Naeem's Little Nuances

Jade vs. Hope

2011-11-14T04:11:00.001+11:00

I like to think everybody has some form of split or multiple personality thing going on that they keep hidden (sometimes not so well hidden) from the rest of the world. Not to the point of switching between different personalities without warning or control, coz' that's just freaky. More like having two different parts of yourself that are sometimes or even regularly at loggerheads with each other... or sometimes being so engrossed in your own thoughts that you imagine your two selves having a conversation with each other...of course this is usually only interesting when you're undergoing some kind of internal conflict or weighing the pros and cons of a decision, or something like that. Well, I don't know if everyone has such a thing going on, but like I said, I like to think everyone does (and doesn't admit it) coz' then that makes me less weird.

I don't talk to myself, but I find more and more that I like to have mental conversations with myself. I picture two different personas, both of whom I have actually given names, i.e. as per the title of this post. The names should be telling in itself. Jade is jaded with life and the 'wilder' persona, and Hope never stops hoping that things will turn out just the way she...well... hopes. The usual topics that lead to discord between the two are relationships with people and faith in God. Sometimes Jade and Hope are just having a rather amicable conversation, albeit with disagreements. Sometimes, I envision them getting into total girl fights with each other. Depending on my mood and sense of adventure, I might imagine some warrior princess battle-like thing going on, complete with broadswords and the armour with boobs (of course I also imagine my two personas looking way hotter than I actually do in real life. I prefer to imagine them as Manga characters), or a ninja showdown, or we're mutants with power to blast fire balls from our hands and try to fry each other. I've stopped at the mental image of half naked female mud fights, although I suspect now that thought will be in your head for this post. My personas even have favourite colours, Jade's being green and Hope's is pink. Don't ask me why.

I've been playing around with the idea of starting another blog, just so I can allow these two to take it out on the new blog, and the conversations I would have with myself would be ...I'm not quite sure how I would manage another blog though, since I already have two and even then I have lack of time or inspiration to update either. So for the moment, I think the new blog idea isn't going to happen. But just in case you see some posts in future here about conversations between some girls named Jade and Hope and you're wondering what the heck is going on... well, now you know.

And that is my eyebrow raising post for today. Have a great week!

The Many (Meaningless?) Things I Wanna Do in My Life

2011-10-04T03:13:00.001+11:00

Since my previous post about having no overall plan for my life, I was thinking to neutralize the 'sad'-ness of that thought (if you're one those who think it's sad that I have no plan) I wanted to write about some of my aspirations, i.e. things I wanna do sometime in my life just for the experience. Just because I don't have a overall direction for my life doesn't mean there aren't things I want to do along the way why figuring out where I'm going. :P It's just the actual long-term planning of how and when I'm going to do these things that I haven't done.... and maybe will never get round to doing for reasons I will explain later.

So I actually sat down and made a list of stuff I want to do at some point in my life, most of which are related to experiencing nature and wildlife, some involves a bit of adventure, some about performing, and some are just plain silly romantic. And after doing a raincheck of my life so far, I'm happy to say that I actually have done quite a few things that I have had wanted to do at some point before. Most of things I have 'accomplished' in my life came not out of long-term planning but from an opportunity that came about that made it much more convenient to do what I want to do.... like a lot of stuff I did in Australia would not have happened if I didn't get a scholarship which allowed my dad to afford to send me to Aus for a year (during which I spent quite a bit of his money during fun stuff....but I still had some left to give back to him when I got home. Heh). And my swim with dolphins would never have happened if I didn't get send to Papua New Guinea for a work trip.

For example, some of the stuff I have wanted to do sometime in my life, and I have already done it:
1) Try sky diving (Brisbane, Australia, year 2004)
2) Learn how to scuba dive
3) Swim with dolphins (Papua New Guinea, late 2009)
4) Learn how to play guitar (not the best player, but I at least I can make some music come out of the dang thing)
5) Visit a roller coaster theme park and ride all the extremest rides (Cedar Point, Cleveland, this year)
6) Visit a Hillsong conference (Sydney, Australia, 2004)
7) Travel in Australia (travelled all 5 major Aussie cities in less than a year) and see real kangaroos and other native Aussia wildlife (almost got into a boxing match with a roo after my bag of food and that was painful and fun at the same time. :p)
8) Work in an area related to environmental conservation (not exactly in the field that I was thinking of, but it's somewhat related)
9) Perform (sing, act, whatever) on stage (done this many times in college and church)
10) Slow danced with a guy I really like, among other romantic things (^_^)

And then here are the things I have wanted to do sometime in my life, but have not done yet:
1) Try bungee jumping
2) Visit Galapagos Island
3) Visit the African Safari
4) Make tonnes of money through blogging, or at least enough money to live a comfy life
5) Buy an underwater camera and become an awesome underwater photographer
6) Get married and live in a small house with a big garden so we can have many dogs and less area of house to clean
7) Make a wedding portrait of hubby and I made such that we look 60-70 years old as a reminder of our goal to stay together always no matter how old and wrinkly and cranky we get
8) Start a church dance class/ ministry (after I learn to dance a lot better than I do now)
9) Write a fantasy novel with a female protagonist named Naeem, or Naima or something like that coz' I always though the name is cool
10) Record at least one song in studio that is good enough to be played on radio even if it never is
11) Fit back into the jeans I wore when I was 16.
12) Have a romantic stroll on a beach with special guy under a starry and windless night (don't want too much sand blowing around in case things get extra romantic)
13) Learn CPR
14) Be a manager/ researcher for a zoo (preferably Singapore Zoo)
15) Be part of a flash mob (this is a relatively new aspiration)
16) Volunteer regularly at an animal shelter

Looking at this 2nd list, there are things that would be really difficult to do just because it would be really expensive (particularly those involving travelling), some will remain an unattainable dream unless I give up my current job (like full time blogging or working at the zoo!) , others I don't dare to start on due to lack of motivation or belief in my own capability to do a good job (write a book? How screwed up would that end up? Don't even talk about the dance ministry idea, that might just be hilarious)... and then there are those which are relatively simple things I could start doing tomorrow, if not for pure laziness or lack of time.

What's missing from that list is a desire to do something that will make a difference in people's lives, the closest thing being starting a dance ministry which I have my own inhibitions about since I'm not a great dancer anyway and it's probably more to feed my own interest in performing than anything else, really. I feel a bit bad that I honestly can't put in anything in there about wanting to make a difference because to be perfectly honest with myself, I'm jaded enough that a part of me doesn't really care to get too close to people. On the other hand, there is the part of me that wants to get over that and just learn to open up and learn to care for people. Coz' at the end of the day, even if I do accomplish every single one of those things on my dream to-do list, most of it was for my own experience and pleasure, which really makes no difference to anyone else. After all, no one's going to write on my tombstone that "Here lies Carol, who jumped out of a airplace one, swam with dolphins and was part of a really funny flash mob". I get this annoying sentiment that Solomon had in the book of Ecclesiastes (which I just read through today for the fun of it while writing this). The feeling that everything is meaningless. Like you work and toil through your life and have a good time every now and then, but in the end, everything is meaningless, like chasing the wind.

Nevertheless, even though I doubt my ability to make a difference in people's lives as well as get round to doing all the things I want to try and do at least once in my life, I still have the hope that it will happen... that someone I can change and motivate myself to get out there and just do it because whatever the thing is that fuels my hopes and ambitions run dry.

Lol, I didn't mean for this post to turn into such deep stuff. Perhaps I really need to just stop over-analyzing my life then I will have more time to do the things I wanna do. :P

No Plan

2011-09-26T03:23:00.000+10:00

It's time for the annual raincheck on my life. Not that I've been doing this annually, just that it sounds better than occasional raincheck on my life.

I'm 28 years old, and will be 29 years old in half a year, and then I will be 30 years old in another year, by which time I can no longer pass as a 'young adult' just starting out in the working world and trying to to figure out what to do with my life but I should already more or less have some sort of plan. Plans that any normal young adult usually has....stuff like aiming for a better work position and getting a higher salary, getting married and starting a family, saving up for my own home, starting a business, maybe even deciding to become a pastor.... stuff like that. At least that's the kind of plan I guess people pass their 30s should have. Although in reality, I'm sure there are many 30-somethings who still don't have a plan. And I've heard a quote by someone who said that at 40 years old he still hasn't figured what he wants to do when he grows up.

Well, right now, I don't really have a plan. And by not having a plan, I mean I don't have have a clue what to do other than continue doing what I have been doing for my whole working life, which I guess so far has been work, go to the gym, go to church on Sunday, serve on Sundays, hang out with friends occasionally, waste time on Facebook, do some fun things every now and then, like travelling, paintballing, scuba diving, and that's pretty much it. It's been working out pretty well so far. But in terms of planning for my long-term future, I haven't been doing much in that respect. I have asked my this question recently... the famous question that potential employers use on employees... where do I see myself in 5 years? And my answer is... probably pretty much the same thing I'm doing right now.

I have been thinking of making a big change, which is moving overseas. My brother who's in the US is encouraging me to go there, or Canada, or Australia. And on surface, given all the complaints people have about this country that is Malaysia, it seems like great idea. The politics suck, the cost of living is skyrocketing, the education system is going to the shits, etc, etc. Why not just get out of here while I still can.

Well, unfortunately to say, I've realized that even though I do have some spark of adventure in me which is the reason why I can jump out of airplanes and go looking for sharks when diving/snorkelling, I still like my comfort zone here in Malaysia. Doing what I've been doing. Yeah, the politics suck, but as long as I can still live my life and the PM isn't trying to blow ME up with dynamite or accuse me of sodomy, I'm ok with the occasionaly drama in the news. Cost of living? Biggest costs are house and car and raising kids. I already have a fully paid, car and I stay with my parents in a cushy condo and not planning to move out unless I get married, and I'm not married which means I have no expensive kids to raise. Otherwise, cost of living is not that bad. Bad education system? Again, no kids, so well, doesn't really affect me.

Yes, I am still thinking that getting out of the country would be worth it. But only if I get married and plan to raise a family, which also means my future imaginery and elusive hubby would have to want to make the move too. As long as I'm single, Malaysia is a pretty cool place to stay in. I have friends and family here, I can watch my nieces grow up, we have great food, shops open way past 5pm, and also it would be a terrible waste to do my diving course this year and then move out of Malaysia (which is next to pretty much all the cool dive spots in the world).

So since I plan to be stuck here for a while, it still means I have no real concrete plan, whether it comes to work, finances, personal life or anything else. How many ways can I possibly have no plan?

Work-wise, I enjoy where I'm at but have been pretty happily plodding along doing my work and hoping for a raise every year. I'm far from the ambitious type where I tell myself I must become manager is x no. of years and at least double my salary or whatever... I just hope for the best and take whatever good I get, whether it be a raise or bonus or whatever. Only recently have I have been feeling stagnant in my area of work (as in I don't think it's getting me anywhere, position-wise) and itching for a change in the main work I do so I get different experience and better future prospects. This is only after almost 3 years in the same job. That change actually could have happened sooner in the almost 3 years since I've been with my current company, but a combination of being already busy with my now stagnating work and my own lack of drive to 'succeed', i.e. work myself up the corporate ladder, lead to the slow progress. But since I've been pretty happy at my job now, I see no reason to leave (part of the reason why I don't want to migrate yet... coz' I need more experience at my work!).

Financially, it's always at the back of my mind that I need to learn how to invest in something reliable. I am currently investing in something through the help of my dad who did all the research on the investment and I'm just along for the ride. But I know I can't rely on him forever and I need to learn how to do my own investments in the future. And since I hate anything to do with finance, except of course, the money itself, learning the tricks of investing in something is scary. Coz' investing is risky and putting my moolah in the wrong place might end up in me losing it. But it's still important, otherwise my moolah will just sit in the bank without growing and that might be difficult when I get to an age when I can't work anymore. Or I actually do start a family and have to raise those money sucking kids. :P My best plan in this area? Marry a guy who is good at financial planning and can help me with investments. Or even better. Marry a damn rich guy who doesn't squander his fortune away. Set for life, baby. >:)

Well, that leads to the next aspect where I have no plan... marriage and family. Kinda hard to plan for that I'm single. Though anything can happen of course, and in five years time I could very well and have met someone and start having little buns baking in the oven. Are there potential guys? Well, yes, there are always potential guys. Whether I will end up with any of them or not is another question. So right now, no plan whatsoever.

And then there's spiritual life. Well, I certainly have no plans to become a pastor, full-time church worker or anything of the sort. Once upon a time I wouldn't mind being married to a pastor if the opportunity came, but now I'm quite sure that will never happen coz' I'm pretty sure I'd make a terrible pastor's wife. On the other hand, I have been having... spiritual issues and was thinking that maybe it's time to go to another church and see what happens. And so was thinking of pulling out of ministries I'm serving in and leaving my current church. But still haven't done it. Mainly coz' I have no plan which church to go to AFTER that. Am kind of occasionally visiting other churchs when I can, to survey the field. It's funny coz' once in the church I went to in Australia, the pastor there, while praying for me, made a prediction that I would become some great woman for God. And everytime I think of that now, I'm just like...hmm... right....

So those are some of the ways where I have no plan in my life. But then I also asked myself... is it really so bad to not have a plan (other than financial planning, which I still consider important no matter what)? I mean, we can plan for stuff but it may not work out the way we want and turn out to be a waste of time (maybe money). Like I usually prefer not to plan for vacations too far ahead of the date, coz' there's another more important event that may come up later at the same time and screw up my plans (happened to me before and I wasted a flight ticket to Thailand!). On the other hand, if I'm content taking each day at a time and hoping for the best, whether it be in my work, personal life or spiritual life, then I may end with things better than I planned or hoped for. And actually I feel like this has what has been happening to me....for example, in my work I have been quite blessed with benefits and favour from my management with I'm not sure I deserve. And in my personal life, I have been blessed with some good friends, and.... I have met a guy whom I really like have great relationship with. But I'm still not sure what will happen between us in the long term, and until I figure it out, he's going to remain a secret. In the meantime, even with having no plan, I still greatly enjoy his company.

Perhaps it sounds bad, but I actually quite enjoy having no plan and enjoying the spontaneity of life. It's been working out for me so far and hopefully it'll continue doing so for a long time. :P

Listen with expectations

2011-08-13T04:34:00.003+10:00

I just spent about 3 and a half hours since 10.15pm chatting with a friend at a cafe. I have questions about my Christian faith which I have to believe he has the answer to. He refuses to tell me because he has no idea how I will react to what he has to say, and he thinks that I will not react well at all, based on his past experiences with other friends. From what I gather, he is 100% sure that God is real. However, he does not believe God is how Christians depict him to be. But he does not what to be the one to break a person's faith. And of course I'm just all the more curious to find out what he knows.

The most I could get out of him however, was a way to get answer to my burning questions.... direct from the source, i.e. the big G Himself.

Listen without expectations.

Now whether I can actually do that is another story. Stopping and listening, I have tried and got nothing. Listening without expectations....that is ... a challenge. I do believe I've talked about how I have this fear about God telling me something I don't wanna hear. And I guess hoping that I won't hear something I don't wanna hear is a form of expectation.

But the burning questions will continue to burn until I get my answers. So I will try.

And we'll see what happens. ;-)

My friend also did say something about how I should stop thinking too much and being afraid of things going wrong. I don't know how the heck he figures this stuff out about me. I thought I did a pretty good job of making people think I'm the carefree, always happy-go-lucky type. Well, that's why I quite enjoy talking to this guy. :)

Of an old song and an old book

2011-05-21T03:06:00.008+10:00

There are two parts to this post (yet another long one. Nyarr!). The first part is about a song I've been thinking about. And the second part is about a book I've been reading, or rather, an excerpt from that book.

I've been thinking about this song.

It's an old song that came out one year before I was even born. I don't particularly like the song. In fact, I'm contemplating whether or not to hate this song. The reason why I'm thinking about it is because the singer, Charlene, is singing about her situation (whether it was real or not, I'm not sure), which is something that could very well be my situation in the future. In a nutshell, the lyrics are sang from a woman who is probably way past her prime and has enjoyed a good life travelling around the world, messing around with guys, living the life. But in the song, this women is giving advice to a married woman with children, telling her that even though she feels unhappy with her marriage and a discontented mother and dreams about doing the things she will never be able to do because she's married with kids, the woman singing advises her that all the 'fantastic things' she's done in her life is nothing compared to having what the other woman has, which is a family. At one part of the song, she sings (or more like, speaks) "Hey, you know what paradise is? It's a lie...but you know what truth is? It's that little baby you're holding, and it's that man you fought with tonight. The same one you're going to make love with tonight. That's truth, that's love." And then she goes on to sing about how she cries for unborn children that might have her complete.

I have many reasons to hate this song. Coz' it makes single women like me worried that if we don't get hitched to someone and have kids, we'll end up old and alone and regretting it. It makes women like me think that finding a guy, settling down and starting a family is more important than anything else. It makes women like me wonder if getting out there and living our single lives, doing what we want, how we want it, is not going to be worth anything later in life. And I hate it mostly because this could actually turn out to be true.

Just recently, I got into another round of conversation with the same guy I had a slightly drunken conversation that I talked about in my previous long waffling post. At one point we started talking about 'true love' again (that question he was dogging me on in our last drunken conversation), and then he commented on my recent Facebook status about this article.

Some of the girls who commented on my FB status are more skinny than curvy, so I'm wondering why THEY would be so happy. Bygones. Anyhow, the guy I'm talking too saw my status update and asked me this question: Do I really NEED a boyfriend? After all, I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself, going on vacation to US, learning how to scuba dive, getting involved in many activities, etc, etc.

Getting technicalities out of way, I'm sure no girl ever actually NEEDS a boyfriend. The question is more whether I actually really want one or not. And it's quite funny now that after a long history of lamenting my lack of love life (most of that lamenting done on this blog itself), I'm now so used to being single and independant that I'm seriously considering if it's best just to stay that way for the rest of my life. But, as I told my friend, I'm also wondering if I'll end up regretting that choice later on in life when I'm old and frail and alone. On the other hand, I may also end up regretting getting hitched to someone. To me, I'm considering 3 possible scenarios:

1) I meet my 'Mr. Right', get married and live mostly happily ever after (every relationship will have its up and downs, but the important thing is that we learn to deal with it and still love each other). That would actually be my ideal situation. And it would be a great plus if we made beautiful babies who grew up to be fantastic people that actually took the time to take care of their folks. In such a case, I would certainly have little or no regrets in my old age because I know I'd have family around and people who love me.

2) I meet a guy, get married, have kids, and then life just spirals downwards from there. Could be either we reach a point where we cannot even sleep in the same room and can't talk to each other without getting in to a fight. Or worst still, we decide to get a divorce. And to top it all off, the kids could turn out to be an irresponsible bunch that fly off the Australia after we spend RM20k a semester trying to get them through uni, only to find out they've failed the course, decided to run off with some guy/girl and never call home again. In such as case, I still end up being alone and regretful in my old age, and I would not have gottent the chance to do all the things I would get to do if I had remained single. So what's the point?

3) I remain single, do whatever I wanna do for the rest of my life, make good friends, visit the world, experience new things, without having to endure all the emotional hoohah of marriage and potentially bratty kids. And then spend my old age withering away in an old folks home, where the news of the week is that another friend of mine passed away, and I would be planning the best way to commit suicide without leaving a bloody mess for the old folks home helpers to clean up.

Scenario 1 would be greatest. Scenario 3 would be great as long as long as I have energy to run around and enjoy my life. Scenario 2 would be just about the suckiest situation to be in. And while I would certainly love being in Scenario 1, if I had to choose between living a life in scenario 2 or 3, I would choose Scenario 3 and be alone for the rest of my life. However, in order to get a shot of living out Scenario 1, I have to run the very real risk of it spiralling downwards to becoming Scenario 2. Which is what I am damn shit scared of happening. My fears are not unfounded. I've grown up in a home where my mum constantly finds a way to be annoyed with my dad, my dad is completely exasperated with my mum's impatience, they currently both stay in separate rooms, and their kids, including myself, hardly ever take the time to actually sit down and spend time with them except if it's someone's birthday or some festival. We kids are not close to our parents (there are reasons for this, of course, and if you know what it's like, you'll know it's not an easy situation to change) although we still carry out our filial duties in terms of providing for mum and dad. Somewhat.

Suffice to say, I don't want to live the type of family life that my mum and dad are living right now. And hence, I'd love to hate the song "I've Never Been To Me" because it sends the message that being married with kids is the best thing you could ever do with your life. Which could be true, or it could go completely the other way and make your life absolutely miserable.

And I'm 28 years old, which makes me at the prime of my life and I'm running out of time to decide whether or not to go the way of marriage and family or the way of singledom. If at some point, my maternal instrincts activate and I decide that I REALLY want to have kids, it may very soon come to the point where that ship has left the dock and there's no way I can jump on it anymore. And I'm not just talking about my biological clock ticking away here, there is another reason for it (which is kind of explained in the 2nd part of my long-winded post). But even if I do decide I want to go the way of marriage, I don't have any potential partners at the moment. And finding the right guy is not easy. My friend was is a bit bewildered on why it is so difficult for me, as he seems to have the opinion that there are many guys out there who would want a girl like me.

Interestingly enough, in one earlier conversation (we've had a few other meet-ups since our first drunken conversation, just so you know), he voiced his suspicion that the reason I'm hesitant to get into a relationship is because I think that I don't deserve to be loved.

And just like the song, I'd love to hate what he said. Because the fact is that I don't consider myself a person with low self-esteem. Therefore the notion that I'm afraid of a relationship because I don't deserve to be loved, which implies that I am a person with low self-esteem, should by all means piss me off.

But unfortunately I hate to say it, but he could be right as well.

Which leads me to my thoughts about the book excerpt. This same guy that I've been having these fascinating conversations with recently lent me a book. It's a really old book as well (like the song) which came out in 1989. I would have been 6 years old and in kindergarten at the time, and funnily enough, the book is called "All I Really Need to Know", I Learned in Kindergarten - Uncommon Thoughts on Uncommon Things" by Robert Fulghum. It's basically a collection of the writer's thought on various topics, each of which are short write-up of only 3 to 4 pages each.

In one story, he talks about his thoughts on children playing hide and seek. And then talk about how adults like to play hide and seek, in their own way. The excerpt is as follows:

A man I know found out last year that he had terminal cancer. He was a doctor. And knew about dying, and he didn't want to make his family and friends suffer through that with him. So he kept his secret. And died. Everybody said how brace he was to bear his suffering in silence and not tell everybody, and so on and so forth. But privately his family and friends said how angry they were that he didn't need them, didn't trust their strength. And it hurt that he didn't say goodbye.

He hid too well. Getting found would have kept him in the game. Hide-and-seek, grown-up style. Wanting to hide. Needing to be sought. Confused about being found. "I don't want anyone to know." "What will people think?""I don't want to bother anyone."

This hit a bit too close to home for me. I've said before on my blog that I don't like people feeling sorry for me, which is why I keep many thing to myself. So while this may sound like I'm going off tangent from the earlier topic, it does relate. Please bear with me. :)

At the end of 2010, I paid a visit to a doctor for a medical check-up. To be specific, it was a gynae and it was the first time I'd visited a gynae. He did some tests, and told me to call back in a week and see how were the results. When I did, it turns out they had found some mild 'abnormal formations' on my cervix. They had to do a biopsy to remove the abnormal cells and check what it was about. So I took a day off, hopped into a cab to the hospital, and went in for the biopsy, which was done in about an hour or so while I was out like a light, after which I took the cab back. Didn't tell anyone about this, by the way. After another week, the doctor explains to me that I have a virus. Not anything that will kill me, and there a chance that the virus goes dormant, in which case I won't have anymore problems. However, there is a higher chance of the buggers recurring and causing more abnormal formations in my cervix. To cut long story short, I am at high risk of cervical cancer. Which again, will not kill me as long as it's monitored. But there is a risk that the buggers may cause enough mayhem in me that I will one day have to have my cervix removed. This could happen within the next few years, or next decade or more.

And once that happens, I can never have kids.

So while that's not too much of a concern for me right NOW, it comes back to the point where I know my time to make a decision is running out. If I do decide to go the way of marriage and children, then I don't have much time left to make that choice. But then there's always the problem of finding the right guy. Plus now there's the additional problem of getting a man who's willing to invest in damaged goods.

On the bright side, it's the weekend and you should watch this vid and smile coz' it has dancing monkeys!

Conversations are more interesting when drunk

2011-04-29T03:11:00.005+10:00

...Or at least somewhat intoxicated. So sometime last week I was at a friend's birthday party. The friend is question invited a whole bunch of friends from everywhere and it was a pretty big party involving BBQ, loud music and of course, plenty of alcohol. I had a few drinks myself, not enough to make me see double of everything and I could still drive home safety after that, but certainly enough to make me a little light-headed and ditzier than I already am.

So at one point I'm minding my own business, walking past a couple of chit chatting guy friends when one of them, whom I shall call Kenny (coz' that is actually his name. Duh.) stops me in my tracks to ask me a question. Apparently the two guys were in a debate over something and Kenny seemed to want to prove his point, whatever it may be, by getting my opinion on the topic and he was hoping that I would agree with him and therefore prove his point (although soon after he ropes me into the conversation, the other guy he was talking to just kind of moseyed away and left me to deal with Kenny. Which I guess kinda defeats the purpose of roping me in in the first place).

His question was this: Would I rather remain content with my life the way it is, even if I'm not really happy... OR would I give up EVERYTHING for a shot at TRUE HAPPINESS? (Everything in this case, meaning my job, family, house, belongings, whatever...)

First thought that came into my head was.... this is one of those hypothetical scenarios that really has little or no chance of happening in real life, and even if it did, I wouldn't know what I would actually do in such a scenario until I was in it. It's along the line of asking "Would you run into a burning building to save someone you didn't know?"? I consider such questions unanswerable coz' you could give any answer you want but when it comes to the real thing, you could end up doing something completely different. Like how the heck would I know until I am actually IN that situation? I mean, I can say yes I would do so, but there's no credibility to my bold claim since I can't prove it. And if I said no, who knows? I may be overcome with heroism if such a thing actually happened.

So naturally I tried make it such that I didn't have to answer the question directly.

First thing I did was challenge his assumption that being content with life the way it is means I'm not happy. Who's to say that a person who is content is not happy? IMHO, happiness to each person is relative, and a person who is content with a simple life can also be much happier than a person who is continually striving to achieve more. So why give up everything I have if I already AM happy with what I have? Agreeing to my point, my friend then makes it a bit more clear what the question is REALLY about.

The revised question is this: Would I give up everything I have in exchange for TRUE LOVE? (true love, by his definition, meaning someone who totally understands me and no matter what other crappy things may happen, I will be the most important person in his life)

Ah, I should have known. We're not talking any ol' type of true happiness here, we're talking about the 'true love' type of true happiness. Yokay....

To this I just decided to skip the roundabout answer. I just simply said I don't know coz' I've never been in the situation. Of course, that's not enough for Kenny, he just keeps right on probing me to give a definite answer, at which I guess I kinda disappointed and maybe surprised him when I said no, I wouldn't.

As you can guess, I'm not much of a hopeless romantic. But trust me when I say I have reasons for my answer (and I consider these perfectly good reasons, dunno about you). The only situation I can think of where I could possibly ever have to give up EVERYTHING for "true love" would be if some guy with no money, house, car or any of the comforts of life I am used somehow or another totally swept me off my feet and I was adamant on marrying him, but my parents completely disapproved of him and swore to disown me if I married such a guy, in which case we ended up eloping. In such a case, I would have lost my family, house, car, and pretty everything except this poor guy who supposedly truly loves me and can't give me a similar comfortable life. But apparently that's ok, because he loves me and love conquers everything!!! Including a grumbling stomach, and having to deal with the roaches crawling on me coz' we have to live on the street. In which case, I would seriously have to question the level of this guy's love for me, coz' if I were madly in love with someone, and I knew that that person would have a worst-off life with me than where he is now, than I would want that person to stay right where he is rather than live a crummy life with me.

Which leads me to the next point...how would I ever know whether or not a guy TRULY loves me enough that he would be worth giving up everything I have for? After all, a guy can bullshit me with as much romantic mumbo jumbo as he wants, that doesn't necessarily make it all true. If a guy is like Bruno Mars and says he would catch a grenade for me, stand in front of a train for me, in other words, DIE for me, there's really no way I would know he's telling the truth unless it actually happened.... until then it could just all be romantic bullshit he's spouting in an effort to get into my pants.

But THEN, Kenny replies, does that mean the only way a guy can prove his TRUE LOVE for me is by showing that he's actually willing to give up his life for me? Once the poor guy is dead (perhaps trying to catch a grenade for me, heavens know where it came from), wouldn't it be too late??

I wasn't quite sure how to explain it to him at the time, but it was totally not my intention to insinuate that a guy has to get run over by a train to prove his undying love for me. The point was simply that a guy can tell me that he would die for me, or tell me that he'll love me forever, or tell me just about any kind of sweet talk that usually causes a girl to swoon...BUT it would be very difficult for me to believe it. Simply because I HAVE been sweet talked by an ex before who told me that he would love me forever. However, he failed to insert the clause that 'forever' no longer applies if I were decide to break up with him. Even though I did it as amicably as possible, he responded by posting anonymous crude comments on blog and starting a fake Friendster account with my number on it encouraging guys to call or sms me for a 'fun time'. That immature behaviour stopped long ago, of course, and now I think he's with another girl whom I feel very sorry for. But anyhow, my idea of 'true love' is to never stop loving a person, even if that person rejects you. My ex said that he would love me forever (and even at that time, I didn't quite believe him), then I rejected him, and he ended up demonstrating how much he actually did NOT love me by behaving like an arse.

So I think it's quite understandable that I would be very doubtful of any guy who gives me such sweet talk. In fact, I've come to realize that the kind of guys I admire now are the ones I know would never sweet talk me with romantic mumbo jumbo. It doesn't mean that I don't like romance. I just don't like romance when a guy makes claims about the extent of his love for me which he would never be able to positively prove (i.e. claims like I would go to the moon and back for you....corrnyyyy), and more likely than not he'd end up contradicting himself like in the case of my ex.

The debate isn't over yet. Then Kenny throws the next question at me: Does this mean that I don't believe in true love?? Or that I think that I can never find MY true love?

Simple answer from me: No, I do believe in true love. I just think that it's extremely difficult to find it. For me, well, I guess if I find such a guy, then great. If I don't, then I'll get a dog (a nicer one than the bratty mutt I have now).

At one point, I throw a question back at Kenny: What exactly is YOUR definition of true love?

He goes the way of saying that true love is someone who understand you completely, always supports you and puts you as number one, no matter what the circumstance.

I wasn't quite sure if I totally agreed with his answer at the time. But now that I think about it, I would take it one step further. True love is about supporting the other person and putting that person as number one in your life (or 2nd to God, if you're a Christian ;-)) even if you DON'T completely understand that person. Coz' really, I don't think there is any couple that PERFECTLY understands each other. Every person is different and has their point of view, and will disagree with each other at some point. But disagreeing doesn't mean you stop supporting or loving each other. And that kind of love doesn't come in the same package of Cloud 9 lovey dovey feeling. It's the kind of love that develops over time, after getting to know a person really well, including all their bad habits, traits that you can't stand, and knowing which issues they would never agree with you on ...and even after all that, if you can say that you'll support and love this person no matter what, then THAT is TRUE LOVE. And that kind of true love is difficult to find, although not impossible. But the ONLY way to find it, is through getting to know the person you're committed to, over time and having to live with this person... all the time. That's why even though I can be having a crush on the same guy for years and think I can accept behaviours of his which most people would not be able to tolerate, I wouldn't dare to say that I'm in love with such a guy. Coz' I don't have to put up with this person ALL THE TIME, so I can't say for sure that eventually he will end up just driving me insane.

And coming back to the revised version of the original question, about whether or not I would give up everything for true love, I think I may have to revise my answer a bit (although Kenny himself may not read this, but it's just for me and whoever cares to read my long-winded dribble on this blog).

If based on the scenario that some guy comes along claiming to be my 'one true love' with all his romantic sweet talk, then definitely NO, I wouldn't give up everything for such a guy until he can put his money where his mouth is.

But if I've been with a man for years, and he has already done enough to show that he would support and love me no matter what, even through all my shortcomings and our disagreements and my nagging him about throwing his socks on the floor, then probably yes, I would give up everything that that kind of love. So yeah, I guess I still do have a bit of romanticism in me. :)

Sorry again for the long rambling post, but I like questions like these. It really makes you think about what you believe in life, and it's very important to know what you believe in. ^_^

Nevertheless, I still think the Bruno Mars song is pretty awesome.

'No Strings Attached' and the head banging dilemma

2011-03-15T23:52:00.001+11:00

In this post, I'm gonna talk about sex and how much I would like it. So I'm betting this post will raise a few eyebrows. But c'mon people, I'm 28 years old and anyone my age who wasn't accidentally abandoned in the forest and living in isolation for the past 20 years would know what it's all about. And even in the forest, you'd eventually see animal humping each other sometime.

I watched this romantic comedy (i.e. romcom) called 'No Strings Attached' online recently.

I normally don't watch rom-coms coz' they all give a highly fluffed up idea of what love is all about. Guy and girl goes through a series of unfortunate events, culminating in guy and girl getting together in the end and living happy ever after. The movie almost always fails to show what happens after they're married, the headaches and heartaches of learning to cope with the other person's annoying behaviours and the REAL process of love, which would be learning to accept and appreciate the other person even through all their annoying behaviours. Plus romcoms make single people feel lonely and miserable. I personally find more fun watching any one of the 'Final Destination' or 'Saw' movies.

But for this movie, I thought the premise was little more interesting. The story goes like this. Girl and guy are old friends. Girl and guy one day decide to 'get it on'. But girl doesn't want a relationship. She freaks at the thought of a relationship. But she likes sex. Therefore girl insists that she and guy only romp and do none of the other romantic stuff, i.e. spooning, cuddling, staring each others eyes. So they become sex friends, otherwise known as f*ck buddies. Guy should be totally ecstatic since most guys enjoy sex and hate the emotional aspect of a relationship coz' they need to be all macho-like and all. But of course, this is a rom-com, and it wouldn't be romantic if guy decided to leave it at that. Nope, he has to fall for the girl and try to convince her to be with him, although she continues to resist. After the rom-com typical series of unfortunate events, girl realizes she loves guy, they get together and live happily ever after. The end. So now you don't need to watch the movie (there aren't any actual sex scenes in it anyway, so especially nothing to see for you guys).

So how would such a movie apply to my life. After all I'm a Christian girl and shouldn't even be thinking of sex until I marry my Mr. Right coz' premarital sex is SINFUL and God will send me the right man eventually as long as I remain patient and continue to serve him faithfully.

Sorry I need a moment.

So here's a slightly different take on my usual griping on my lack of love life. Yes, I would like to meet my so-called 'Mr. Right', enjoy a bit of fluffy romance and wind up married, which will hopefully be happily ever after. I'm a female, this desire is genetically written in my DNA. But these days I'm starting to question the reason why I want a guy.

Do I need a guy for emotional support? Not really. I already mentioned in my previous post that I hate inconveniencing people or making people feel sorry for me, and griping to my man about whatever crap is going on in my life doesn't really help the situatuon. In fact, a man is more likely to be the cause of why I need emotional support. I haven't been in a relationship in years, and I know for a fact that I have spent much less time crying like a baby OUT of a relationship than in one. Of course, I enjoy the time spent with that special someone. But I really hated the times he drove me nearly insane. Being single can be lonely, yes, but I sure as heck am more emotional stable.

Do I need a guy to support me? Not really. I have a job, I don't have a great pay, but it's enough for me to live a pretty comfy life.

Do I need a guy to have kids? Well, obviously I would (unless I go the way of in-vitro fertilization, in which case if I don't do proper research on the history of that sperm, I could end up with the spawn of a retard). But the problem is, I don't even really want kids. Not to say that I totally don't want them or wouldn't consider having them, and I can't say that 5 or 10 years down the line I'd start wishing for the pitter patter of little feet around the house. But right now, I have no desire to go through the 9 months of carrying a growing watermelon in my stomach, suffering the next few months of sleepless nights to feed the kid every few hours, dealing with a potential screamer/ super active kid, then having to put up with their wise cracks when he/ she becomes a teenager. If I do ever decide to have kids, it would be only under two conditions:

1) I am 100% sure that my husband will be actively loving and helping to take care of the kids. Or so help me God if I suffer from post natal depression and start having murderous thoughts.

2) I will not be working until the kid is at least 5 years old, so I can take care of the kid. Unless his or my parents are willing to take care of the kid, and even then, I have to stake out the parents-in-law first and see how many screws they have loose in their heads. I don't even trust me parents completely either... my mum no longer has the energy or patience for it, and my dad taking care of babies? Errrr.... ain't gonna happen. The first 5 years of a child's life are the most crucial, and I sure as heck am not letting some foreign maid take care of my kids for more than one third of his or her young life. So how many guys can afford to support a family on his salary alone these days with costs of everything shooting through the roof?

NOT MANY.

Concluding question. Do I really need a man?

Noooot really.

Having said that, I still really enjoy being with a guy. And as a certain song by Ms. Britney Spears goes, I'm not that innocent. I have 'messed around' with my previous bfs, although to what extent I'll leave that to your wildest imagination. And I enjoyed it. A lot . Really I did. Stop blushing, you know you do too.

So with all that in mind, the concept of romping with a guy while remaining purely friends, with no deep emotional connection as would be expected in an attached relationship, well, doesn't sound too bad. But of course, some of you reading this might be having your jaw dropped right now and ready to call my pastor to sit me down for a good long talk. Being a church-serving Christian girl, something like would more likely than not result in me being kicked out of whatever ministry I'm in. Maybe even kicked from the church.

I'm not about to defend that it's perfectly ok, but since I've been thinking about it here a some other potentially jaw dropping insides from the brain of Carol. Premarital sex is a sin, no doubt it says that in the Bible. I can perfectly understand why, since there are so many risks associated with it (STDs, unwanted babies, emotional distress, yadda yadda yadda). But why is there so much stigma attached to girls (or guys) who do it, as opposed to say.... working on a Sunday? Or a Saturday, which some say is technically the Sabbath Day. Coz' one of the 10 Commandments was not to work on the Sabbath Day but leave it as a day of rest. But no one prays for your repentance if you work on a Sunday or Saturday. It's perfectly fine. Pre-marital sex is not listed anywhere on the 10 Commandments, by the way. Adultery is, but that's not the same thing, although some wise guys would argue that premarital sex is akin to cheating on your future partner. Right. So what if I don't ever get married or I can't find my mysterious Mr. Right then, eh, wise guys?

And then there's this verse in 1 Corinthians 7:8-9 which says "Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I do. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion."

Which really blows my mind when I think about coz' it kinda saying if you really want intimacy and sex, then just go and get married to someone so you can bonk 'em silly. O_O

Obviously isn't as simple as that. I mean, if you're gonna be stuck with a person for the rest of your life, you'd at least wanna make pretty sure you know what you're getting into instead of being guided by the amount of blood that pumps into your southern regions. And I'm finding the older I get, the more picky I'm getting with my potential life partners. And I have a very strange dilemma when in comes to choosing men.

I still consider being with a Christian guy very important, hence I am very likely to reject a non-Christian guy (Unless he's really hot, has awesome character and lots of money. In which case there would be tons of other girls lining up for him and I wouldn't have a chance anyway) However, I'm not a very gung-ho, full steam ahead, totally-trust-in-God kind of Christian. I have a bit of a flailing faith, but not one I will give up on anytime soon. So when I do meet a Christian guy I like, but I think he's every bit as pathetic in his walk with God as I am, I feel a bit hesitant in going for him since I know we'll just be flailing around in our faith together and neither will grow spiritually. I kinda want a Christian who can and will challenge me spiritually and give me that push in the right direction, make me see and learn things about my faith I never knew before. BUT THEN, when I do find such a guy I admire.... I STILL am hesitant to make a move. Coz' then I think.... what the heck would I have to offer this guy? If my faith is pathetic and he is full steam ahead, wouldn't I just drag him down and discourage him? I knew the previous guy who had a thing for me had a REALLY 'lalang' character...he went along with everyone I said or did, and I knew I could push him around to my liking easily.... I couldn't stand him coz' I know I'm not highly dominating, but I can take on a dominating role around submissive people. But I DO NOT WANT to be in a relationship with a submissive man!

So that taught me that one of the things I'd really want in a guy is someone who is a leader and opinionated. And with such a guy I wouldn't mind taking on the role of 'supporting gf/ wife'. But again, with the flailing faith... I do question that if I ever did snag myself such a guy... would I really be the kind of support to that guy that I should be? So I'm also afraid of being with a man of strong Christian faith... simply because I'm afraid I'll bring him down.

So I probably won't take a Christian guy, I don't really like Christian guys of average faith and I'm afraid of bringing down a guy of strong Christian faith even though that's the guy I want. That just about eliminates all men in the world as the right partner for me. Plus, even if I do find someone 'perfect' for me, it's no use if he doesn't reciprocate the feelings. And yet even if I never get married for all these reasons, because the Bible says so and the church disapproves of it, I still can't enjoy intimacy or sex with a guy even though God also created humans with hormones.

Allow me to take another moment.

From emo to self-analysis to OK

2011-03-10T03:47:00.009+11:00

For those who thought that girls only know how to drown their sorrows with girly bitching sessions, chocolate and shopping, here's the all new Facebook approved method:

I wanted to write this post yesterday coz' yesterday was an emo day and I wanted to bitch about it, but it got late and I didn't manage to finish it on time. So the emo post got postponed to today... but it ends a little more positively than I originally intended it to.

Anyway, the reason for my emo-ness was the thought that I am severely lacking in close friends. Not that the thought just occured to me, I of course have been aware of this for a long time and understand that the reason for is mostly my own doing. But what happened yesterday is that I was really excited about something and so I emailed a whole bunch of friends about the news, at least 40 of them, thinking that this would be such a cool thing that that I'd be swamped with responses from my friends wanting to join in the fun.

After 24 hours, I got 3 responses from the first group of about 10 friends I emailed, which was ok.... but from the other group of 30, there was not ONE response. Which I found quite strange, since I'm sure not at least some of them would have checked their emails. I did get one person from that group who responded to me through Facebook....one of the few people I consider a pretty good friend. But not one direct reply to the email. Then I was logged into Facebook and saw one of my friends had posted the same news on her profile, and she was practically swamped with responses.

So the lack of enthusiasm to my email could be due to a great deal of factors (they could have been too busy to reply, haven't seen the email, etc, etc), I just got the feeling that one of the more likely reasons was that the many people I shared this with just isn't close enough to me to give a damn about responding.

Hence I sad. Sad because it's like I meet all these people on a regular basis and it was like not even ONE person could bother to reply to me (even until today, which is 2 days later... zero responses from group 2). And I figured that the main reason for the lack of response was because I am not close to any of these people.

I usually hang out with my big group of friends in a group... and in a group, all talk is small talk. In other words, I never get down to talking with these people about personal things, sharing our 'heart', knowing the crap that is going on in each others lives, it's usually frivolous topics of discussion. I would define a 'close' friend as someone I sit down with one to one every now and then and chat about anything with, including personal topics, without feeling weird about it. There are very few people whom I actually do this with, and even with these few people, I rarely ever take the time to time to meet up with with them for one to one chats. And even with these few people, I don't actually talk about my personal life unless someone asks me something related to it, or somehow the discussion leads to it and I have an excuse to bitch about the crappy things going on in my life. I've been asked before if I had a BEST friend...which I would define a 'best friend' as someone I can call up any hour of the day, say I have a problem and I wanna talk about it and that person will listen to me as long as it takes without thinking it's weird, and vice versa. But to that question, I just kinda blinked for a while and said I don't have a best friend.

I've done a lot of self-analyzing to figure out why I've come to this state. I figure one reason is because a long time ago I did know people I considered my 'best friend'.... until I realized they didn't think the same of me, and I was left being ignored by them. This was one of those experiences that made me learn from an early age that trusting too much in people can result in them disappointing me, and I've said it before that I hate the feeling of being disappointed.

Another 2 reasons is that I hate inconveniencing people and I don't like people feeling sorry for me. I calling up a friend just because I want to talk about something crappy going on in my life is only going to result in one or the other. Either the person doesn't give a hoot about my problem and feels inconvenienced by my whining which is taking up his or her previous time. OR they will feel sorry for me but most likely they can't do anything about the problem anyway, so I would have just made them feel a bit crappy too without getting the problem solved and that really doesn't help anyone. I fail to see the point in either. Even in that FB thread, when I was asked to explain why I was emo, I gave one silly response which didn't answer the question. My typical deflective mechanism which means people won't feel inconvenienced or sorry for me, but they have no idea still what ticking in my brain.

So for the most part, I've been pretty ok being this way. But on occasion I do feel crappy about the way it is, and yesterday was one of those days. As much as I want to protect myself from being disappointed by people, the fact of the matter is I think everyone needs to be able to talk to someone about the tough, personal, emotionally inconveniencing topics every now and then. Even people I know who claim they are not a 'people person' enjoy the occasional long conversation with people they are very close to. Far as I'm concerned there's no such thing as a non-people person... just people who want to protect themselves from getting hurt by misplacing trust in the wrong people.

Anyway, I spent almost the whole day feeling kinda miserable about the depressing thought of having so few close friends, thinking about everything I was blabbering about above and thinking I should just forget about that 'cool' thing I wanted to do since the response was close to dead.

Fortunately, the good thing about me is that I've somehow or another mastered the art of picking myself up when I feel like crap. And after the whole self-analysis session, I figure that since my current state of lack of close friends is due to my own behaviour, why on earth can't I stop being miserable about it and just change my behaviour? If I want to talk to people, instead on waiting around and hoping someone would be ma 'friend' I oughtta get out there and talk to them first.

However, the first matter at hand was to deal with the lack of response to my email. So today I upped and called a whole bunch of people I emailed one by one to ask if they wanted to join this thing or not. And it turns out quite a few of them were interested, and just as I initially suspected (if my emo-ness hadn't taken over), some were just too busy to reply. So I now have a group of people to join this cool thing which I'm sure will be the bomb, and I was glad to report this on my earlier Facebook thread ....

By the way, if you're someone I know who actually took the time to read through my incessantly long waffling and suffer the same emo issues as me, just gimme a holler anytime so we can go out for coffee and bitch about life. ^_^

Not wanting to want

2011-02-28T03:42:00.006+11:00

Yay, I finally got a working blog page navigation thingy on my revamped blog. Woohoo! On the downside, it somehow or another has resulted in my entire list of buddies blogs to disappear. Ugh. I'm too lazy to work on filling up that list right now. I just wanna blog.

Last Friday I went to a cell group (which is now officially called LifeNet Groups in my church, but that always reminds me of LNG, i.e. liquid natural gas, and that kinda cracks me up) for the 1st time in a few weeks. Some things going on in my cell group, resulting in it being disbanded so I am now in another cell group, although these days I don't really feel like going anymore for reasons that I will explain somewhere along the way here.

But I went to cell on Friday anyhow, and the topic of discussion was the famous Psalm 23. And so the leader tells us that we're supposed to read the whole psalm, then think about which line of the psalm taught us something, explain why and also share how we could apply whatever it is we 'learned' to our lives. We were given about 5 minutes to read through and think about what we wanted to say. So for 5 whole minutes the group was pin-drop silent while we read through but I'm sure our brains were all frantically thinking of something reasonably intelligent to say if we were asked. Fortunately I actually did think of something to say, although it wasn't so much on how that verse could be made applicable to my life. I kinda misunderstood what we were supposed to do as I was thinking we were just supposed to share about our thoughts on that verse that 'hit' us, and I was the first one to share my thoughts, so I didn't have a chance to correct myself.

The line that struck me most was the first line of Psalm 23:

"The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want"

I just found out that other versions of the Bible translate the 2nd part as "I lack nothing" or "I have all that I need", which wouldn't have invoked similar thoughts in me, coz' the part that kinda boggled me was the whole idea of not wanting anything. Coz' I don't think it's really humanly possible to not want anything. People always want something, whether it's new stuff, a relationship, good exam results, a promotion, a feeling of gratification... heck, even a suicidal person with no hope wants to die. How the heck does someone not ever want anything?

Then I was reminded of a conversation I had before with a Buddhist friend. This was not the type of Buddhist who worshipped little statues or gave altar offerings... he never bothers with any of that. The only reason why he calls himself a Buddhist is coz' he accepts the teachings of Buddhism, one of which he explained to me and I found quite interesting, was that in order to attain true happiness/bliss, we have to learn to not want. The reason for this is because our desire for something is usually the same thing that causes us grief or unhappiness.

He gave an example of a guy he knows... a rich guy who earns a comfy five-figure salary every month...more than what most people earn in a year. You'd think this guy would be very happy... but far from it. He's always unhappy and complaining that he doesn't earn enough money...but the thing is this guy doesn't even spend the money. He just earns a hoopla of dough every month and keeps it away, spending most of his time making more money rather than enjoying what he has made. For him, he only wants to make the money. That's where he gets his kick, and he has a goal of how much he wants to make. But for someone like him, even if he does reach his 'target' salary, he STILL won't be happy... because then he'll just continue wanting more. And he'll never be happy because of it.

But letting go of our 'wants' doesn't apply only material things, my friend explained. He also gave the example of his mother, whose favourite son is my friend's eldest brother. Unfortunately the eldest brother has never shown much appreciation for his mother, although she has helped take care of his children, cook food for his family, etc, etc. And because she wants to receive some form of appreciation from him but never gets it, she always complains about it and feel dejected. My friend simply advises her that if she wants to continue to dot on her son and his children, she should do so without expecting anything in return, since it only causes her grief.

So I shared this little conversation with my Buddhist friend with the cell group... and at the end of it I said that it was an interesting teaching, but Psalm 23 goes further. Coz' it not only tells us that by having God in our lives, we will no longer want (or need) anything... but at the end of the psalm, it also says "Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life". And so Psalm 23 tells us that God not only provides us with what we need and make us not 'want', but goes even further by providing us with love. And that's one up on Buddhism (with full respect to my Buddhist friends).

The truth is, I said all that coz' it was a nice comfy text-book answer... but honestly I would have had so much more to say on the topic of 'wanting' that would have been much less fine and dandy, but I would have been opening a can of worms, most likely giving my cell leader a headache and potentially raising doubts in the others about their faith, which would have been BAD. This is part of the reason why I kinda lost my steam for cell group. I find it unconducive for asking difficult questions coz' either no one can really answer (or at least give some good opinions as food for thought), or I worry how the difficult questions will affect the faith of others. But I like opening up cans of worms. >:)

DISCLAIMERRRR: If you are a new Christian / Christian who doesn't like hearing difficult questions about your faith and just think all Christians should just have blind and not ask such silly things, please stop reading now. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Listening to my Buddhist friend, I thought that the concept of being happy by learning not to want really made a lot of sense to me. I don't consider myself a person of high ambition and wanting a lot of new stuff... but nevertheless, there are some things, as in inmaterial things, that I do want. I wanted something so much that I have prayed for God to provide it (and I don't plan on sharing what it is here, coz' a girl needs her secrets. ;)). But after such a long time of not getting what I prayed for, I ended up being disappointed. I know that I'm not supposed to treat God like a Santa Claus, asking Him for stuff and kicking up a rebellious fuss if I don't get what I want. But I do think that want I asked for was a good thing... you know... in line with his will or whatever, coz' in a way it would hopefully have helped me grow in my faith as well.

The unfortunate result has been that now I try not to ask for anything when I pray now. I still pray in other ways... thanking God for a blessings, talking to Him when I need to bitch about something but I don't want to tell people, etc, etc. But asking Him for anything now is difficult for me... just coz' I don't want to be disappointed if I don't get what I prayed for. I absolutely abhore that feeling of disappointment, whether it's due to people or God. I would almost say I have a fear of disappointment, which has led to me developing a 'fear' of having too close relationships. It's not a good thing, I know, but shit happens.

Even then, I still do pray every now and then for something, with some sort of miniscule hope that it will happen, even though Christians always say that when we pray, we should believe in complete faith that it will happen, but I really can't do that coz' I also believe that God can up and decide that what we asked for is not the best for us and just not give us what we asked for. And voila, my complete faith would be completely crushed coz' on the surface level, it seems God decided to take my prayer request and shove it in the backburner.

Now my prayer is more along the lines of "Please God, provide for me what I ask for, but if You don't plan to do so, then please God, take away my desire for this thing I'm asking for so at least I don't feel so crappy". Even then, my prayer for request no. 2 is still not answered and I still feel like crap for not getting what I'm asking for.

That in turn has brought up the question in my mind... did God decide not to take away my desire for this thing I really want, but am not getting, because:

A) He insists on not doing everything for me so I have to figure out how to deal with it myself which helps me develop 'character'

B) He doesn't have the power to take away my desire ~(:O)

C) He wouldn't take away my desire because He created humans to have free will and removing my desire is akin to removing part of my free will

D) He derives some for of entertainment in watching me pine away for something I can't get

Ok, I'm not that serious about the last one, but the thought does pop into mind after a while.

Nevertheless, if there's one thing I believe I have never lacked in, it's hope. I still hope for the thing that I want, and even though I do get disappointed and have a beef with God sometimes, that hope keeps my desire, and my faith in God, somewhat afloat.

Well hey, I ended with a somewhat feel-good note. That wasn't too bad eh. :P Here some lolcats to make u smile.

U-Turn

2011-02-14T03:45:00.002+11:00

Today in church, Pastor Mal talked about making u-turns in life. In other words, when you know you're not doing something right in your life (going the wrong direction), with Jesus, there is always a chance to repent and 'u-turn' back to the right path. And he shared the story of a murderer on death row who gave his life to Jesus and became a totally changed person who ministered to many others prison inmates before being executed.

I just wonder... what about the people who are not so driven to change. Those who say they repent and actually have tried to change, but eventually go back to their old 'sinful' ways because they lack the willpower to change? Or those who have been taught these Christian values from a young age were never really so 'sinful' in the first place but then later on go tired of being so 'good' that they became 'sinful' just for the fun of it. They always say God can provide the strength to live according to His ways if you ask for it... but when people 'u-turn' back to the wrong direction even after they have have pledged to make a change and prayed for help to become a more Godly person, does this mean God didn't really give the strength to that person, and instead such strength (or desire to change) has to come from the person itself?

I've changed my way of thinking on the purpose in asking God to change me for the better. But anyway, there have been many times that I have asked God to help change me for the better, but eventually after the spiritual euphoria wears off, I end up going back to being the same person doing things I know I shouldn't be doing. The atheists would throw their hands up in glee, saying that this goes to show that God doesn't really exist after all, coz' He didn't answer my prayer even though it was to change to be better. But I have thought about it, and have the feeling now that if God is really there, and He really wants us to make a 'u-turn', then it should be something that comes out of our own desire, and not because He voodoo-ed us into becoming someone else. In other words, if I really appreciate what God has done for me, I shouldn't need to ask Him to help me change to be more like what he wants, I would do it automatically out of love and appreciation.

The next question is, would God still forgive such a person who continues to live going in the 'wrong direction' because they have just kept trying and trying to change themselves for the better, but always ends up failing to the point where they just can't be bothered anymore? Some people might say, yes, God is always ready to forgive if you really want it, some might say that the lack of ability to change one's sinful ways to God's way is already a sign that the 'repentance' in not sincere. But there is a difference between sinning on purpose and taking God's forgiveness for granted, and sinning because you can't really help yourself and sometimes if you don't do what you've been taught is 'wrong', you end up feeling like crap anyway. I don't wanna give an example of what I'm talking about, coz' it's something you either understand if you're going through it, or you don't, in which case, you don't need to know.

Just some tough questions that swam into my mind today.

The blog got a makeover!

2011-02-13T22:51:00.003+11:00

I finally got sick of the old look and did a total revamp of my blog, with a little help from templatesblock.com where I got my current template from. Since now I have another blog (www.read-in-red.blogspot.com) for me to write about more frivolous stuff (it was intended to be money-spinning blog with ads and all, but I don't post much anyway and my grand earnings from my ads now are probably less than a 50 cents), I've decided to change this to a place for more personal ramblings, and I thought a the diary look would be pretty cool. The idea is that now only my good friends will know about this blog and everyone else I'm acquainted with but not so close to can read my other blog, but of course, I don't do a great job of keeping this blog private either, so anyone on the web can find it if they looked hard enough. lol. So well, I just like segregating my personal thoughts from my frivolous posts now. Sorry if you're confused.

One problem now is that the right 'page' is mostly empty now coz' it's the sidebar. And for the moment the page navigation buttons are missing and the 'Subcribe to Posts' link at the bottom doesn't work properly. I don't have the time to fix it now though, so I'll crack my brains on this later (of course, any html geniuses who can help me out would be much appreciated!).

I also got rid of the music player, which I know was annoying to some people, but I just couldn't bring myself to get rid of it for a while since it's also being used by my friend Carol Rasiah on her blog, Just Being Autonomous. The other Carol was a friend of mine with a bone disorder that made her extremely stunted and she died in a car accident at the end of 2009, as I blogged about earlier here. Yeah, it was sad.

And yes, also changed the blog title. Just coz' my previous blog title (Crimson Shadow) didn't really match my blog url. 'Nuanced' is "possessed of multiple layers of detail, pattern, or meaning", which kinda reflects the intention of my blog. But if that confuses you too, just accept that I changed the name and smile. ^_^

Anyway, more posts coming soon, maybe I hope. :P

Sel & Gav are back!

2010-12-19T03:25:00.002+11:00

I have not since like forever again. I should make it a new year's resolution to blog more. :P

Selina and Gavin, my good buddies who left our Malaysian soil to migrate to Aussieland, are back this week. And I'm glad they are! Yesterday went out for dinner with them, Sonia and Fan Yin, a.k.a. Limfy a.k.a. Lymphatic nodes (she's gonna kill me if she reads this), and we have the best laugh I've had for a long long time... at Gavin's expense. Something about how Sel was one day trying to tell him something really really important and then he just gave a really retarded look... like his eyes were droopy and he looked like he was ready to knock out, and at the same time his upper lip was rolled in and stuck to his gums.

I told Sel the next time he does that, she must take a picture of it and post it up on her blog.

Next week I'm taking leave for Christmas and we're going to Ipoh for a 'makan' trip! Food glorious food, here we come!

The LOLL (lack-of-love-life) update

2010-09-06T02:43:00.003+10:00

I apologize for the fact that this has now become my sad blog. Since I've started my Read in Red blog, I prefer to keep all my non-personal updates about any interesting stuff on that blog and stuck to blogging more personal stuff here. Unfortunately the only time I have personal stuff to blog about is when I'm sad or depressed for some reason or another, or something to do with my love life or griping over my lack of it. At least the fact that I don't update very often goes to show that I don't get sad or depressed so easily... and I still don't have much of a love life, so I can't keep griping about that. But today's post kinda falls under the latter category of griping about my (lack of) love life. Get ready to be bored again. Nyek nyek.

I met a new guy friend recently. I find said guy mentioned above a very interesting person, just a year older than me. But I can talk to him easily and openly and we have interesting conversations. He has quite a regularly interesting blog, just simple stuff about his life. The thing I liked was how he liked to update about his personal thoughts and activities with his friends and loved ones (he seems to be a pretty active guy)... the stuff I SHOULD be blogging about here, but I'm not coz' I'm a lazy bum!! It inspired me to get blabbering here again. Don't know how long the inspiration will last though. :P The sad part for me is that said guy is already taken and going to be married early next year. So it's like that Alanis Morrisette song, you know, the one where's she sings about how life is as ironic as 'meeting the man of my dreams and then meeting his beautiful wife'. In this case, fiance.

Well, if you've been paying attention to what few updates I've made to this blog, you'd have known my last post mentioned about how I'm starting to not be too into the idea of getting hitched anyway, so no biggie. Just cursing my bad luck coz' something COULD have happened if he was NOT already with another girl. *Sigh* Welcome to the story of my love life, people. But I'm glad to have him as a friend anyway. It's nice to have someone new come along and inspire me every once in a while, even if it's to work these lazy fingers and start blogging about my boring life.

Yet I'm also strangely happy with the fact that I'm not desperate to get into the relationship. Reason I know this is because I met ANOTHER guy recently during a gathering of Christian friends I have not in ages (met them in a camp). This guy was particularly chatty with me during the dinner, and he's a nice guy, got a long well too, so we exchanged numbers. Since then, he has called me up every now and then just to chat and asked me out for drinks a few times (I've only gone out with him once for breakfast and a movie). And he often start online chats with me, just to chat. So I'm pretty sure this guy has a thing for me.

Sad to say, the feeling is not mutual.

Like I said, he's a nice guy... just that apart from talking about what boring stuff is happening in our lives (which is not much), I don't find our conversations very interesting. He does not strike me as someone opinionated or with an interesting view of things, or, well.... an interesting person in general. So as nice as he is and flattered as I am by his attention, I'm simply not attracted to him. I'm not quite sure how to tell him this though... I'm still replying to his chats and would probably still go out with him again. Maybe after a while of me not reciprocating with initiating the chats, etc, he'll get the hint?

So here I am liking a guy I can't have and being liked by a guy I'm not interested in. My life is now almost fodder for a cheezy Taiwanese drama! Whoop whoop!

Taking stock

2010-07-07T03:22:00.003+10:00

There comes a point in most people’s lives when you kinda stop and take stock of where you have been, where you are now, and where you think you’re gonna end up. Actually I’ve been at that point a few times already, but this is the first time I’ve already taken the time to actually write about it. I think there are very few people in this world who, when they come to this point, can actually honestly say that they are perfectly happy with where they are, and most people having an inherent desire to get more than what they currently have or be more than what they currently are, would tend to bitch about what they desire but have not achieved. Which to some point is understandable… being too content with your lot means you will lack drive to get better things. But having a high drive to obtain more also leaves you discontented. So where does a person find the balance? Without a doubt, whether or not a person tends to lean towards accepting their lot or striving for what they want depends a lot on their personality and life experiences.

When it comes to my work, I guess I’m kinda like Goldilocks. I don’t like my chair too big and porridge too hot, I don’t my chair too small or my porridge too cold either, I like it just nice. I hoped to be a reasonably successful career woman, who is allowed to carry out my work with independence and be paid reasonably well for it, but I don’t particularly aim to be at the top of the career ladder, managing my own company with lots of cronies under me. Right now, I can safely say that career-wise, I am pretty much where I want to be, and I have potential to take on a future managerial role in my company, in which case I will likely have a small team of people under me, which is fine (hasn’t happened yet though, right now I’m still a crony, but a crony left to work quite independently :) ). I don’t have a nutcase job of a boss breathing down my neck, and I am very grateful that I am in company with an open working environment and my manager trusts me a great deal, which is a fantastically much better experience than what I had to go through in my previous job at a GLC. For that, I am truly blessed and thankful.

In terms of my personal life and my relationships, however, it’s a more difficult question to answer when I ask if I am truly content with where I am now.

It used to be ‘No’. I’m not quite sure if I can safely say now that it is a ‘Yes’… but I think I’m getting there, because I’ve kinda learned that a major reason for disappointments in life in because of unmet expectations. Usually, these are unmet expectations of other people.

I think in terms of personal life and relationship, most people pretty much want the same thing. To have people they can be close to and enjoy a good relationship with, especially their family. And especially for more girls, they dream of the perfect wedding with the perfect man, after which both man and woman hope for adorable kids who grow up to be filial children that accompany and take care of their aged folks. Kinda like an extension of a fairy tale (which usually stops at the ‘Get married and live happily every after part’).

Unfortunately, reality very rarely turns out to be a fairy tale. People you think are your good friends can end up ignoring you. A husband can cheat on his wife, or vice versa. Children may grow up to be completely ungrateful and dump their folks at an Old Folks Home, never to visit them again.

I remember once when I was in primary school, there was this Indian girl I was friends with. Her name was Dharshini. I thought she was my best friend in the whole wide world. Then one day, I can’t remember exactly what happened, but I believe we were divided into different teams for sports, and I kept bugging the teacher to let me in the same team as her… but she didn’t bother to make the same request, in fact she was quite happy hanging out with other friends. And I remember feeling so sad and disappointed, I even cried. From then on, she was no longer my best friend, and while along the way, I had other ‘best’ friends in school, but I guess that kind of shaped my early thinking of friendship. Eventually, I drifted away from my other ‘best’ friends, and I learned to be less attached to people. To this day, I have many friends, but not many good friends, and not even a best friend. So much that I sometimes wonder who on earth I would ask to be my bridesmaid if I ever got married. No person I can call up anytime and pour my heart to if I’m not happy about something. To some extent, that also comes from my mentality that I hate inconveniencing other people, and I feel that blabbering my problems out to other people would make other people sad and hence inconvenience them, especially when they have no capacity to help me other than pat me on the back and try to make me feel better. I’m not sure why I learned to be like this… but I do know that the unfortunate effect is that I also get a bit annoyed when people call ME to blabber about their problems which I can’t do anything about. I mean, I understand that people sometimes just like to tell their sob stories, but honestly…as mean as it sounds, as long as the problem does not pertain to a loved one being dead or half dead, I can hardly care. It’s horrible of me, I know. I should care. It’s important to be able to listen to people, coz’ only then can I ever hope to develop a close relationship. But I am the way I am now.

Even to my own family, particularly my folks, deep inside, I would like to be close to them and be able to share stuff with them. I have no doubt that my folks love me, especially my mum. But we just did not grow being able to be open to each other and did not express care for each other with hugs and kisses. And honestly speaking, most of the times when I have shared my thoughts on something with my mum, she usually ends up disagreeing with me and advising me to do something I don’t wanna do, and if I show signs of not wanting to take her advice, she considers me rebellious. Too much to explain, but the point is, that has resulted in a clamp down in my openness to her. Not the ideal mother-daughter relationship, but I feel that that has been the only thing I could do to maintain an amicable relationship with her. My mum does it a lot with her 3 year old grand-daughter and her baby sister now, I guess that my mum’s way of trying to make up for how I and my brothers were raised.

There are also too many times on this blog when I have expressed my hope of meeting the right guy, and living that sort-of fairy tale life. I know the reality of it, of course, a lasting and loving relationship involves commitment and perseverance, and a willingness to compromise and serve your partner, not always hoping that the other fella just only do what you want. Throughout my life I have had crushes on… too many guys. Gone through that cycle of analyzing his every action and word spoken to me, looking for a sign of interest in me, experiencing that ecstatic high when he smiles at me. But I’ve also experienced too many times the disappointment at realizing he wasn’t interested in me at all. I’ve experienced and observed married couples who, instead of loving each other, want totally nothing to do with their partner, and even threaten for a divorce every other minute. I know people separated from their spouses, and having to raise children on their own. And I find it ironically strange that the same people in these crumbled relationships are hoping that I will find a boyfriend myself and get married one day. I mean, your experience sucked, why on earth would you want the same thing for me?

For most of my life, I’ve wanted to be with a man. A part of me still hopes for that fairy tales. But knowing the reality of it, I’m now coming to accept the idea that maybe it better to be single for the rest of my life. Oh, the shock and horror of it to most! No husband! No kids! Am I sure I want to live such a lonely life? Do I want to miss on the joy of being in a loving marriage and the joy of raising kids?

Well yes, I’ve thought of it, and the idea of dying without having anyone who really cares about me is pretty sad. But I also know that I would rather be single and lonely than married and STILL lonely (or even worse, hating that man sleeping next to me). I also know that I myself am full of crap, so full of crap that I may end up being the one hurting my partner, and that same crap will be inherited by whatever kids I have. Who's to say that being married will definitely lead to happiness? And speaking of kids, I don’t see the point of bringing kids into this world in the hopes that they will keep me company when I’m old, because it’s very likely whatever crappy personality traits I have will be inherited by them (in addition to having the crappy traits of my husband) and there is NO guarantee that they will not end up abandoning me… or even worse… that they will die earlier than me! Besides, it’s estimated that most of the world’s land mass will be covered with water over the next couple of decades due to rapid global warming, which would mean lack of dwelling space, lack of land for growing food, and pure havoc for our over-populated earth. Don’t want my kids going through that shit. The only regret I would have in not having kids is that I guess it would be nice to have more grandkids for my mum to enjoy... but then I have to deal with them for the rest of my life, and not her!

All in all, at this point in my life, in terms of my personal life, I can say that I have become quite jaded. The fear of being hurt in my relationships has overtaken my need to experience joy in a relationships, and I am willing to sacrifice the potential joy in order to protect myself from the potential pain, and therefore I’m perfectly find maintaining superficial relationships instead of making the effort to develop deeper ones. It’s not what I really want… but it’s what I've become.

I know that sounds rather depressing, and maybe most people reading this would be kinda sad for me. But there is no reason to be. Every person in their relationships has their joys and sadness, ups and downs. I prefer to take path of more… stabilized emotions… and sometimes it saddens me because like any normal girl I still wish and hope for love, but for the most part, I enjoy my independence, I enjoy being able to do whatever I want without having to be accountable for other people’s needs or worrying about hurting other people or being hurt myself. I still hope that along the way I find love, and that I learn to care more about other people, and perhaps over time I will change. And being still somewhat a believer in romance, as difficult as it is to find and MAINTAIN, I believe I’ve met only one man in my life who is afraid of relationships for the very same reasons I am… and for that reason, we may just be the right people for each other. And of course, it helps that I think he’s super hot, hmm… but again, one of those cases where the feeling isn’t mutual. But it’s still fun to dream. :)

ANYWAY (see, old habits die hard, I still blabber on about my schoolgirl crushes in the midst of being all contemplative), I see having hope as important, because no matter how jaded a person gets, if they completely lose hope that they will achieve the things they want, that’s just really sad. But at the same time, I wanna enjoy the moment and not dwell waiting for things I may never have.

Thanks for reading my long and boring thoughts, and have a blessed day. :)

Through my doubts, I celebrate the day

2010-04-05T02:19:00.003+10:00

For most of my life, I have had what I guess most people would consider a slightly lukewarm Christian life. Slightly lukewarm because I still attend church, I serve in two different ministries, and I help out in occasional church events, but my faith is not actually all that great, I don't have a passion for telling the people around me about Christ, and I don't even bother to pray or read my Bible all that much these days. And for most of my life, this has been somewhat of a frustration to me. We Christians are always reminded that we are called by God to love other people, to serve Him, to try and bring others to Christ, to maintain a close relationship with God, yadda yadda yadda blablabla, and for some Christians, this seems to be easy. They say it's the love of God that drives them to do it, and for most people I think they have had some sort of spiritual or emotional experience with God and that's why they go all out for him. Very rarely do people believe in God because it intellectually makes sense to them. The weird thing for me is that, at this point in my life, the only thing that is keeping my faith together is that for the most part, the Christian faith intellectually makes sense. I guess at this point, most atheists and perhaps a great deal of Christians would be like "Wat??", but yeah, I've read the logical arguments for it and few months ago, I was in some online debates over my faith with non-believers. And during those debates, even though I was usually debating with more atheists than I could handle and I was the ONLY Christian, my faith came out stronger instead of weaker. Unfortunately, after a while, I got too busy with work and no longer have the time to continue the debates... and since then, I've had many questions and doubts about what I believe in. Intellectually, I have many reasons to believe there is a God (not going into the debate here, that's not the purpose of this post), but the doubts creeping in were on whether or not that God was actually the loving and personal God I've always been taught about. Because many times, I have prayed to Him, to ask for something... something I thought would be good especially for my spiritual growth, or something that I could use as a testimony for Him. Like the time my wallet was lost at Sunway Pyramid (most likely pickpocketed from my handbag), I prayed that I would get it back somehow, and not only me, but even a group of Christian friends prayed the same thing and their prayer was with even more gusto and confidence than mine. I prayed that if I got it back, I would definitely testify about it... but I never got my wallet back. So no testimony. And then there's the long standing prayer that I would find a nice Christian guy to be in a relationship with. I've asked God for that I dunno how many times throughout the past few years, and each time I would tell him that I really want to enjoy being in a relationship, and I want to enjoy the intimacy, but I don't want to get into another relationship with a guy was not Christian and undoubtedly would lead to problems, like in my past two relationships. And I would tell him it would be great to have a guy who could support me (and I could 'hopefully' support him) in our Christian walk together. You'd think God would be most happy to answer that request and send me my Mr. Right who is a Christian. But so far, I have been nothing but disappointed. To the extent where I've even asked him that if He wants me to single, then please take away my desire to want to be a relationship. He hasn't answered that either. Sometimes I wonder if God is purposely not giving me what I want coz' I got into previous relationships that I knew I shouldn't have, and on occasions crossed the line I shouldn't have. And sometimes I wonder if God is even hearing me at all, or whether He even cares. At points, the doubts have made me almost wanna throw my hands up, give up my beliefs, run out to a club and party the night away coz' I don't wanna think about it anymore. I live somewhat of a double life... I kinda pretend that I have a pretty ok relationship with God, and always chirpy and quirky, as most people call me... but in actuality I'm like that because I don't want people to know that I am problems in my faith. And I don't want them to know because I don't want them to get depressed because of my doubts, which may cause THEM to have doubts too. I think if they are having a good walk with God, why should I come along with my little grey cloud and rain on their parade?

I've never done the whole running-out-to-the-club part though... partially coz' all the cool clubs are all the way in KL and I have to pay quite a bit to get in. And partially because I know that giving up my faith isn't going to make me happy. It's probably going to make me just even more miserable. And one of the things I hold on to is the memory of my own spiritual experience I had in 2004, when I went through a similar bout of sadness and doubt, and I actually did make a decision that I didn't want to be a Christian anymore... and immediately after I was overwhelmed with so much sadness, I was crying uncontrollably like I'd never cried before and in my head I was wondering what was happening to me. And another part of my head (God talking, I guess) told me that this was all the pain and hurt I was going to through in my life if I were no longer a Christian. After that, well, I decided giving up my faith maybe not such a great plan after all.

The other things that keep me going is the stories of the Bible itself. Namely some of the Psalms and the book of Ecclesiastes and Job. Ecclesiastes, probably written by King Solomon, could go for the most depressing book of the Bible award and win hands down. The writer rants on about how everything in life is meaningless and depressing and people are full of crap, and stuff like that. And than there's poor Job, who was a pretty well-off dude with a strong faith in God, but one day everything was taken away from him, he lost all of his wealth and all his children dead, and he was left asking God why. And then there were the Psalmists, who also felt at times that God was far off, eg. first line of Psalm 10 says "Why, O Lord, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?". All these writers have had their own issues with God and with their faith... but in the end, they all would eventually write about praising God for his goodness anyway. And in Job's case, he was doubly blessed. I guess in some ways, my issue is that the church has always drummed into our heads that we're supposed to be experiencing some great joy from God, and some people get the impression that we're supposed to be happy joyful people all the time, which makes me feel kinda blah coz' I'm not. But these books in the BIBLE, tell me that it's ok to feel the way I do... it's ok to feel that God isn't listening to me... it doesn't mean He isn't. Maybe He's just waiting for a better time.... or procrastinating.. :P And even through all the doubts and sadness I have sometimes, every time I decide to stop overthinking my faith and just give up some praise to God, I do feel an inexplicable sense of peace and joy which I guess for the most part, cannot be intellectually explained. And I guess that is a peace and joy that comes from God.

Thank you, Lord, for your death on the cross this Easter Day (I'm one hour and 45 minutes overdue, but it's ok, it's still Easter in the United States. :))

Coffee's Last Breath

2010-03-12T03:36:00.001+11:00

Most of the stuff I post here now is personal stuff these days (since I started my other blog), and it's unfortunate that most of the personal stuff is rather sad stuff... today is no exception, and it's also about a death of one of my gerbils... but unlike Peanut, which I posted about some time ago, the death of Coffee, which happened a couple of days ago, was very much more special. And while I have been mum over the deaths of other gerbils, this one was so special, I have to pay tribute to Coffee on my blog.

Coffee is the daddy of all my other gerbils... except for my original mummy gerbil, Girl Girl, who is now, also dead. Gerbil was Girl Girl's son, who was born along with another female gerbil, Honey (she's still alive). This is Honey and Coffee (the slightly darker one) when they were kids, born around December 2006

After some time, Coffee turned from dark brown to half brown and black, which you can see in his teenager pic, where he's on the left looks pretty weird, like most teens do.

And here he was, completely black, after he mated with his mum (yes, I know it sounds wrong) and became the proud big daddy of a bunch of little gerbs.

These guys are cute to bits when they are young. But they are grew up, of course, and now my gerbils are all over 3 years old now, and that makes them grandmas and grandpas in gerbil age. So they've been dying off one by one. After Peanut, I found my mummy gerbil dead one day (pretty late too coz' her body was quite eaten up by ants already), and a couple of months later, my smallest and slightly off balance female gerbil, Chomper, bit the dust too. In both cases, I could see them both weakening and slowing down a week or two before, and had much reduced appetite, so I figured they were getting ready to go. And when I found them dead, it was not unexpected, and I was sad, but didn't cry. I just wrapped them up in newspapers and threw them out in the trash. A bit impersonal, I know, but with their bodies already stiff and decaying, I didn't want to be holding on to them too long.

So a week ago, when I noticed Coffee starting to really slow down, become very inactive, and , I knew his time was running out. I checked him often to see how he was doing, and a couple of days ago when I noticed him being really sleep and refusing to eat his favourite kuaci, I took him out for a run around my room, thinking that it might be one of his last chances to enjoy a bit of freedom. He did run around a bit, but he looked like a sleepy old grandpa.

So I gave him a few head rubs, and talked to him a bit. I'd always liked Coffee and like to call him my 'good boy' coz' he doesn't bite me when I'm holding him... he just sits in my hands and even seems to like it when I rub his head. So I consider Coffee my favourite gerbil... and told him I didn't want him to die. He looked at me sleepily some more. So I put him back in his cage, and went out for a couple of hours.

When I got back, I went to his cage again, and saw him sitting in one corner, away from his fellow gerbils, and it looked like he was slowly chewing something... but it was unusual behaviour. So I opened the cage and took him out to have a look. He wasn't chewing anything, but slowly gasping for breath. I knew something was wrong. I thought maybe he would like some banana, so I carried him over to the dining table, ready to feed him some. But suddenly his body started going into spasms, jerking so hard, I had to hold him tight so I didn't drop him. Then his body started squeezing inwards like something invisible was pressing hard against him. I had NO idea what was happening, I could only watch helplessly and all this happened in my hands. Then, as his body relaxed again, he let out one last breath and... he was dead.

There I was holding my Coffee's lifeless body in my hands, shocked at what just happened. And my mum certainly wasn't very sympathetic, she saw what went on when he was in spasms, and when I worriedly asked out loud what was happening to him, she nonchalently said he was dying. And when he was dead, she just said, at least he waited for me before he died.

I didn't cry at the death of my other gerbils (except my original Peanut, and I cried only out of anger at my dad)... but seeing all that happened with Coffee, my favourite gerbil, I couldn't help but cry. I do wonder if he actually wanted me to hold it when it died... or was it just a coincidence? Did he feel comfortable when I held it, so much that he decided it was the right time to go? I don't know, but I would like to think so

Unlike the other gerbils, I couldn't bear to throw Coffee out in the dumpster. His body was still warm and hadn't stiffened... and I sat in my room for a while, holding him while crying, hoping that somehow he would wake up, and feeling so strange that I could lift him up, poke him, and there would be no reaction from him. So after a while I took his body downstairs to my condo's garden (this was late at night, btw), dug up a small plot at the corner, and buried him there. I hope something nice grows there... like maybe a sunflower.

Watching him die was truly surreal. I'd never seen something die of natural causes right in front of me. And it made me wonder a lot of things... like did Coffee have a spirit that went somewhere after he died? Is there a gerbil heaven? Or will he and all my other gerbils go to people heaven? And it made me wonder how some people can NOT believe in spirits or souls... there is an essence in all living creatures that makes them ALIVE. The body is just a container... but even though the body is still normal and can function, like in Coffee's case, he was perfectly healthy all this time, and was just old... for some reason, that 'life' inside of him was there one second, and the next... it was gone. For no apparent reason... he wasn't sick, he wasn't injured... but he died. Where did his life essence go?

It's also a grim reminder that one day, that will happen to me too. And I hope, not only will I die of natural causes, but like Coffee, that I will die in the hands...or rather, arms of someone who cares about me. I'm really sad seeing Coffee die... but I would rather all my gerbils die in my hands then any other way. And the fact that he, being my favourite gerbil, and dying in such a way, although sad, but it was very special to me. I guess seeing something you care about die in front of you, but you are powerful to stop it, really gave me something to think about. Ironic that it's so easy to take away a life... but we are completely powerless to give it back.

Rest in piece, Coffee buddy, and do I hope I get to play with you some more in people heaven. :)

Until we meet again, Carol

2010-01-09T15:17:00.006+11:00

My friend, Carol Rasiah, was a special person in many ways. One, which is very hard to go unnoticed, is that she was born with a severe form of a disease called osteogenesis imperfecta, which causes brittle bones that fracture and break easily, and in her case, causing growth defects and malformed bones. So she has spent all her life in a wheelchair, and hardly able to move around. What makes her even more special was that even with her condition, she had always been full of joy and gratefulness to God (this is also evident from posts on her blog. And yes, she ripped that music player off my blog, with my permission. Lol. :) ), not to mention she had an incredible will to live life to the fullest. By God's amazing grace, she was able to spend more than 2 years living by herself in an apartment near my condo. Every thing she does which the rest of us able-bodied people take for granted is an incredible task. From getting off her bed into her wheelchair, to using the bathroom, to cooking up a meal... I have no idea how she does it, but somehow she does it all on her own. Of course, when it comes to cleaning up her house, she gets a maid to come in once in a while to help out. I only got to know her in 2008, and during Christmas that year, she asked me to help her put up her Christmas tree, of which I gladly obliged.

Last Christmas, however, I did not hear anything from her, or even received an sms from her during Christmas. Which at one point I thought was quite odd since she would usually sms every now and then, especially on special occasions. But this time she didn't, and I had a nagging feeling that I should give her a call and say hi or something, but I didn't. Now I've learned that nagging feelings should not be ignored. I got news this week that Carol passed away recently. According to her obituary, it stated that she passed away on the 1st of January, however, from reading other online sources, it seems she passed on in early December. And I only knew about it two days ago!
I went to her memorial service today and learned that it was due to a bad accident. Every week, some folks come in a van to pick her up and help her do some chores like shopping and getting a haircut, etc. While in the van, the driver had to emergency brake, and because she wasn't wearing a seatbelt (she's small and it's difficult for her wear a normal seat belt. I think she was also in her wheelchair at the time, which makes it more difficult), she got flung forward. The impact fractured her spine, skull and God knows how many other bones, and she was unconscious in the hospital for days, until she finally gave up her life. The news of how it happened was especially heart breaking to me, because I took her out in my car several times. And every time I would put on the seat belt for her, even though she would laugh and say it wasn't necessary. I would always say "Nonono, you gotta wear your seatbelt!", although I would only strap the bottom part across her, while the part that usually goes across the chest would go behind her back instead, since she was too small and the strap would only go across her face. If only she had followed my advice... she might have survived.

The last time I saw her was on 14 November 09, when she asked me to come to her place and help put up a clock on her wall. It didn't take too long for me to do so, and after that I just chatted with her for a bit, and I remember talking to her about all this online debates about Christianity that I've been getting into, and some of the difficult questions related to our faith. And she just put a big smile on her face and said that even though we don't have all the answers, we should always still put our faith in God. It's just amazing that someone with a debilitating condition like hers can have such faith in God and be so happy, when there are so many able-bodied people out there who do nothing but complain about every piece of crap that happens to them, but not make a peep when good stuff happens. I do feel a bit crappy that I didn't contact her more after that. I feel especially crappy in that I knew she didn't get many visitors, although she wanted people's company, and she even asked me once before if I could be a good friend to her. And not that I didn't enjoy her company, but I know I'm very bad at spending time with people, even good friends, and so I didn't want to disappoint her by making such a promise and then end up not spending as much time with her as she would have liked. I suppose it's normal to feel such regrets when someone is gone, and perhaps it serves as a reminder for us to not take our loved ones for granted and spend time with them while we are still able to.

Nevertheless, although death brings sadness, there is still a cause for joy because I know now she is no longer feeling the pain of her condition and one day I will get to see her again, enjoying an eternal life with a perfect body free of ridiculous birth defects. And when I do see her, first thing I'm gonna say is "I TOLD you so! Why didn't you wear your seatbelt, hur??". Lol. Until we meet again, Carol! :)

My last photo with her, taken when I brought her to my church on October 18, 2009:

Physical and spiritual training

2009-09-18T01:36:00.003+10:00

Since I started my new job early this year in February, I signed up at the fitness centre near my place, TrueFitness (and I purposely stick the words together so they have less chance of googling this and find me crapping about them a bit. Hehe.). Which was kinda funny coz' before that when the place was new and somehow they got my number (you know how they get members to give their friends contacts so they can call people up and bug them to join the gym), so of course they were calling me a few times to bug me to join too, to the point where I got sick of getting their calls and saved their number as TrueFatness on my phone, so I would know when they're calling and not pick up. And get a good laugh at the same time. But anyway, since my new office is now super near my house, and I no longer waste precious time sitting around in traffic jams, I decided to join the place after all.

Few months after I joined, I got approached by one of their fitness trainers, his name is Danny, who noticed I was wearing knee support on my right knee. I wear it due to my taekwondo accident some time ago, and I explained that to him, so he was went on to suggest that I needed some personal training (PT) coz' of my knee problem, blablabla, and also since I'm a little on the prosperous side, more blablabla.... :P To cut the boring story short, I ended up signing up for some PT sessions and also some kickboxing sessions (supposedly good for burning off extra prosperity), a bit against my better judgement coz' it's pretty pricey.

Thankfully, I haven't really regretted it coz' Danny really knows what he doing (I've heard stories from a friend who took PT but got a back injury coz' of it. Lousy trainer!). He's really professional but fun at the same time, we've gotten along very well. Signing up for PT has since turned me into a gym freak... now I go almost every day (even when I have no session with him) just coz' I want to make the most of the money I spent. Haha! And though in the initial sessions I was feeling some sore muscles here and there, I've pushed myself so far now that I can pretty much take whatever torture he dishes out to me, and he's had to be more creative with me. And he even recently said I'm his strongest client, and mentioned that he shares stories of my progress with other clients as an example. Woo hoo! I'm so proud of myself! :D I think he pretty much considers me his pet project now, and if he can get me to lose quite a few pounds, he will be very proud of himself too. Unfortunately I'm still not dropping as much weight as I hoped, and I can only presume that my fats are as stubborn as I am. Bleh.

But even more importantly is that Danny, although from a Buddhist family and supposedly being a a Buddhist, he told me he's interested in learning more about Christianity and even asked me to help teach him more about it. And since I've started training under him, he's been visiting his friend's church and also reading a bible borrowed to him by a friend. I also lent him my New Living Translation version of the New Testament, which he said he likes better than the old one his friend lent him (easier to understand). He told me he's actually finished reading the whole book of John and finishing the book of Matthew (probably already finished it by now), and even I'm inspired by his desire to read the Word of God. I don't really get much chance to really sit down and share with him coz' other than our sessions together, where he's too busy torturing me for me to really teach him anything about my faith, he's usually busy with other clients. But I tell him whatever I can and have given him Christian booklets and music CDs to encourage him along. As much as he would like to see me to shed the pounds, I think I would like even more to see him come to know Christ. So he's kinda like my pet project too now. Haha! I'm actually glad now that I signed up for the pricey training, since because of this, I have more chance to share my faith with him. Which I'm really bad at doing most of the time coz' I can be quite antisocial and don't really make the effort to spend time with people anyway. Bad of me, baaaad.

To my fellow Christian buddies, do keep Danny in prayer. And while you're at it, you can pray that I lose more weight and become a hot hoochie mama. ;-)

A good week...2 weeks ago :P

2009-05-14T03:22:00.002+10:00

Another overdue post! Yargh! But only by a week or so. Just wanted to thank God for one pretty good week (which started 2 weeks ago) coz' of a few things:

1) 2 Sundays ago, my mum, who all my life calls herself Christian but has never really believed in God (and this is due to some bad experience with Christians and people in general, so can't blame her) actually came back to Christ. She had been attending my church services for a few weeks, and that Sunday, she came up to me after church and said she wanted to talk to my pastor. So I went and stole my pastor away from whoever he was talking to, to see my mum, and she told him she wanted to come back to God. So my pastor did the whole Sinner's Prayer with her, and she was crying and all, and I was there with her pretty happy and kinda like "Whoa!" all at the same time.

So now she's an 'official' believer, which is great!... but of course that's only the first step and she need to be discipled as a new Christian and all. And since I'm pretty much the only Christian in the same house as her, that discipling role probably falls on me, and unfortunately life has still been the same since and I'm not quite sure how to about it. As in, I know the technicalities and what I should be doing... but you know, it's my MUM, and though I appreciate her being my mum and all, honestly I'm not super close to her, soooo taking up the role of a Christian mentor is kinda weird for me. I did get her a nice new devotional Bible for women (it's in pink, what s surprise) and gave her one of my old learning guides... it's the just sitting with her and going through all this stuff part that I feel weird about. Trying to get

Anyhow, the fact that she has taken that first step is a great thing already. Now I just need to work on my part. heh. Pray, people. Praaaaay for me. And my mum too. Yeah.

2) At work, I was pretty happy about two things that week, one is that I got a request from a potential client asking to do a project in Thailand, which is the project I really wanted as it would be a great learning experience for me, and upon completion, it would really help to put my company on the radar for the area I'm specializing in, since now we're pretty new in it and my company isn't getting many requests for the area I'm handling. Though the project is not confirmed yet and I have to come with a proposal to get the project, I'm pretty excited about and reeeeaaallly hope we get it. Chances are pretty good, I think.

Another good thing is that I've passed my probation period and recently been confirmed! Woo hoo!!! And better part is that my pay goes up a bit too! DOUBLE woo hoo!!! I'm tempted to say "Up yours" to my ex-boss for not confirming me for dumb reasons.... buuut I won't.... although technically I just did, but that doesn't count coz' I said I wouldn't. Haha.

3) That same week, I also attended my church's monthly prayer meeting, where there was a guest speaker for that night (whose name I can't remember now, but it's some black dude, I think. :P). Anyway, I actually didn't really feel like going for the prayer meeting coz' that day I was feeling really crappy with myself and thinking that I probably wouldn't be able to honestly pray anything good in that kind of mood. But last minute decided to go, and listen to this guy... and one of the first things he said during his message was that by the time we all would leave church that night, we would be filled with joy. And when I heard that I was kinda like "Yeah, right!". Yeah, I was feeling that crappy. Also didn't really help that the same dude spoke so excitedly that he would be yelling instead of speaking more of his message, in this rather high-pitched and grating voice that was getting to me quite a bit. I mean, it's great to be excited for God and all, but yelling about 80% of the time was... em... a bit much. Honestly, I was considering leaving the church, but wasn't a nice thing to do.

Somehow or another I managed to ignore the yelling after a while and listen to what he was saying underneath all the yelling, and what he said was actually good and encouraging. And in the end, he went around praying for quite a number of people in our church individually, still in the same gung ho spirit. And it was an awesome session, where a lot of people who got prayed for by him were so filled with joy and Holy Spirit that they fell over on the floor and was just enjoying the joyfulness. And I was one of them! Yeesh, if I had to choose between feeling crappy and having God's joy, then the option is kinda 'duh'! And since then, I've been feeling much better, and I think a lot of other people there were blessed too.

So yay, thanks God for a good week... two weeks ago. :P

Reflections on the D-word

2009-04-28T02:52:00.003+10:00

Today's blog post was inspired by...

A dead rat.

... as well as other things in between, but mainly the dead rat. I saw in a rather contemplative mood today for some reason, and after coming back from the fitness centre nearby, I was just sitting in my car for a while in a dark alone and talking to God about stuff, which I haven't really been doing in a while. So when I got out of my car, I noticed this dead little bugger lying smack in the middle of the road at my apartment's basement. Poor thing probably got roadkilled by a passing car, and even though I realize it's a pest that can cause all sorts of diseases, I still have some sympathy for rodents considering I keep a gerbil family of my own.

Anyhow, it just reminded me about a few recent conversations I've had with friends about... well... death. Yeah I know, not exactly cool dinner topic, but seriously it's the only other thing certain in life asides from taxes, so I find it rather funny how some people just totally skirt the topic, preferring to pretend like it will never happen to them. I know someone whom every time I or anyone else says something along the lines of "You should do (so-and-so) just in case next time you pass on...", he'll get all fidgety and ask us not to say it like that. So we have to be creative and say "...when you're not around anymore..." or something like that. Or even better, just pretend that it will never happen at all. -_O?

I suppose it's a typical reaction of people who are afraid of death... and the only reason to be afraid of death is because they don't know what happens to them afterwards, if anything at all, so they'd just rather not think about it. Which to me is kinda weird, coz' thinking about the possibilities of what could happen to you in the afterlife is a VERY important thing, especially if there is a chance your spirit will continue existing for a long time (like FORVER) after you die.

I, on the other hand, as well as most people of my generation who are less bogged down by the mental and cultural taboos of just mentioning anything pertaining to death, have few qualms talking about it. In fact, I will happily tell you that when I die, I hope that all my reusable organs will be harvested and given to people who really need them, coz' I certainly won't need them anymore, and you all know I'm into recycling, so why waste a perfectly good organ? I just haven't gotten round to signing myself up as an organ donor yet. Dum de dum...

There was also this quote I heard on the radio once, supposedly from some famous dude (I *think* it was Ronan Keating), who said that he's not afraid of death but was afraid of dying. And the radio dj who mentioned that was like "Huh? What's that supposed to mean?" but I was thinking that that makes perfect sense. To be afraid of dying, I figure, means to be afraid HOW you would die. Like I'm totally freaked out at the possibility of going though a slow and painful death, like if I got into a really bad accident and most of my bones broken but still not dead, or if I came down with some debilitating disease and was stuck in a hospital for months or years, or if I was being eaten alive by a lion... well, you get the idea. But I'm not afraid of what will happen to me AFTER I die, just coz' as a believer in Christ, I have a pretty good idea of what's going to me happen to me after death. Therefore the fear of the unknown of the afterlife does not apply to me, as it would to most people who have no such reassurance and might be worried about whether their spirit ends up in some form of limbo-land after death... or whether they've done enough 'good' in their lifetime to earn a place in heaven or to avoid being reincarnated as a cockroach... or whatever their belief system is. I don't mean to sound like one of those pompous Christian pricks (unfortunately, there are some) who think they are better than everyone else coz' we going to heaven... Christians (myself included) are really just about as screwed up as the next person, and we don't get into heaven through anything we did particularly better than anyone else, but only coz' God is just too good to us. But anyhow, the explanation of that is another long story, which I would be happy to share if you asked, but I won't go into here.

One interesting question posed to me recently is "What would you do if you only had 24 hours to live?". Frankly, I really don't like these kind of questions where you won't have the answer to it unless you are actually in that situation. Like seriously, who the heck would actually know what they would do if they had 24 hours left? But there's another aspect of this question that makes it even more interesting... Whatever it is that you would do in the last 24 hours of your life, why aren't you doing it now?

Ooh, bugger.

The friends I were talking to both felt the need to accomplish something worthy within those 24 hours. But I think that in that situation, if you haven't accomplished anything worthy before that, doing so in your last 24 hours is kind of a bit too late. So what I would do is most likely be tying loose ends... writing letters to family and friends to clear up any bad feelings and give them final encouragement, going up to that dude I like and maybe try to weasel a smooch out of him... and THEN once all that's settled, I'd go bungee jumping coz' I've never tried that before and really want to. And THEN I would die in peace. Har har.

And then I think about the question I brought up earlier, which is "Why aren't I doing these things now?". After all, you never know when you're going to die anyway. I could get mowed down by a truck tomorrow. Unfortunately, answering this is much harder than the first question, coz' truth be told, I and probably 80% of the world hold off doing stuff that is important to us for reason that are pretty lame.

So yeah, that's just my few random and rather directionless reflections on death. Cheerio!

The money-spinning blog

2009-04-06T03:28:00.002+10:00

I went for Barcamp KL at Inti College over the weekend, which is an event for young entrepreneurs to get together and share business ideas. Basically people come together, whoever wants to talk about something is free to book a slot and present his/her stuff during that slot to whoever wants to listen, and whoever gets bored can just leave and move to another room to hear another speaker. Lots of interesting topics were flying around, from 'How to Date a Japanese Girl' (apparently by a Japanese Girl), to 'Sex and Business' (needless to say, this one was interesting, but nothing to do with porn, people!) to a swing dance lesson from a group called KL Swing.

One talk I particularly liked was about making money from honest blogging. As in, you don't need to blog 'slanderous' stuff that's interesting to make money, but bloggers who write their own uncoierced opinions about things, without being paid off by companies to write something 'good' about their company/products, for example, can actually make a pretty good living off it. Example of this dude I'd never heard of before called Liew C F who actually makes a more-than-decent living just sitting at home in his underpants (or maybe less) blogging away! Of course, his blog is sponsored, but apparently they don't sponsor him to write good stuff about them. He's sponsored just coz' lots of people are interested to read his crap and it's a good place to advertise. Apperently he recently bought a very nice new Honda using his blogging income. How cool is that?

So yeah, I figured since before Barcamp that I would probably make a sucky enterpreneuer/ business person just coz' I don't like the risks associated with starting my own business, I don't have the passion for it and starting businesses involves good networking which I totally suck at as well. Like I didn't really bother to chat much with anyone new at Barcamp, just mainly hung out with the people I already knew. Which defeats part of the purpose of attending it. But one thing I can and do enjoy doing is exactly what I'm doing now, which is BLOGGING. And yeah, I heard of the idea of making money from blogs before, but I didn't really take it seriously til I went for that talk. So after getting that inspiration, I decided to get into the bandwagon of turning my blog into a money spinner. Woo hoo! Well, I'll probably earn a miserable amount from it, if anything at all, but hey, doesn't hurt to try. :P

However, my money spinning blog isn't going to be this one... just coz' if I'm going to get a high influx of unknown readers, I'd rather keep my personal life more private. Thus, I'm saving this blog for blogging more on personal stuff, ie. anything involving family, relationship issues, work, etc. And my 2nd blog shall be all the other stuff...except politics, but I explained that on my first post on my other blog. You can check out my new blog here. As you might expect, it's also in RED. Hehe. I wanted to named it The Red Blog, but that URL and practically every variation of that name was taken, mostly by people who only posted one or two posts like 5 years ago, which is highly annoying. I was tempted to email them and tick them off for using up cool blog URL's for nothing. *Ahem*, anyway, my new blog background looks even cooler than my current one, so I'm pretty stoked. :)

Ode to Australia, Japan, Selina, Gavin, Wai Keet & everything in between...

2009-03-29T23:11:00.006+11:00

For those who were at the party: No explanation required. Just enjoy the vid. :)

For those who weren't: Here's a little diddly I wrote and performed with Sonia for my good buddies from church, Sel and Gav who are migrating to Australia, and Wai Keet who's going to Japan to study Japanese, and performed it at their farewell party. I somehow managed to throw this song together in about 4 days (after working hours, of course), and it came out pretty good, so I'm pretty stoked. :) By the way, Wai Keet loves to cosplay (that's Costume-Play ie. dress up in costumes, mainly for Anime fans) while Selina loves pink, so our party's theme was 'Costumes/All Pink'!!

Just to give credit where it's due and for those who are curious, some lyrics were ripped off the following songs:

1) The Australian National Anthem, though in all honesty, I think Adam Hill's version is MUCH better!
2)"I Come From The Land Down Under" by Men at Work. Makes me think videos in the 80's were so much more entertaining than the half-naked-people-prancing-around vids they make these days... though I wonder why there are electricity poles in the middle of a desert at the end of the vid??
3)"Sukiyaki" by 4PM, though originally it was a Japanese song sung by Kyu Sakamoto with lyrics of totally different meaning, and apparently that song has been remade a gazaillion times, but I guess most people, like me, would know the 4pm version. :P
4) "Turning Japanese" by the Vapors. This song is classic and some punk rock band seriously needs to remake this!!!
5) The Doraemon Theme Song. And no, I have no idea what the lyrics mean. But that didn't make singing it any less fun! XD

I have photos!!!!

Adam Lambert is a freakin' genius!!!

2009-03-20T02:00:00.004+11:00

I mean, c'mon, anyone who can take this...:

And turn it into this...:

...and perform it on American Idol during COUNTRY week, must surely earn a place in genius land. ;)

Poetic inspiration comes at strange circumstances...

2009-03-02T00:57:00.004+11:00

In the garden of Sel, Gav & Terk
I took this most fascinating pic,
Good enough, I would hope,
To be on National Geographic!

Though it may be their nature,
To mate amongst the blooms,
It was my nature too,
To yell out "Get a room!"

To this Coleopteran hanging on
A leaf for her life so dear
With her male partner's appendage
Stuck up her...*ahem*

And to entitle this photo
Between choices, I'm torn
To name it 'Insect Procreation'
Or more simply, 'Bug Porn'?

AI takes for 2009

2009-02-28T05:11:00.003+11:00

Oh, how I forget about my annual American Idol post? Yeah well, this time round I won't be making such detailed predictions of who's going to get through week by week coz' 1) I'm too lazy, and 2) most of you fellas reading this probably don't watch AI anyway, so you wouldn't know what I'm talking about... but for those who DO watch it (or at least read about it), here are my takes so far:

1) Thank God Tatiana Del Toro didn't make it through to top 12 last week. Not that she's a bad singer, in fact, I concede that she's a fantastic singer. But for one thing, I can't stand her drama queen antics, and I can't stand her hyena-like laughter either. Buh bye, Tati!

2) I'm sad that Nick Mitchell/Norman (or Normund? No one seems to know how to spell his name right!) Gentle didn't make it through this week. Not a great singer, but certainly the most entertaining idol contestant ever. Certainly more entertaining that what's-his-name who sang 'Man in the Mirror' and managed to get through to the top 12. You certainly can't disagree after watching this:

They better bring him back on Wildcard night!

3) Dunno where this dude popped out from, but as soon as he started his rendition of 'Can't Get No Satisfaction', I fell in love with Adam Lambert:

I hope he wins American Idol!!! But it's more likely that...

4) Danny Gokey will win the whole show. He can sing darn well, he's pretty cute, and his pretty wife just passed away recently. So he'll get the good-singer votes, cute-guy votes AND sympathy votes. How not to win like dat??

Sorry the vids are rather crappy though. Apparently Fremantle International removes any videos of original clips from the show for copyright infringement. Yeesh, like they're already earning gazillions from the show, they could at least let people enjoy the real vids on Youtube for free. >:(

The Un-traumatizing Process

2009-02-28T04:24:00.003+11:00

I'm kind of sitting here not really sure what to write about and kind of updating my blog for the sake of assuring people who actually bother to read it that I have not disappeared off the face of the earth. Unfortunately I've been going through a phase of kind of wanting to keep a low profile and not my usually blab-about-whatever-I-feel-like self here... as weird as it may sound, I'm pretty sure it's the side effects of my experiences at my previous job, where I got nitpicked on by my boss for so many stupid things that I became rather withdrawn, tense and paranoid that anything I do would somehow or another turn out to be wrong... and even now at my new job, where far as I can see my bosses and the culture is much better, I'm still having trouble 'un-traumatizing' myself from past experiences. Fine example is sending emails... one of the things I got into trouble for before was sending emails to 'outsiders' (which includes people WITHIN the company, but not under my bosses' team) without going though my boss, which ticked him off coz' he was afraid that I would say stuff that would ruin the image of his team, and he was also mad coz' I refered to him as 'my manager' instead of by his correct position in one of my emails. Later on, I realized that this culture of fear and image protection isn't just his problem, but really stems from people at the top. Anyhow, after that, I was super careful about whatever I wrote in my emails, and was always wondering if I should check with him first before sending anything... even for small minor things that bosses shouldn't even be bothered about. Naturally, repeated scanning through emails for mistakes or anything that could 'ruin company's image' was quite a waste of time when I could be doing more important work. Certainly, being paranoid is far from productive.

But anyhow, so far things have been good at my new office. I'm still enjoying the fact that it's only 7 minutes drive from my house (would be less if not for a patch of road at the shortcut that's not tarred and full of potholes, which I would rather avoid), I can wake up after 8am and be at office in half an hour, and when I'm sleepy, I can come back during lunch hour and nap in my cozy bed. Hmmm... So far no problems with bosses and colleagues are all great (no office bullies. Whew!) and the one of the German directors who only comes in once a month or so just loves going around, hugging and kissing all the girls (on the head, yeah!) everytime he sees them. He didn't do it to me the first time we met, of course, he just shook my hand hard enough that I thought it was going to fall off!

I can't really say everything will continue being hunky dory since I've only been here like 2 weeks. Usually I figure out whether I love the place or not within 6 months... so I hope and pray I can do well here and be here for a loooooong time. And even more hopefully, I get my groove back and post more interesting stuff here. :P

Is this mutton halal?

2009-02-14T04:36:00.000+11:00

It is a veeeery pertinent question....

If the China Chinese could sell their souls for $1, they probably would...

2009-02-09T05:30:00.003+11:00

I got a link from a friend on Facebook to this site called Animal Saviours that are creating awareness on this trade of live skinning of cats and dogs in China for their fur. Skinned. ALIVE. And the poor creatures are left to die in agony after that. For what? $1 per pelt or some ridiculously small amount like that. Heck, even $1 gazillion a pelt doesn't justify this inhumanity. I have no reason to believe this is a hoax, and there's a even a video of the skinning being carried out on the site, which honestly I couldn't watch because I know it would give me nightmares after that. Just reading the description of what the poor animals have to go through is horrifying enough. I mean, seriously, the human race can-NOT get any sicker than this.

They have an online petition asking for signatures to get the Chinese government to end this trade. If you feel signing it will make some sort of difference, please go ahead. Fact is that most online petitions are pretty useless (as explained in this article here)... and I signed it only coz' there's really nothing much else I can do except maybe hop a flight to China and bash in the heads of the sickos doing this. A better thing you can do is:

1) Never ever EVER buy any clothes/bags/shoes/ANYTHING made of fur. Even if it says it's made of mink or some other animal, it may actually be made of dog or cat fur. And if it ISN'T a dog or cat, other animals shouldn't be treated like this either!!

2) Tell people about this and make sure they are sickened enough to decide to never, ever buy fur products too. Yes, people, I am telling you to go forth, be annoying and SPAM all your friends with this message!!!

Unfortunately people don't treat chickens, cows, pigs and other animal we eat much better either. One day I hope I have the willpower to become vegetarian.

Danger Zone

2009-01-30T01:41:00.003+11:00

At my last cell group meeting, we were asked to share about times when we were in danger and God has protected us from harm. For the most part, my life has been relatively safe and boring, though there were a few times I recalled when I was sort-of in danger. Like apparently when I was a kid, I swallowed an eraser whole and amazingly didn't choke to death (it came out in my poop later, according to my mum. I remember none of this). Also once, when I was too young to remember, my parents left me and my brother at the car for a while and the car was on the slope outside our house. My brother was standing next to the open door of the car while I was sitting inside when the handbrake decided not to work and the car rolled backwards. I don't know the details, but somehow or another I think my parents managed to stop the car and my brother was unhurt. I imagine I was sitting in the car completely oblivious to what had just happened.

And then there were the times I was in danger because I sort of put myself into that situation. Like when I was visiting Brisbane and I was went canoeing on my own. I went too close to the mouth of the lagoon heading out to sea and might have been swept out to sea if I hadn't mustered the strength to row against the current and get myself back. It was a pretty good workout though. And in Brisbane, I went solo sky-diving and everything went great until landing when I was supposed to pull both of my parachute handles to slow down the parachute so I could land easily. But for some reason, I forgot to do that one important thing and I landed like a tonne of bricks. Well, not really. I DID remember that in case I was falling too fast at landing, I need to roll to reduce the impact, so I did that instead and somehow escaped without breaking anything in my body. I even got the video to show my rather hilarious, and potentially painful, drop from the sky.

Today I can add another dangerous situation to the list. I was driving my car, with my dad next to me, and we were waiting first in line at the traffic light near my house. Once the light turned green and I moved the car forward, my dad suddenly yelled at me to stop and I also saw it... this fella coming from the right was zooming past the same traffic light even though the light was red on his side. I think he was coming at at least 60kph and had already past the white line on his side of the traffic light. I hit the brakes and blared my horn non-stop, and only then did the guy stop his car and reversed back behind the white line. He looked kind of confused, so I'm guessing he didn't notice the traffic light or perhaps he just wasn't concentrating on the road. Anyhow, IF my dad had not been there to tell me to stop and IF I had not seen the guy coming and I had just kept driving, I'm 100% sure he would have rammed right into my car, into the driver's side where I was, and I wouldn've been badly injured or worse.

Either I was one dang lucky girl or someone up there has REALLY looking out for me. I like to think it's the latter.Thank YOU, God.

What would you do...

2009-01-21T22:16:00.003+11:00

... if you were in a company where:

1) Your boss is being micro-managed, has an oversized ego and is constantly picking on you for every little thing you do wrong in the fear that you are giving him a 'bad' image, when in fact most people you work with have no problem with you. And the nit-picking from the boss gets to the point where you become paranoid that anything you say or do will get you into trouble, and this of course affects your ability to do any work.

2) Big bosses in the company act like lords of the earth, and they are only interested in seeing you achieve the numbers they want but don't care to hear about the practical issues you or your team are facing. And it seems for the most part that the company operates out of fear of making the big bosses unhappy. And you are told that this is normal in any other company, but you think otherwise.

3) As a result of all this (and more), you are sick of the company's culture and have the opportunity to leave but your team members are suffering from work overload and everyone else, except your boss, wants you to stay in the company coz' they really need people, and most people in my team actually appreciate your work. And as much as you can't stand your boss and the management, you really don't want your team members who are pretty nice people to die of work overload. The fact that you have an overwhelming sense of responsibility to handle the tasks given to you, and right now there is no one to take over, kind of makes you feel rather guilty about leaving people in the dust too. Ideally, the company SHOULD be able to just bring in more people to take over, but for some strange reasons that are probably bureaucratic and political, it's just not that easy. Again, that comes back to crappy management decisions.

4) As screwed up as the boss and the management is, you actually do enjoy the work itself, plus benefits are good and it is stable enough to survive a rough economy. Changing jobs at this time is also probably not a good idea. Even though I believe God will provide, I still wonder if this is really from Him, or am I'm just doing what I want and taking for granted that He will take provide... only to possibly later on find that I made a mistake?

Yeah well, that's my dilemma now. I've already sent in my resignation, but I was told that I can still retract it, and some people in my team have asked me to stay. So now I'm wondering what to do. I spend most of my day thinking about all the issues I've had to go through at work, all the problems my boss has had with me, wondering if I was justified in the things I did, wondering if resigning is the best thing to do, wondering if I'll possibly face the same issues in my next job or God knows what new issues will pop up, and just thinking nonstop about it to the point where I think my whole head of hair will eventually turn grey if I keep on thinking about it. And I have one week left to decide. Hrmm....

My bro's wedding pics

2009-01-21T22:05:00.002+11:00

I do remember promising some pics of my brother's wedding, and haven't had the time to post them yet. Fortunately, the wedding photographer saved me some trouble, so here you go:

http://gallery.me.com/lucyschultze#100031

Enjoy. :)

Fun stuff to do in the US while waiting for my big bro to get hitched...

2009-01-10T16:17:00.009+11:00

My bro is married today! Woo hoo! Congrats to him and his new wife, Keonghi da cool Korean chick! :D

Wedding pics aren't ready yet, so I'll keep ya all entertained with my list of fun stuff to do in the United States (or rather, in Knoxville, Tennessee) while waiting for my bro to get married:

1) Go 1120 feet under a mountain to see a waterfall!
The first couple of days of my trip to Knoxville, Tennessee were kept well busy as my bro and his wife took me, my mum and his wife's mum to go visit Ruby Falls at Chattanooga. Ruby Falls is a very cool waterfall located way underground in a mountain, and has a very interesting history behind it, which you can read about here. Basically we took an elevator 1120 feet deep down into a mountain, where we exited into an underground cave full of fantastic rock formations, and at some points were pretty narrow.

As my brother would attest to, it was quite scary. Fortunately, I am in no way claustrophobic, so I quite enjoyed myself. Some of the rocks resembled everyday objects, and were given names to match.

For some reason, I was rather hungry after the walk though the caves. :P Kidding!

At the end of the walk, we reached the best part of the whole place, which was the underground waterfall, Ruby Falls!

They had fancy colour-changing lights there to make it look even more awesome. And there was also a walkway around the pond where the water fell into, so I took a pic there almost directly under the waterfall, and this was what came out:

Not quite what I expected, but looked pretty cool nonetheless. After all that, we had to climb back out the mountain and my bro and I ended up like this.

2) Go see fishies!

Ok, so visiting an aquarium isn't a big deal, but I always like seeing anything wildlife-like and like taking good pictures of them even more, so allow me to indulge in showing off a few of my nice piccies of some of the residents of Tennessee Aquarium.

Aren't they all purty? The last pic isn't very clear, but I thought it was cool to show the mini jellyfish with the bright flashing coloured lights. It is, of course, much cooler to see them in real light, flashing away their multi-coloured lights like a...a.... bright multi-coloured flashing thingy!

3) Drive up a mountain (or two)!
My mum and I went to visit the Great Smoky Mountains yesterday with some of the other wedding guests who are my bro's wife's friends. I got the picture to prove it!

My camera does very littl justice to the mountains. Like seriously. They look much more awesome than this.

Close up shots, on the other hand, look MUCH better. It was so cold the night before that the leaves and branches totally froze over!

There are also lots of places with water running down the rocks, forming little waterfalls. I managed to catch a rainbow formation in this mini waterfall. Nice-ness!

Further up the mountains, we finally came to a point were snow had fallen, so we got to stop and have a snowball fight, and I got to practice my swing.
I also got to make a snowman! Ain't that even cooler?

Unfortunately the others I went with wanted to go off quick so I didn't have time to make the eye, nose and hat. And since it was only a 5 inch-high snowman, a hat would've been quite a feat to make.

4) Shop til you drop!
Well, actually, my mum was doing all the shopping for clothes and cosmetics and God knows what else. I was mostly walking around from shop to shop, looking for stuff at reasonable prices, but everytime I would calculate in my head the conversion rate from ringgit to US dollar and decide not to buy anything coz' I can get similar stuff in Malaysia for cheaper. So I end up like walking the whole mall in about half an hour and then coming back to my mum who's still stuck at the first boutique and asking "Are you done yet?". In case you're wondering, I am so not a shopaholic.

One fun thing about shopping for clothes in the US is that I have absolutely no problem finding clothes my size. Among Asians, I'm considered larger than the average Asian gal... but around here, almost every other American lady is the same size or larger than me. There are sections of clothes in departmental stores labelled 'Petites', and they all fit me nicely, which makes me very happy! :D And their clothes and shoes are mostly made of good quality stuff, not like in Malaysia, where most material is pretty crappy. If I were earning in USD, I would be quite happy shopping in US. Most of the clothes, shoes, and bags here looks really nice too, although I came across this monstrosity which made me wonder if I should laugh my head off or scream my head off.

Only in America, I believe.

Another fun thing is walking into shops with 'themes' and observing how the shop attendants. Like at a shop selling coats and suits for men, all the male shop attendants are wearing nice looking suits. At a shop selling only black and white coloured clothes, the attendants only wear black and white clothes. At a shop selling clothes for plus-sized ladies (all the clothes there were way too big for me, by the way. Makes me even more happy. ;P), all the shop attendants are... you guessed it... plus-sized! It was quite amusing... too bad I don't have the photos to show it. The shop attendants would've thought I was nuts to take their pics.

Of course, there is no lack of interesting knick knacks in American stores, and I just couldn't resist getting my hands on (*drumroll please*....) the Super Dooper Pocket Pooper!!!

It's a little toy reindeer that comes with little brown, round candy. The head can be flipped open and the candy poured in through the neck. Then the candy can be dispensed from the rear end of the reindeer, so it looks like POOP. Just the type of sick humour that yours truly can appreciate. :D And when you've eaten all the candy, you can replace it with other small round candy. But since it's hard to find small, round, brown candy, you could probably replace it with those white or green small round mints which are much easier to find. The you can say the reindeer is pooping snowballs, or even better, radioactive waste blobs... or maybe giving birth to green alien offspring! And the reindeer doubles up as a keychain too, so that makes it even neater. :)

By the way, I bought about ten of these pocket poopers to give away to people whom I really like or whom I think share the same sick humour as me and can appreciate a pocket pooper. But if you really want one and if you're fast enough to ask me, and I like you enough, I might give you one too. :P Might help if you offer to be my slave for the next couple of weeks or so...

5) Eat, eat, eat!
Aaaah, the infamous Malaysian indulgence... FOOD. Well, Americans seem to love food twice as much as Malaysians, coz' whenever we eat out, the food portions are practically double the portions of Malaysian food. Seriously. My mum and I went with my bro's wife and her mum to IHOP (that stands for International House Of Pancakes, for the uninformed), and we made the mistake of ordering individual meals for each of us. And we had to go through the delightfully yummy yet sinfully torturous task of having to wolf down all of this!

My mum had gigantico bacon and cheese burger with fries. She couldn't finish it.

That was my meal of sirloin tips, with two eggs, two hash browns and two of IHOP's famous buttermilk pancakes. Almost all went down the hatch, save for some hash browns, and I felt delightfully guilty after that. After that I decided anytime we ate out, it was best to order one meal for both of us to share. That rule has served us quite well.

Another dish worth mentioning is the spaghetti and meatballs from this Italian joint called Sbarro. I tried it the first day I landed in the US at the airport, but failed to take a photo. I totally fell in love with the meatballs. Especially the fact that they are BIG meatballs. One BIG meatball = about 3 or 4 Malaysian normal meatballs, and tastes really good. The spaghetti was pretty good too. So when I saw Sbarro's again at the mall, I got myself almost the same stuff, except I ordered ziti (or penne pasta) instead of spaghetti, to give it a try. And this time I got a photo of the ziti and BIG meatballs. Doesn't look like much, presentation-wise, and the ziti wasn't as good as the spaghetti, but the meatballs are still hmmm.....

I have a feeling I will slightly more prosperous than usual for CNY this year...

On a slightly related but not really related note, my bro and his wife ordered online some extra special Chinese tea for their wedding ceremony. What makes this tea extra special is that it's actually a bunch of long tea leaves woven with a flower, and the flower and leaves 'bloom' in hot water, as can be seen below!

Ain't that neat? I thought that was so neat, I want to get the same tea for my wedding too and make all my guests go "Ooooooh! Blooming tea!". Of course, I'd have other things to get for my wedding first... like a poor sod who's willing to marry me. Hur hur.

My bro and his wife had a wedding rehearsal followed by a nice dinner at a Korean restaurant the night before the wedding ceremony.

Yeah, I know that's not particularly interesting. I just needed an excuse to put this pic up.

Now you know where I get it from.

Wedding pics coming soon!!!

He will provide

2009-01-07T16:55:00.003+11:00

I've been halfway around the world in the United States for the past few days, counting down the days til my big bro's wedding. Of course, I'm really happy to be here to celebrate with him, to finally meet his fiance who is a really cool chick, and of course I have photos of us and our respective mums who are here going to visit some fun places in the first few days. I haven't edited the pics yet though, and I'm saving it for next time, as I have other stuff to blabber about that I haven't had the chance to do til now.

I've resigned! AGAIN! I didn't really intend to do it so soon, at least not til after I returned from my trip, but something happened a couple of days before I left that made me decide enough was enough. Won't go into the details of that coz' as fun as complaining is, I think I've already done enough of it to anyone around me who was willing to listen and I don't feel like I need to add any more to the plate. It was a very tough and rather bittersweet decision for me. Tough because resigning means giving up pretty good benefits, and now with the economy kind of in the pits, it's not really a good time to be jumping ship. And there's no guarantee that I won't have a fresh bunch of problems in the next company I join. Also, while I relish the fact that I am now *almost* free (still have one month's notice to serve. Ugh) from having to put up with the company's crap, I've also gotten quite close to some of my colleagues, and I regret that my leaving means they will have more work to do. And right now, they already have a lot of work to do. Unfortunately for them, staying in a company for the sake of my colleagues is a lousy reason to stay. But still, I had a lot of things to consider when making this move.

Something I didn't really tell anyone (probably coz' I was too busy complaining about my company) is that after the first incident in November 08 when I got sooooo frus that I told my boss I was going to resign, after cooling down and considering the points above, I was having second thoughts about whether it was a good idea to resign after all. And I was worried that my chances of getting another job offer now are low due to the bad economy. So I really prayed about it and ended up being so unsure of what to do, that I just did up my CV and sent it out to four different companies and asked God to decide for me. After all, if anyone knows what's best for me, it would be Him! Basically, I asked Him that if I am to stay at my company now, then keep the doors shut, don't let me get any job offers, and puh-LEEZE don't let me go through any more crap with my boss. But if I'm meant to leave the company, then I prayed that He would open the doors and I would get at least one good job offer.

Since then, God has opened the doors wide and I have not just one, but two other companies wanting to hire me. One is a German certification body, doing environmental auditing, such as I what I do now, and they need my experience in a specific area (Ceh-wah! ;P). I went for two interviews, one with the director who is a German dude, and the other is a manager and my future immediate boss, and both interviews went super well, so they're going to make me an offer. And the office is only 5 minutes away from my house! How cool is that??

*Ahem*, anyway the other company was one I didn't apply to...but a very interesting one nonetheless. My old boss at Mad Science heard that I wanted to leave my company now and asked me to meet him up to discuss whether I was interested to return to work at Mad Science. And as he thought I did a very good job when I was working there previously, he wanted me to return not just as a normal instructor teaching classes, but in a sort-of managerial position where I'll basically be running the whole company in my boss's absence (and he's away, like, ALL the time). Needless to say, I was like "Whoa!". The prospect of being the manager of my old company and having a lot more freedom to do things how I would like is... pretty cool. But it is also very daunting, coz' there are a gazillion challenges, like I would have to deal with a bunch of issues going on at the company now and I would have to handle EVERYTHING from planning events, HR issues, bringing in more business to the company on top of teaching classes. And right now, the benefits are still blah, which is why I left in the first place. BUT if I am miraculously able to handle all this and the company does very good business later on, the benefits will definitely come then. But that's a big IF... this company is basically still a small business, and running small businesses are always risky.

Nevertheless, my old boss is still going to make me an offer, and then I will have to decide between two job offers... most likely going for the German certification body that's only a heavenly 5 minutes drive from my house (petrol not cheap, MAH). Even then, with two prospective offers, I still wasn't totally sure if I was supposed to leave my company now, and I asked God for another sign... This time I really had no idea what kind of sign He could give me, so I just prayed that if I'm supposed to leave the company, that my boss to do something else really unreasonable to push me over. Something like refusing to approve my leave for the US, which I applied for weeks ago. I didn't think it would actually happen, especially since my other superior was ok with me taking my leave, but lo and behold, two days before I'm supposed to go, I found out he actually didn't approve my leave. Again, long story, don't feel like explaining the details, but it was enough for me to finally decide to fly the coup. And that's the way the cookie crumbles.

I guess it sounds pretty dumb to resign before I've even gotten the job offers in my hand, but after all this, I do believe all will be well. My church is repeatedly saying that even though many people predict 2009 will be a bad year economically, we should trust and believe God will provide for us. From what I've experienced so far, I'm pretty sure of He will.

Did I forget to say Merry Christmas?

2008-12-29T17:24:00.004+11:00

Oh yeah, I did! Sorry all, had a super busy Christmas Day and also going through one of my blogging PMS stages now (as in, I don't feel like blogging).

Anyhow, hope you all had a great Christmas and will have an even better new year 2009, full of joy and prosperity and all that good stuff. And my dog wishes you a belated Merry Christmas too.

Aahh, just gotta love them Santa hats.

Doing my bit for shameless advertising

2008-12-10T04:26:00.003+11:00

It's 1.30am and I have to wake up early for work tomorrow but I'm not sleeping yet coz' I have an insanely busy week of travelling all over the place and I have yet to do my bit of shameless advertising for THIS.... our CBC Christmas Carnival! It's happening this Sunday, 2-7pm and SS14's school field, and we got food and games and all that other fun stuff. And of course, this would all be meaningless during Christmas if it was not for charity! We are raising funds for WAO's home for children from abused families... the kids need funds for school equipment, clothes, etc, etc... so you get to have fun and eat food while helping these kids get the things they need for the new school year. Everyone wins! Woo hoo!!! And we have flyers! Aren't they cool??

Alrighty, I'll stop writing Kim KARdashian-style now and go catch some zzz's. Hope to see you guys there. :)

Monash Alumni Gathering

2008-12-08T20:53:00.002+11:00

Oh cool, there's a Monash article with my name in it on my old uni's website. Coz' I went for Monash's Alumni Gathering a couple of months back and they invited me to be on the panel of speakers at their forum, to share with the students and alumni on our working life experiences. It was quite fun, really... having to look and talk all professional-like while answering questions from students, when all the while I was quite tempted to say something like "Forget about finishing your degree and joining the boring working world! Go out and become rock star! Kekeke....". I highly doubt I would be invited back for next year's gathering if I had done that though, but it sure would have been funny.

See if you can spot the Carol in the immensely small group pic. Coz' I sure can't. Lol.

The disappearing blog post

2008-12-06T06:25:00.002+11:00

After some advice from a good friend, I've decided to remove my previous post about my tales of oppression. Unfortunately, for every person like myself who just loves to tell things like it is, there are also people out there who just can't take it like it is and would make it their life mission to get the people who tell it like it is into trouble. And while I respect people like an a certain infamous bald blogger who will not back down from telling it like it is, even they it gets him into hot soup... I'd rather save myself the drama. It WAS good advice from my friend though, so thanks to you, you know who you are. :P

However, if you didn't get the chance to read my previous entry and you're dying to know what it's all about, I saved my story and can send it to you. Provided, of course, that I know who you are and I trust you enough not to abuse it. Heh. Just gimme a holler.

Talking rubbish

2008-11-13T00:55:00.006+11:00

The main rubbish bin in my home is kept in this small little corner in the laundry area of my apartment, right next to the kitchen. Usually, there is a proper bin there, but sometimes when my mum or dad get their hands on a humungous plastic bag, they use that to keep the trash instead.

So a couple of days ago, I go to get my dry laundry from the laundry area, and I take a look inside the big bag o' rubbish, which at that point was already quite full. And I see a couple of empty potato chip cans, used shampoo bottles and God knows what other things in there that really SHOULDN'T be in the rubbish bin. So I grab another bag and proceed to rummage through the big bag of rubbish to look for stuff like these:

Lo' and behold, resting within the crevices of the big bag o' rubbish were the two potato chip cans, two shampoo bottles, a plastic bottle, a big Vegood tetrapak box and smaller tetrapak drink box, 3 tin cans, an aluminium can and a round plastic container... plus a stack of A4 papers not seen in this pic coz' I put them together with my stack of all other unwanted papers. All in all, I believe I reduced the amount of junk in the bag of rubbish by at least one third. If I really want to, I could've hunted deeper into the bag for more junk, just that there was some weird smelling liquid in the bag and I decided my collection was sufficient for the time being.

Now at this point, if you are a typical Malaysian, you might be thinking that Carol has developed some strange junk-hoarding disorder and she go get some help now. If you are an extraordinary Malaysian who also hoards the same kind of junk, then you would know where I'm getting at here. All the stuff above that I took out of the big bag o' rubbish... papers, plastic, tins and tetrapaks... are all RECYCLABLES. This is the kind of stuff that you can take to a nearby recycling centre, where they melt it down or something like that so they can reuse the materials to make new paper stuff or plastic stuff or tin stuff, etc...

The average Malaysian is like my mum and dad, who throws every unwanted item into the big bag o' rubbish and then happily continue with their lives. The average Malaysian will go *yawn*..."So why should I care? Why waste my precious time and energy separating my recyclables and taking them all the way to a recycling centre when I have soooo many other things to do? Zzzzzz...."

Well, I'd like to think most of you well-learned folks would at least have heard something on the radio or read something telling you that Malaysian produce too much rubbish, bla bla bla, recycling is important, bla bla bla, green is the new pink, bla bla bla... but if you have truly been living under a coconut shell and are completely unaware of how all the junk you throw away affects the world around you... and ultimately, you, then here are my fun (but not-so-short) facts for today.

1) The average Malaysian produces 0.8 kg of waste a day. For Malaysian in KL, the number is almost double, at 1.5 kg a day. Apparently in the year of 2007, Malaysians achived the amazing feat of producing enough rubbish to fill up 42 Petronas Twin Towers. That's just ONE year. Fu-yoh, Malaysia boleh!!!

2) All our rubbish goes into landfills. In case you don't know what a landfill is, it's an area of land designated for the sole purpose of dumping rubbish. 'Ideally' it should be a big hole in the ground so that once it's full of rubbish, it can be covered up with dirt and let to decompose. Sometimes when people are too lazy to dig a big hole, you get a big pile of rubbish like this:

I took this pic from one of the estates I went to visit recently. You can click on the pic to enjoy the full extent of my lovely panorama of rubbish. And this is just one estate. Imagine the sight of the landfill where the rubbish of KL residents goes! Brr...

Obviously, landfills take up land space. That means precious land area that can be used for housing, or for agricultural use, or just to be left as natural reserves are now just being used to store our rubbish. Just so you know, right now we also have this major thing called Global Warming going on, and because of this, glaciers in the North and South Poles are melting like M&M's in your mouth. This causes the sea level to rise and cover even more land area that can be used for housing or crops, etc... Meanwhile human beings are breeding almost like rabbits... our world's population was 6 billion in 1999... in 2008 it's already reached 6.7 billion. We need land to plant crops to feed all these people... but WE ARE RUNNING OUT OF LAND!!! This, by the way, is also a reason why I don't want to have kids. My apologies to my future hubby if you or your parents are the old fashioned type who must have kids to carry on the family name or whatever hogwash like that. Poorly managed landfills also produce methane. Methane is a greenhouse gas that when released to the atmosphere increases Global Warming. In fact, all of the greenhouses gases floating around, methane is most POWderful coz' it holds the most heat. In fact, Mr. Methane has 23 times the global warming potential of it's closest competitor, Mr. Carbon Dioxide. In landfills, however, most of the methane produced by the accumulated rubbish can't be released directly to the air coz', well, there's too much rubbish on top of the gas. So methane builds up inside landfills over time. And methane is also flammable. So guess what might happen at a landfill if some smart aleck comes along and tosses his cigarette butt on it? Landfill go BOOM.

That's a picture of a landfill fire and a very hapless fireman, by the way. Landfill fires have happened in Malaysian landfills, at Hulu Langat, Kepong, and God knows where else. Too bad I couldn't find a picture off those, so this will suffice.

3) Plastic, glass, tin and all these recyclable materials take ages to break down. I'm sure you know that by now. What you may not know is that plastic does not biodegrade, it photodegrades. Meaning it doesn't break down to its constituents which are quite harmless, but instead just breaks into itty bitty toxic bits of plastic. These itty bitty bits of toxicness go into the land and water, get eaten by fish and other animals, which get eaten by bigger fish or animals, and meanwhile all the fish and animals, both big and small alike, get eaten by....(drumroll please....) US! Hence you or your kids end up getting lots of toxic bits of plastic accumulating in yourselves. That's probably not too good for health. That's just for plastic. I'm not too sure what happens to glass and metal... and I'm not too keen to find out right now.

Yesterday was was National Recycling Day in Malaysia. For all intents and purposes, I should have been able to go around to everyone I know and say "Happy Recycling!". Of course, that didn't happen, coz' for one, most people don't know it it was National Recycling Day in the first place, and second, most people don't recycle, and I would've just gotten lots of weird looks. Heck, I didn't even know it was National Recycling Day until my boss told me to attend this presentation on recycling that was being held at HQ in conjunction with this day. My company is starting to get big on the 3R's (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) and I'm part of the team working to make the project a success... but it's an uphill climb coz' it's never easy to change the mindsets of people. But after working on this and learning more of the facts, I learned that the problem is just getting REALLY bad.

So people, hopefully I've inspired (or scared) you enough to want to start sorting your trash from now on. And I just got to say this.... Happy Belated Recycling Day!

Forum Ministry?

2008-10-13T03:27:00.006+11:00

So it's been a while since my sabbatical from CBC, which turned out to not be a sabbatical coz' I didn't leave anyway. I don't visit Acts' evening service anymore, even though I want to coz' there are just too many things on my plate and too many other things I want to do but have no time to do. And work has been super busy lately, compounded with the occasional period of demoralization I go through everytime I do something I'm not supposed to do, or not do something I'm supposed to do, and my boss tells me off for anything I do wrong while completely ignoring anything I do right. I've gotten along perfectly fine with my bosses in my previous jobs, so I can only surmise that my current boss and I operate and think in too different manners, yet anytime I try to ask him what exactly he wants from me, he brushes me off coz' he's too busy. So for the sake of my career and sanity, I need to learn how to become psychic. Wonderful, I'm sure that skill would look fantastic on my CV. *Sigh* I've also come to realize that very few companies actually run as well as Accenture did, so my dream of getting a future job where I do environmental or conservation work but the company runs as well as Accenture will probably never materialize. *Double sigh*

Among other things I've been thinking a lot about is what sort of ministry to go into. I'm already doing stuff in church like teaching kids in Sunday School, and recently I decided to rejoin the worship team on choir (was on guitar before this until I got downsized coz' of being outstation so often I couldn't make practices... I'd still have the same problem in choir, but hopefully it'll work out. I think I sing better than I play guitar anyway. :P). But I wanted to do something else where I can meet new people outside of church, people who don't know God and whom I will have the chance to tell them about Him. Yet I don't want to commit to a ministry where I have to regularly go out somewhere to do something for people, like visiting an old folks home or something... just coz' I'm afraid work will take up too much time and I can't be committed. Plus, I already go out a lot as it, for work and church and God knows what else, so much that my parents don't see me around the house often enough. So I need to chock up on my good-filial-daughter points by spending more time at home... though it's not like I spend a great deal of time talking to my folks at home anyway. We all just end up doing our own thing and not talking much... just that when I'm at home, my folks don't complain that I go out too much. -_- Must be something that all parents are programmed to do...

Anyway, I thought, since I spend half my life online at home anyway, I came up with the 'brilliant' idea of going to online forums. There are plenty of people who have questions about Christianity and God who post their questions at such forums, so I thought it would be good to get in there and try to give some good answers, and maybe make some new friends along the way. Plus, making the effort to try and answer other people's weird and wonderful questions about Christianity forces me to do my own research to get good answers, and in the process, I learn new stuff. So now I'm using my previously-dead-coz'-I-can't-be-bothered-with-it Friendster account to check out forums there. And the rest of my post below is my reply to one of the forum posts from this atheist guy who had quite a few questions and I answered each of them to the best of my knowhow. I'm probably opening a can of worms here, coz' whatever answers I give will have flaws and will lead to more questions... to which I may not have a good answer for. But it's ok, then I'll just have to find the answer and learn more new stuff. :P

So here's the fella's post (in bold) and my answers:

Q: what is the act of god?
A: I don't totally get your question here. God has done many acts, so there's no ONE specific 'THE' act that He has done. I'm guessing what you actually mean is, what can be considered as an act of God. Most people would probably say anything extraordinary (miracles, for example) or extreme natural events are acts of God... but Christians believe that God works is less supernatural ways all the time... by working through people or allowing certain events to happen. So I would say that God is acting all the time.

Q: who created god? who create the creator of god?
A: This is pretty funny, coz' it's implying that if God was made by a creator, then that creator must have been created by another creator, and thus THAT creator must have been created too... and so on and so forth. So where the heck did all these creators come from?
The Bible says that God is the first and the last, the beginning and the end. This means that God has always existed even before time began (as someone already mentioned, God created time itself). And since He's always been there, He has no creator. God is the creator of everything else.

Q: how can u say that u have faith?
A: If it were possible to prove beyond any doubt that God exists, everyone would be forced to believe. Unfortunately, we only have evidence that God exists, and different people interpret the evidence differently. Since we cannot completely prove that God exists, that where we must have faith.

Q: how do u know if i have a soul? is soul's even true?
A: Most people would define a soul as the 'essense' of a person that makes up their personality and consciousness. By this definition, we would of course have to agree that everyone must have a soul, since everyone has different personalities and a conscience. It is the thing that makes us different from other living things like plants and some animals. Plants and animals are alive, but they don't have souls coz' they don't have personalities and don't worry about doing what is right or wrong. They just grow or do what they do to survive (though some very smart animals like dogs and cats do have their own personalities, and so whether they have souls or not, I am not totally sure).
I think the main issue with having a soul is, if we DON'T have souls, then religion is a waste of time coz' once we die, we just die and that's the end of the story. We don't have to worry about what we're supposed to believe or what good we need to do to make sure our soul goes to heaven and not to the other fiery place. But IF it is true that people have souls, then whatever we believe and do while we are alive probably DOES make a difference. We have to wonder what happens to the our after our physical body dies.
Again, it's hard to prove the existence of souls coz' we can't examine it under a microscope, but consider this: If we do all we can or whatever we think is right in order to get to heaven after we die, but it turns we actually have no souls and when we die nothing happens after that, then we don't really lose anything, except maybe the time we spent doing the practices of our different religions. BUT if we DO have souls, and we do nothing about it, after you die, your soul will live on forever... which is much longer than the years you have alive on earth. Wouldn't you think making the effort to ensure your soul goes to the right place would be a somewhat worthwhile investment?

Q: when did the believing of god started?
A: Well, if you believe that we evolved from cavemen, then it's pretty hard to pinpoint exactly when man started believing in God. But Christians believe that man was created by God, and the first man and woman (Adam and Eve) has a relationship with God. So I would say it started from the very creation of man. Now if you want to argue that creation is a load of bull, and evolution is true, then that's another long discussion altogether.

Q:why is god a man and not a woman?
A: God isn't a man or a woman... God is merely referred to as a masculine being, ie. we call God a 'He' instead of a 'She'. To Christians, I think this is because we also refer to God as our Father...as we consider Him as something like our earthly fathers who take care of us.

Q: for me.. being atheist.. whats the point of discriminating me?
im not discriminating god believers..why do you discriminate us? and whats the point?
A: Well, in perspective, Christians and people of other faiths are also discriminated against in different parts of the world, so it's not just the atheists. But anyhow, I have nothing against you, so I would not discriminate against you. Unfortunately I cannot control the actions of other people, and sadly some people of certain religions (even Christians) sometimes think they are better than anyone else who does not share their beliefs. I won't say anything about those of other faiths or why they act like that, but for Christians, I think this is not the right way to act. Being a Christian does not make me any better than anyone else, and certainly does not make me perfect. I'm just as screwed up as the next person, except that I know that God loves me and He accepts me through my screwed-up-ness.

Q: wheres the freedom of expression? wheres the freedom of speech?
A: You're free to say anything you want to me. :)

Q: for my opinion..there is no god. god was created by man so man can have power to other human beings.
A: In my opinion, God does exist and God loves us, and people who use God and religion to have power over other people deserve a good smacking around.

Q: there is no point if u go to church at sunday. why not just go to a community and serve the people?
A: It's difficult to understand school subjects if we don't bother to attend classes...so if we don't fully understand difficult subjects like Science, how can we go out and become Scientists? Similarly, Christians go to church because we believe it is important to be with fellow Christians so we can help each other grow in our faith and learn from the Bible. Without church, it would be quite difficult for us to understand or grow on our own. And it is from there that we are supposed to go out and serve the community and bring the love of God to others.
Unfortunately, it is true that most Christians don't really take the time to go out and do community work, but we serve the church and serve people in other ways.

Lessons from iBridge

2008-10-10T02:41:00.010+11:00

I went for iBridge camp during my lovely long Raya break (one of the perks of working for a Malay-dominated company). For the uninformed, iBridge is a Christian camp for young working adults to get together, chill, and do their Christian stuff... and it is also infamously known as the 'meat market' ie. the place for young working adults who also happen to be single, available and probably desperate to go 'find someone'. The camp lasted 4 days, and was at this place in Malacca called El Sanctuary, which is a like a bunch of wooden chalets in a edge of a jungle, and the place is run by a very nice Christian family consisting of an half-English, half-Chinese dad, a Chinese mum and a whole bunch of dang good looking kids. The rooms were nice and the everyone just LOVED the food there... unlike food at most camps which is pretty much the same ol' boring crap every day, we were practically pampered with different types of Western and Chinese food every day, including fish and chips, lamb chops and these awesome homemade mashed potatoes that I was quite tempted to 'tau pau' all of it to take home. Goodness, I think the accommodation and food itself was worth the price of the camp, let alone all the other activities thrown in. Though unfortunately, I didn't meet any potential suitors at the camp, so maybe I should get my money back. Hmmm.....

Of course, more important is what I actually learned from the whole thing. I can't say I came back feeling all gung ho for God, which is usually the case when people go for camps like these. Which I actually think is a good thing for me... I didn't really want to go there just to get all fired up and floating on spiritual cloud 9 or whatever... I've been for quite a few camps in my younger days where I come back like that and the high lasts all of 2 weeks, after which it's back to the normal humdrum of life and I am still my normal not-very-spiritual self. I'm quite done with going through that cycle, so I went without much expectations and just hoping to learn something useful. And I did learn a couple of things, though not exactly what I expected and not in the way I expected.

What I Learned #1: It's OK to Screw Up
One of the things I found quite interesting was the guest speakers who work in different fields, including a lawyer, an ex-performer who now runs his own live show business, and a guy named Roshen who used to work for big corporate companies like GE and NBC before going into full-time ministry. It was the Roshen's story that really encouraged me coz' he told us that when he first was working for GE, he went through quite a bit of trouble at work. He was even fired for leaving an important document lying around... though a few days later, the boss called him and told him to come back to work coz' he just wanted to teach him that important documents must be kept away properly. And his story was good for me coz' it showed me that it's ok to fail at work, which unfortunately has been happening to me quite a bit.

Since I joined my current company, I've gotten into trouble with my boss for doing things that I didn't think were wrong, but it turns out they were very wrong to the company. In Accenture, things were run COMPLETELY different. Everything was really open there, I could talk to anyone in HR or other departments easily by just making a call or sending an email, and I could call my project manager or even the company CEO by his first name and they would be totally ok with it. And Accenture is no small fart company, it's a renowned global company. I found out rather uncomfortably that in my company now, I can't simply contact other departments on my own coz' I risk saying or doing something that will give my unit a bad name. I even got into trouble for referring to my boss as my 'manager' instead of my 'unit head', which is his proper title. Fortunately I haven't made the mistake of calling any of the tops shots by their first name instead of 'Tuan Whatever' or 'Dato So-and-So'... I'm sure if I did, I would be hung upside down by my ankles or something. Heck, if my boss ever read this post of mine, I'd probably get sacked for giving the company a bad image... which would only prove my point even more. Basically coz' I totally don't get the culture here, which is full of procedures and formalities. Which is not necessarily a bad thing... some people may be ok or even like working in this type of system. Just that I'm not one of them. I've been in a company that does things much differently (and better, in my hunble opinion) but the seniors in this company have probably been in the system too long to know any better, while the rest of my team are all fresh grads who don't know any better either. One thing I find particularly grating is that when I first joined, there was no orientation on basic stuff like what's the company structure, how to make claims, and basically to let newbies know how things work around here. We're just expected to be 'independant' and ask the more senior people how things are supposed to be done. Now being independant is one thing... but not making sure your new staff are aligned to the way the company runs, especially when they have worked in other companies and have different ideas of how things usually work, well, this just causes problems for everyone. Like when I don't ask questions, or I ask and get wrong information and then make a mistake, I kena 'kantoi' for it.

Case in point: Initially there was a couple of times I was sent by my boss to outstation to attend a meeting or see what's happening in a project, and when I came back, the boss, being very busy, didn't ask to me to report to him on what happened. And I asked a colleague if I was supposed to prepare a report for him, and she said only if he asks for it. So I didn't make any report since he didn't ask for it. Some time later, boss reprimands me for not reporting to him. Fine. After getting over the annoyance that he seems to expects me to be psychic, I decided to prepare reports on anything I was sent out to do. One week, I was outstation and busy til Friday, my team was going to have a meeting on Monday, and we received an email stating that we need to be ready to present whatever updates we have to the team during that meeting. So that Saturday (not a working day for my office) I took the time to write a report, and emailed it to my boss to look through so he knows the update on my part before the meeting. You would think bosses would like their staff doing this kind of stuff. Instead during the meeting on Monday morning, he tells me off for not letting another superior review my report first (which I didn't know I had to do in the first place coz' I wasn't informed), AND he points out everything that is wrong about the format of my report, AND (this is the 'best' part) he says we are not supposed to be sending work emails on Saturday, since it's a non-working day. Right. But the other team members who sometimes have to work on Saturdays and probably send work emails to the boss somehow or another don't get into trouble. Only yours truly gets the dubious honour.

As you might imagine, I was so frustrated, I think I was ready to pop. And especially since I thought this job was the big blessing from God coz' the kind of work is exactly what I wanted to do... I don't really get why I'm having so much trouble here. Yeah, I even scolded God quite a bit about this, asking why is He letting all this crap happen to me and giving my boss and some of the other people on my team a bad impression of me, when I trying to be a good example for Him. Thankfully not everyone on my team thinks I'm useless... and there are a few other newbies like me who have also gotten into trouble for not doing things 'the right way', so the few of us like the little 'black sheep' of the family. Funnily enough, the other 'black sheep' look up to me in a way and would rather ask me how to do things instead asking others in my team. Sometimes I have to tell them to ask the boss coz' I'm worried I will tell them the wrong thing and I'll get into trouble. *Sigh*

ANYWAAAAAY....sorry, I got a bit carried away whining about my sorrows. So hearing Roshen's story about his failures at work just made me feel a lot better. I guess no job is perfect and I will have some issue or another with any place I work in. But I still want to stick it out here and hopefully not mess with the system anymore, coz' I actually do really enjoy the work here... even though I haven't actually had the chance to get involved in the cool conservation projects like hanging around with monkeys, coz' I've been too busy with other things. I've been put in charge of the 3R (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) project and Waste Management, so now I'm becoming an expert on rubbish. Not quite as glamourous, but still, I'm gaining experience in doing environmental management work, which is good stuff for my CV. If I had to pick between boring work but great system, or interesting work and stifling system, I pick the latter, just coz' I know environmental management is what I wanna do now, and I wanna become damn good at it. So hopefully I will eventually get used to how things are 'supposed' to be done around my company so I can stop worrying about getting into trouble and enjoy my work more.

Right, enough diverging. Back to iBridge then.

What I Learned #2: Freedom through Obedience
As I said earlier, this is something I learned in a way I didn't quite expect. The people who ran the camp site we were at also owned quite a number of dogs. At my count, at least 8 of them. One St. Bernard, one Labrador, one Dalmation, three Rottweiler-mixed breeds, one black dog (probably pariah) and one brown dog (can't tell what breed it was).

All the dogs had the freedom to run around the camp site, and they enjoyed accompanying us campers wherever we went, even when we were running around playing games, or having a prayers around a campfire on the final night, the dogs were always following us and would just sit or lie down next to us, while we would enjoy giving them pats on the head or good belly rubs.

All except for the brown dog, which I noticed was chained up all the time and sometimes barked noisily at the rest of us. I found out that this dog was old and was given to the family by someone else. They tried to train it to not poop all over the place and not go into the eating areas, but the dog didn't obey them, so that's why they kept it chained up all the time. The other dogs were all trained well, which is why we didn't see a single piece of dog poop ANYWHERE (frankly, I'm wondering where on earth they went to do their toilet business) and they didn't wander into the eating areas (although the Labrador did wander in once to greet some of the campers, but got a prompt smacking from the owner).

Anyway, point of the story is that the dogs that obeyed the few rules set by their masters were given the freedom to go anywhere and do anything else they wanted, whereas the one dog that didn't obey, unfortunately was not given such freedom. Most people think that freedom through obedience is oxymoronic, but the case with these dogs show otherwise.

In a way, I guess this is how it works with God, who we Christians call our 'master'. Most people may think that being a Christian and having to obey a gazillion and one rules in the Bible is restrictive... but in actual fact, it isn't. When we obey His commands, we are actually free. Free because instead of relying on other things to get our kicks, like partying or alcohol, we are relying on God. Or free because when we obey Him, He opens up avenues and opportunities to us that we probably wouldn't get otherwise. I've heard lots of stories from pastors and missionary who can testify on this - God tells them to do something and even though it sounds crazy or they might lose everything, when they do it, they find they are more blessed in return. Like the pastor who once owned this little coffee shop, and when he was low on money to do ministry, he wanted to sell his shop. But then he felt God was telling him to actually give the shop away to another man in another ministry, for FREE. Sounded totally insane, he was totally freaked, but he obeyed. And soon after, money started pouring in from all sorts of other sources, and he ended up getting even more than the worth of the shop.

Well, these are the kind of stories I hear during Sunday sermons. But of course, applying it to real life isn't always that easy, and I have also seen cases of people obeying God but are still held down by other...issues. Still, it's just something to think about.

The wedding of Galina

2008-09-29T20:29:00.005+10:00

Well, they've finally gone and dun it. Tied the knot. Gotten hitched. And whatever other phrases that basically mean... MARRIED. Congrats, Gavin and Selina... or Galina... or Selvin. Ah yes, the weird names that wedding guests come up with when they're milling around waiting for the bride to arrive. And I really gotta hand it to these two, coz' even after like 6 (I think) breakups and reconciliations, and having to deal with a lot of problems preparing for their wedding, they've managed to pull through it all together, which all in all has probably made their relationship even closer.

Another cool thing is that theirs was the ultimate DIY wedding. Practically everything from the invitation cards to the wedding cake stand to the wedding cake was designed or made by Gav or Sel or a friend. Including the cute little heart-shaped cookies some of us ladies baked one day sometime at the end of August, to give to the wedding guests.

Actually, it was more like the other gals were doing the baking and I was happily fixing the tails for the fans to be given to the guests... as I don't really trust myself with baking stuff.

The Bachelor and Bachelorette Parties were on last Thursday. While the guys hit KL for a night of karaoke and boozing, the gals opted for a more *refined* English tea party celebration, where all the lovely ladies had to come in a dress, and we enjoyed various types of tea, cakes, scones, meat pie and...um... Rocky sticks. I hear they're quite popular in England.

After a while though, the party turned out to be... well... not so refined as Sel opened up her prezzies to find some rather raunchy gifts, including this one!

Now 30% more powerful! Batteries not included. :P

We also enjoyed the time-honoured tradition of torturing the bride by putting a bunch of temporary tattoos on various parts of Selina, the locations of which only Gavin would know after the wedding day. Really had to hold Sel down for that one. Too bad I couldn't take any pics of that coz' my camera batteries ran out.

And after all the excitement on Thursday, it was finally the big day on Saturday. The colour theme for the wedding was pink and brown, and you would think that the manly men would opt to wear clothes in the latter colour instead of the former. Interestingly enough, the opposite was true for pretty much all the guys who came for the wedding. Check out these good lookin' Men in Pink.

Kudos to you guys for breaking the stigma that pink is only meant for little baby girls. Woo hoo.

Of course, a wedding is also a fantastic opportunity to grab some artsy fartsy shots... such as a violin laid on top of the bushes...

Or the decorations on Damien the designated driver's car...

Or the shy flower girl who's always trying to run away from the camera...

Plus her adorable little brother in a mini tux.

And here's Mattie's chin with his corsage.

Yes, yes, I know you want pics of the actual wedding and not this nonsense, so check out them Wedding pix here, plus some more piccies of the Hen Night.

And to the happy couple, congrats and be blessed. :)

A sneak preview...

2008-09-17T17:31:00.003+10:00

... of my latest artwork.

I don't get many opportunities to put my drawing skills to work, and I don't draw unless I have a reason to. Well, there's a very good reason for this one. I finished drawing a couple of weeks ago and spent a couple more weeks looking at it every now and then and touching up the parts that look weird. Finally decided to stop mucking around with it and sent it to be framed yesterday, which will take about 3 days.

Just hoping that I managed to do justice to these two pretty faces. :P

A special person, in more ways than one

2008-09-17T00:33:00.003+10:00

Last week I got an email from my cell leader Matthew, forwarded from Pastor Mal, telling about this disabled lady named Carol Rasiah, who's interested in coming to visit CBC and he asked for some volunteers to pick her up from her place on Sunday to bring her to service. He attached the photo above of her in the email (yeah, apparently she and Hannah Yeoh are quite buddy buddy. Hannah Yeoh even made some space on her blog for Carol), and I recognized her coz' while I was visiting another church a couple of months ago, she was sitting pretty close to her in the service. I didn't talk to her at the time, so I doubt she would have remembered me, but considering she's wheelchair-bound and exceptionally small in size (due to some form of stunted growth disorder, I suppose), I didn't have the same problem of remembering her. And considering she's staying at USJ 1, which is really close to where I stay, I decided to go ahead and offer to pick her up.

So Pastor Mal passed me her phone number, I gave her a call to work out the whole plan of getting the little lady to church. She told me that I would have to go up to her flat to get her, and also I would need to carry her around a bit, so she strongly suggested that I get help from someone else. Considering I'd seen her before and she doesn't look all that heavy, I was thinking I probably could handle it on my own. But soon I decided since it's my first time with her and I don't spend a great deal of time lifting around disabled people, I decided to rope in some male muscle in the form of Damien Loo to help me, just he lives pretty close to USJ 1 too. I thought bringing a visitor would be a good way to get myself to church early too, coz I usually get to church close to 10am, when it starts at 9.30am (in fact, prayer starts at 9.00am, so technically I'm an hour late. Verrrrryyy bad! :S ).

So on Sunday, the two of us met up in USJ 1, spent a few minutes driving around the flats there until I figured out where Carol's flat was, went up to the 11th floor, and we spent another couple of minutes walking around there til we found her place. We found the grill door unlocked and she was waiting for us in her living room on her motorized wheelchair. She explained that she usually gets around her house and flat in that wheelchair, but whenever anyone takes her out, she has to go on a foldable wheelchair as that's the only one that can fit into a car. So Damien utilized that man muscle of his to transfer Carol to the foldable wheelchair, which was pretty funny coz' both of us have never handled wheelchair-bound people before, so we were both asking Carol what was the best way to do it. She was just amazingly understanding and friendly to these two blurcases whom she just met and who were trying to figure out the best way to move her around. Of course, eventually we got her into the wheelchair, down the lift and into Damien's car and off we went to church. Unfortunately my plan to be early to church failed miserably as after having to hunt for her place and move her around, we ended up getting to church around 10am anyway. Bleh. Of course, we gave her the best seat in the house by pushing her all the way up front, before I went to plop myself down at the usual side of church. I was quite amused during the announcements when they introduced the visitors for the day. Usually the visitors stand up for everyone to see, but obviously Carol couldn't stand when her name was announched, so I guess everyone was wondering where the heck this new person was.

After church, Damien and I took her out to Medan (which is now called Rock Cafe, for the uninformed. But seriously, who is going to call it that??) for lunch with some others church friends, where when she introduced herself as Carol to our friends, I got the chance to interject with the all time lame joke, "I'm Carol too, by the way. ^_^". We sent her back to her flat after that and the second time there, I guess it was because I was in less of a rush, but I began to notice that the flat area was in quite a sorry state. The walls at the lift area at the ground floor are covered with old posters and ads, and there are scratches, marks and graffiti all over the place. On the way up in the lift, Damien and I were wondering if there was any ventilation in there, coz it didn't feel like there was much air, though I guess there must have been coz' when we went up the lift was full of people and if there was no ventilation, I think we would have suffered severe breathing difficulties. Fortunately, we didn't. Still, later on after dropping Carol off, we both agreed that the condition of the flat was pretty bad. According to Carol, the lift even broke down once for 3 whole days, so she was stuck in her flat unable to go down to buy food from the shops during that time. Good grief. Fortunately, Hannah Yeah helped to do something about that. Go, Hannah Yeoh!

Another thing that got to me was when we were waiting for the lift, there was a lot of other people there waiting too... and all of them were just staring at Carol. The lift took at least 5 to 10 minutes just come down, and all that time, most of them just stared and stared at her, until I was rather annoyed with them and had the urge to say "Yo people, this ain't a freakshow!". I doubt they would've understood that anyway since most of them looked like foreign workers with probably very lousy English... but then I realised that while all the staring made me uncomfortable, the other Carol must be used to it coz' she probably would have had to put up with people staring at her all her life. Or maybe even worse things like people avoiding her or touching her coz' she looks so different... or kids getting frightened and running away.

Yet even with her disability and her sorry-looking flat and the stares from people, Carol was nothing but friendly and happy the whole time I was with her. And she told us that she even used to go to this centre for disabled people to help them out. Which really boggles the mind, coz' I find it hard to imagine that someone like her who has to rely on others to move around and can't do much physically can still help others like her. I suppose that makes her special in more ways than one.

Damien actually said that he learned a lot about working with people with disabilities that day, just helping to bring Carol around. I think I would have to agree, it's pretty interesting.

Gerbil or hamster?

2008-09-13T01:37:00.006+10:00

I'm quite amazed by how having animals around and observing their behaviors has given me quite a few insights on life. Take, for example, my gerbils and their persistent scratching and chewing at their cage. All of my gerbils spend a considerably amount of their waking time doing this. They also know where the openings of their cages are, so they focus most of their scratching and chewing energy around the area of the door or other openings.

I can only surmise that my gerbils are extremely bored in their cages and want nothing more than to get out and run around outside (they have managed to escape quite a few times too... the clever little buggers). My Habitrail cage once had a green loft on it's side, like the one shown in the pic here, and I could lift off the green lid from the loft to clean it out or just poke around at my gerbils in the loft. They quickly figured out that there was 'some' way to get out through the loft, so they spent a lot of time scratching away at the side of the loft, hoping to get out, until one day they actually managed to dig a hold right through the thing. The loft is made of plastic, so it took almost a year of scratching, but eventually they got there, so I had to throw away the loft and shut off the hole at the side of my cage. So now, as can be seen in the vid, they have resorted to scratching the side of the funnels. Hopefully it won't end up having a hole at the side of that too.

And then I heard a funny story from a friend before who keeps a hamster. Even though sometimes she leaves the door of the cage wide open for her hamster to go out, it just refuses to leave the cage. At the most it would stick it's head out the door, take a sniff around, then promptly go back in and happily curl up into a contented little ball of fur in one corner of the cage. I find it amusing that while my gerbils so persistently try to attain their freedom, even though they never get it (I sometimes let them run around my room for a while, but that's the most freedom they get), while that hamster has a chance for freedom but would rather remain in it's comfortable little cage.

There is this simple little Christian song that has only a few lines repeated over and over. "Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom... There is peace, there is hope, there is joy. It is for freedom, He set us free.... I'm free, I'm free...". Obviously, the songwriter plagiarized some verses from the Bible to write this song (unfortunately the people who wrote those verses were kind of too dead to enjoy the royalties), but the verse that really gets me thinking is 2 Corinthians 3:17, which says "Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom."

I find the Holy Spirit most fascinating. Most Christians believe in the Trinity, where God is sort of like a 3-in-1 entity consisting of the Father (God), Son (Jesus) and the Holy Spirit. And unlike God and Jesus, which are both mostly there for us to worship and pray to and all that stuff, the Holy Spirit is different in that it's not something we worship or pray to, but it's something that supposedly lives within us. At least, that's what I gather from verses like 1 Corinthians 6:19 (Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?) and Mark 13: 11 (Whenever you are arrested and brought to trial, do not worry beforehand about what to say. Just say whatever is given you at the time, for it is not you speaking, but the Holy Spirit).

Ok, so now we know that the Holy Spirit is supposedly in each of us who calls ourselves followers of Jesus Christ. So going back to 2 Corinthians 3:17, which says "Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom." Since the Spirit lives in us, from this verse, I would assume then that all of us who call ourselves followers of Jesus Christ and have the Holy Spirit within us would therefore have freedom. And this is the part where most Christians on a high would go "Praise the Lord!" and do the Chicken Little dance in celebration of our freedom.

But I wondering... what exactly is the extent of this freedom? Not that I like the idea that the freedom given by God in His infinite wisdom and love and power has a limit of any sort, but all 'freedom' usually has a limitation. We are free to drive anywhere we want to, as long as we keep to the speed limit. We are free to start our own businesses, unless it's something illegal like loan-sharking. We are free to complain about crap in this country, unless you're Raja Petra, Teresa Kok or Tan Hoon Cheng. Bygones. So what about the freedom that we have in the Holy Spirit?

I think most Christians would agree that we are free from the ultimate effect of sin in our lives, which would be being separated from God after we die and going to that rather unpleasant place of extremely high temperature. Ok, I can get that. But what about freedom from other bondages? Freedom from stuff like feeling guilty from past sins, or getting angry or impatient too easily, or sexual addictions... basically the stuff that we know we shouldn't be like and we try not to be like, and yet somehow we end up falling back to doing or being the same thing. I've heard my fair share of testimonies about people who had all these issues or more, and once they became Christians, they changed completely and no longer go back to those old lousy ways. But I also know quite a few Christians who continue to struggle with these issues in their lives. Heck, I don't need to go so far, I'M one of these people. I've spent quite a few sessions asking God to help me change, to be better, to not fall back to those ways and continue doing stuff that I shouldn't do... but usually I end up falling back anyway. It's kind of gotten to the point where I just accept that this is probably just the way I am, and though I know I it's wrong, at least I'm trying and all in all, God still loves me anyway. Whoop de doo.

I'm not so naive to think that the Holy Spirit is some miracle cure to stop us from sinning. We are all people, after all, and we will always mess up. But I do wonder why it seems as though while some Christians seem to be totally enjoying this freedom, others like myself are kind of left out of the loop. I kind of feel like my gerbils... knowing that there is freedom out there and I'm struggling to get out... sometimes I escape from the cage and totally enjoy that freedom, but eventually I end up back in there again. And sometimes, when I just can't be bothered to try anymore, I feel like a fat lazy hamster who's content with my lot in my little cage and too lazy to bother going out to enjoy the real freedom that's out there.

Ultimately, I do believe that God wants to set each of us completely and totally free of all these crappy stuff that holds us down spiritually. Probably just that because we are people of free will, and not robots, we have the choice to do the right thing or the wrong thing. And perhaps because we are so used to getting things wrong, it's kind of hard to get used to doing things right. But still, even though I've tried to change myself many times and failed many times, I still want to try be like a persistent gerbil desiring freedom, instead a fat hamster happy in the cage. I'd rather keep on trying and fail then lull myself into thinking this is just the way I am and I'll never change. And unlike my poor gerbs stuck in their cage just coz' I refuse to let them out, I'm pretty sure the door to my cage has been left wide open. I just need to get my lazy fat hamster butt out there and enjoy the freedom.

Not quite moving on

2008-09-01T18:13:00.002+10:00

So as I said I would do a few posts ago, I've been up and raring myself to move on to another church for the past almost two months. My idea was that after my last Sunday School class, I would start going to another church (which I didn't mention before, but it's Acts) instead of CBC. My last Sunday School class was 3 Sundays ago, so technically I should've started going to Acts 2 weeks ago. But then, 2 Sundays ago, I thought, what the heck, one more Sunday at CBC should be ok lah. So I went back to CBC on that Sunday.

Yesterday morning I woke up with two decisions weighing on my head... "Should I go to CBC or should I go to Acts today? I think God wants me to go to Acts.... but I still wanna go to CBC. Why ar why ar why ar??". It was Aunty Jo's birthday yesterday too, and I didn't want to miss out on that. Besides, Acts has an evening service, so I can always go for that instead of the morning one.

So after a few minutes of tossing the two choices around in my head, I decided to go back to CBC. And I also went to Acts in the afternoon.

So I'm wondering now if God is leading me somewhere else, then I shouldn't be finding it so difficult to leave. And the fact that I AM finding it difficult to leave maybe means that my heart is with CBC after all. After all, I've been going there for the past 7 years or so, I think. I'm practically on auto-pilot every Sunday - wake up, go to CBC, though most of the time I'm late, which is not a great thing (need to work on that). And I know practically everyone in the church already. And if God wanted me to do some more people-oriented ministry then it would make more sense to be somewhere where I already know the people. At least, that makes sense to me. And recently I think things are really happening in my church. Last Friday we had a prayer and worship meeting in the church to pray for all the cell groups. And the youth were just totally HYPED. I mean, during the worship, they were bouncing and running all over the place just giving praise to God. And during the prayer sessions, they were the ones leading most of the prayers. Whoa. And I see they've been getting all hyped up for God for the past few weeks. I'm thinking if God is moving the youth people in the church, then the church is really going to go places. And yeah, I really want to see what's going to happen from here... hopefully help make things happen too. :P

At the same time, I am still a bit worried that I'll end up remaining happily in my comfort zone by staying in CBC instead of doing what I'm supposed to be doing. So right now I'm also going to Acts' evening service on Sundays, just so I can learn from them and see what they do to attract people there coz' their church is growing. It a bit weird going to two churches, but I figure more of God can't hurt... and it's only til I really figure out what I need to be doing. Which I should figure out soon, coz' right now I'm not serving in anything at church, and I want to get out there and start serving already! In the right place, of course. But having a break from serving from a month or two isn't too bad either... less time doing stuff, more time learning and growing. Yeah. Or at least that would be the theory. :P

Yeah, Carol is so fickle-minded. So sue me.

Stuff I probably shouldn't blog about, but what da hey :P

2008-08-31T01:33:00.005+10:00

Writing in my blog has kept me occupied enough that I have not updated my personal journal for the past couple of years. Not that there was any lack of juicy secrets to write about, just that once I started working, updating a blog AND my journal was just too much of a hassle. Recently though, there's been quite a bit going on that I didn't feel like writing here, so I decided to go back to my journal and blah it all out. And so I got out a pen and picked up that dusty book I have hiding somewhere and wrote about 6 pages worth of stuff... until my hand started to ache, I was sick of having to use correction fluid everytime I make mistakes, and I still wasn't done writing. So I figured, since I type a lot faster than I write, and whenever I make errors on a comp I can simply use the almighty backspace instead of having to wait for correction fluid to dry, might as well take my personal journal online. Ooooh, how risky is that? Anyone might just be able to find my writings online and happily read all my juicy secrets. Well, there is always a risk I guess, but as long as it's no one I know reading my juicy secrets, it's ok. :P Anyhow, I tried googling my journal and couldn't find it, so I trust it's secure enough. So don't bother trying, you nosy pokes. I'm just thinking how funny it is that now everything is so easy to do online, I can't even be bothered to write the good ol' fashioned way. I can happily spend my whole life in front of my computer now... oh wait, I'm already pretty much doing that. Ack.

A hot topic to write about has been, and always will be, guys. Such as the new guy in my office whom I really enjoy having around, for little other reason other than I think he's totally hot. I'm tempted to put up a pic to show how hot he is, but asides from that being a violation of his privacy, photos of him really don't do him justice. He's much hotter in real life, mannerisms and all. And he's also pretty funny, which is always a major plus point for me. Unfortunately, I can merely enjoy looking at his royal hotness but not take it any further, for a few reasons.

One, he's just a fresh graduate and kind of a bit too young for me... one and a half years younger actually. I suppose age isn't really a problem as long as the guy is mature in dealing with issues in a relationship. Problem is it's hard even to find older guys who are mature in dealing with issues in a relationship... I highly doubt a younger guy would do much better. But perhaps it's just my rotten stinking luck. Of course, another problem is that a younger guy would be less financially secure. While I don't mind so much paying for a date every now and then, I don't want to end up paying all the time just coz' my date can't afford it.

Two, he already has a girlfriend. Or at least, I have very good reasons to think so, though I haven't asked him to confirm it and I don't intend to ask coz' I know I can't be with him for reason number...

Three, he's not Christian. Not that I think any less of guys who aren't Christian, but while any other differences like age are not so important, it IS important for me to be with someone who shares the same fundamental beliefs. If cannot pass this one criteria, then no matter how perfect he is in other aspects, it ain't gonna happen. But it's ok, coz' since I'm quite happy that I get to see eye candy in office almost everyday, sometimes semi-flirting with him coz' I'm single and I can get away with it, minus having to go through the annoying emotionals ups and downs. I do believe having hot guys in the office improves office morale... though the same may not hold true for office productivity. :P

Of course, I would not endorse getting your highs from such superficial means. What I would really like is to have a good, Christian guy in my life who loves God first, love me second and loves people too. I have some cool notions that the guy I meet will be involved in some ministry where I can be the supporting partner-in-crime, whoops, I mean, ministry. But then the problem would be if I DO meet a guy so gung-ho for God, I doubt I'd have much to offer him since I'm not all that gung-ho myself. Well, I do try... and fail... miserably. Which is probably why I've settled for guys who are much less than gung-ho for God before. But now, I think if I can't get a partner-in-crime, whoops, ministry... I'd rather go alone than settle for any less. Recently in cell, we had a discussion on 'grey' areas of our faith, like appropriate dressing, and working on the Sabbath, and also on marrying non-Christians... and my discussion group got the last topic. At the end of it, the other girls in my group (who are both attached) decided to pray for me to be able to find a good, gung-ho Christian guy to be with. I was ok with it, though I can't help but think that God would probably have plenty of better things to do then fix my love life. But then again, He did say in Genesis 2:18 that it's not good for man to be alone, and so Eve was born to keep Adam company. And thus is probably why most females have this annoying inclination to want to find partner, yours truly included, and therefore God owes me a good guy. Hmm... I should have a chat with Him about that next time I pray about it. :P

Good single gung-ho Christian guys are hard to find and prospects are few... but they're around. Right now, the mysterious tilapia guy is back on my radar again. And who is this mysterious tilapia guy? See, this the stuff I write about on my private journal. Har har. Actually, he's always been around but for some reason I've never really noticed until recently a weird chain of events led to us hanging out together for almost half a day and being with him was pretty fun. And it was only after we were done hanging out and I was heading home when I thought "Hey, we could have something pretty good going on here". Far as I can tell, he's not only totally gung ho for God, but he cares a lot for people too. So he DEFINITELY passes the main criteria. Now all I need to worry about is the secondary stuff like whether or not he's partially insane. You'd think it's a given thing that Christian guys have all their bolts screwed on tight, but interestingly enough, they can be just as whacked out as the next guy. Haha. Anyway, I'm trying not to get my hopes up or rush into anything. I just want to bide my time and get to know him better. And if something happens, then great, but if not, then well... I can just happily continue getting my kicks from the eye candy in my office. Lol.

Kalimantan and other side stories

2008-08-28T00:07:00.006+10:00

I had to go to Kalimantan last week with a bunch of my colleagues to visit some of our estates there (yeah, Sime Darby has estates in Indonesia). I think the only time I've ever been to Indon was when my dad worked in Jakarta as a plantation manager for a couple of years, and my mum and I went there to visit him once. This was when I was in secondary school, and it wasn't a particularly interesting trip, considering there's little or no form of entertainment in the estates... though I remember we went to this restaurant in the nearby town where a drop-dead gorgeous guy was working, and after that I bugged my dad to go back there to eat, though of course I didn't tell him the actual reason why I wanted to go back there. Bygones. Anyway, visiting Kalimantan last week was pretty interesting, coz' although Indon is pretty similar to Malaysia, a few things are quite different, and being there gave me a refresher on just how different things are.

Take the highways, for example. Malaysian highways are usually about 3 lanes wide. But in Kalimantan, from the time we entered Indon land from Kuching, the highway is only one lane in each direction with no divider. It's like a trunk road all the way... but for some reason they call it a highway.
My team and I were driven by the estate manager drivers about 3 hours along this so-called highway before we reached our destination. Not unexpectedly, our drivers were happily overtaking whatever cars or bikes they could, and driving at at least 80 km/hour throughout this small, koochi single lane highway. After the first hour or so, I stopped freaking out quietly in the back seat and decided to just go to sleep and hope I wake up in one piece. Strangely enough, when I asked one of the managers if accidents were frequent, he said there are very few accidents. And I also did not notice ANY roadkill on the roads throughout my stay there, even though I saw heaps of dogs, chickens and other animals wandering just metres away from the road. Which either means that drivers in Indon make more effort to avoid animals that wander on the road... or animals in Indonesia are smarter than animals in Malaysia and they don't go onto the roads. I'll go for the second theory, just coz' it's more fascinating. I, for one, can't stand seeing roadkill, so I'm pretty glad it doesn't happen much there. And speaking of roadkill, just today while stopping at traffic light at Taipan on my way to work and when the light turned green, I saw suddenly a kitten rolling out from under the car in front of me as it started moving. The kitten flopped over right onto the dotted line between lanes, but I couldn't see how it was as I had to move my own car past it while yelling "Aaaargggh!!! Don't roll over the kitty!!!"... supposedly to the drivers behind me, but they couldn't hear me anyway. I wasn't sure if I should stop to help it or just keep on going coz' I might've been late for work... but thoughts of the poor kitty trying to crawl off the road amidst oncoming traffic got to me. I quickly parked my car at the housing area nearby and came back to the traffic light to try and save the kitty from being run over again if it was still alive... but as I watched it from the side of the road to see if it was moving or breathing, it showed no sign of movement. I suppose it was already dead, so after a while I decided to go back to my car. In hindsight though, I didn't see any wounds or blood on it, so I should've just gone and taken it off the road to make really sure it was dead, and at least let the dead kitty rest in peace on the grass instead of being smashed up by other cars...but oh well. *Sigh* Roadkill make Carol sad. :(

Anyway, back to the story of my trip to Kalimantan. Another thing about the roads is that they aren't maintained too well. While the supposed highways are not so bad, there was one road leading into the estates that we had to go through that was really super bumpy coz' there was a gazillion and one potholes in it. It was kinda like a souped up Motion Master (I swear, after working here, I don't ever need to pay for a Motion Master ride at Genting ever again. Riding through bumpy estates roads is well more fun). I took a video of my ride out through this road, and uploaded it here

Unfortunately, my Share on Ovi site temporarily doesn't allow direct streaming of videos, so you can only go to the link and download the video to watch my super bumpy ride. Sorry for the trouble!

Trying to communicate with the locals in Indonesia was also an interesting task. Malay and Indonesian words are mostly the same... but some words in Malay mean something completely different in Indonesian. On one day, we were talking to the estate staff about the amount of fuel they use to run the estate vehicles, and they were going on about their 'mobil-mobil menggunakan solar'. I know 'mobil' there means car... but when they talked about 'solar', I was wondering if the cars there had solar panels attached and they ran on sunlight instead of fuel. While that would have been a cool idea, common sense told me that it was more likely that they weren't talking about solar panels... and eventually I figured out that 'solar' means petrol. And if you're wondering, solar energy is called 'suria' in Indon. And NOW you know....

Along the way back from one of the estates my team had to visit, our drivers decided to take a slightly more interesting route. We went into this area of forest where we saw a few animal enclosures with deer, crocodiles and orang utans. Deer are pretty boring, so I didn't bother to take pictures of them, but I caught some cool pics of the others residents.

There was another smaller orang utan in the same enclosure with this fella (I think it's a mother and daughter) but the smaller one didn't seem too sociable that day.

Perhaps she was having PMS that day or something. Whatever it was, I didn't stay too long to find out coz' after some time, Mama Orangutan started grabbing some big rocks and was giving me and my colleague standing at the edge of the enclosure some weird looks. Seems like she was about to throw them big rocks at us... like I said, we didn't hang around long enough to find out coz' we both ran off as fast as we could to safety.

My team and I got the pleasure of staying at the mess hall within one of the estates. If you think folks going into the estates have only dingy shacks to stay in, think again. Most of the time, they have guesthouses which are pretty comfy and so far. The mess hall we stayed at had a large screen tv where we got to enjoy satellite tv (that has even more channels than Astro!), computer with an extremely slow internet connection but I could still play games on it, and a pool table. I think I played about 20 games of pool the whole time I was there... some by myself just so I could work on my sucky angles. I played against the estate manager, and lost 4 out of 5 games to him... most of which when I only had one ball left to hit in. That was quite annoying.

One thing I really like over there is their orange juice, which they call 'es jeruk'. I had a taste of it at lunch one day, and the juice was made of pure mandarin juice, with the pulp and all still inside, and it was sooooo much better than the fake orange juices we get over here. And after conversion, I think the drink cost less than RM2, whereas it would probably cost at least RM4 here, or some even more insane price as a result of the fuel price hike (good that the price has gone done, but I highly doubt the prices of anything else is going back down, so doesn't really make much a fantastic difference).

By the way, I also had the unfortunate experience of having to take MAS instead of Air Asia to Kuching, so we could get into Kalimantan from there. And I have to say the MAS food was SOOO bad... We had a choice of french toast or roti jala for breakfast, and I chose french toast. The french toast was tasteless, the bun was dry, the yogurt had the blah taste of cheap food...
much as I don't like wasting food, I have to say that the stuff they let us eat on MAS can't really categorized as food. It's more like weird stuff we can put in our stomachs to reduce our hunger. Go Air Asia anytime. You gotta pay for the food, but at least the food is palatable. And if you travel for work, you get to claim for the meals too. Yay!

A night at Passion

2008-08-16T19:12:00.006+10:00

This is a rather long overdue post, considering the event happened 2 weeks ago on Sunday, 3rd of August, but considering I've been pretty busy, you'll just have to deal with stale news. Bygones!

Couples of weeks ago I went for Passion World Tour 2008: Kuala Lumpur, held at the Sunway Convention Centre. For those of you wondering what da 'eck is this all about, the event is a worldwide Christian concert tour run by Passion Conferences, a Christian organization that runs annual Christian events targeted mainly at college students (or those who can still pass off as a college students such as yours truly). For their Passion World Tour 2008, they are visiting a total of 17 countries, Malaysia being one of them, and their tickets were pretty cheap at only RM20. At first I had read about the event on Facebook, but wasn't really planning on going for the concert... until a friend of mine asked me if I wanted to go, and I was "Um...eh...errr...okaaay...". Only Rm20 anyway... so I thought, what the hey, might as well go and check it out.

And as expected, the event WAS totally awesome! The entire convention centre was packed with about 4000 people (mostly college students and older foggies like me trying to pass off as college students). The concert started off with some cool visual effects, which you can see
here in the wonderful world of Youtube. Then the band started off with a bunch of upbeat Passion Christian songs, most of which I'd never heard before but learned how to sing along soon enough. And when you're singing worship songs along with about 4000 other people, jumping up and down like a bunch of bunnies high on caffeine coz' they're so ecstatically praising our God, trust me, there is no cooler feeling. UNLESS you're singing along with tens of thousands of other people from all over the world jumping up and down while praising God, like I was once when I was in Australia attending the Hillsong Conference in Sydney.... but that's another story! Oh yeah, Chris Tomlin (who is only like probably the most famous contemporary Christian artiste today) was leading the Passion band too. I've heard a bunch of his songs before, but didn't really know what he looked like, and of course it was my first time seeing him live. Fantastic singer, singing some fantastic songs, and not too bad on the eyes too. All the elements needed for a great concert... :P

But the music wasn't all that was to it... after about 6 or 7 songs and everyone had had enough of jumping around, we got to have a seat and listen to a message from Louie Giglio, who's the founder of Passion Conferences. While his message overall was really good, the part that really got everyone was when he pulled out a journal and opened it to read to everyone. He explained that the journal belonged to a young girl named Ashley who was a senior at the University of Florida. As he read out loud and explained the first part of Ashley's journal, which consisted of quite a few swear words that Louie had to 'edit' out, it revealed the story of a typical party girl who enjoyed nights out getting drunk silly and getting it on with her boyfriend. Ashley's mum was a Christian who kept talking to her about God and Jesus and stuff like that, but to Ashley, her mother behaved as though she was better than non-Christians. And in fact, all the Christians she knew behaved as though they were better than non-Christians... so Ashley wasn't too fond of Christians, and thought that considering her partying lifestyle, she was too far gone, too 'sinful' to ever be accepted by this God dude her mum kept talking about.

Then one day, Ashley has a big fight with her boyfriend whom she was living with. She kicked him out of her apartment, but didn't like living alone and started advertising for a housemate. A girl named Christa took her up on the offer, and after she moved in, Ashley found out that Christa was one of those Christian people. Ugh. But she soon learned that Christa was...different. She didn't act like she was better than Ashley, and she didn't look down on Ashley for her partying lifestyle. Christa started talking to Ashley about Jesus, and though at first Ashley at first had her inhibitions, when Christa started showing her DVD's of some Passion Conferences and she listened to Louie Giglio's messages, she started to have a change of heart. After getting through the awe that Christians actually record church messages on DVD, she learned from Louie's messages that no one is too 'far gone' to be accepted by God... and God would love and accept her even after all her 'sinful' partying ways. Ashley was intrigued by this, and wanting to learn more, she started writing letters to Louie Giglio himself. She didn't expect to get a personal reply from him, but he did reply, and they exchanged a few emails online but never actually met.

Eventually, Ashley decide to accept Christ and become a Christian, and her journal entries from then on were very different from before as she talked about how great God was and all. In one entry, she talked about how she when to a Christian cell group, and they sang one song which she didn't know, but the lyrics of the song just hit her so hard and she loved it so much, she wrote down the lyrics of the song in her journal. The song was called 'Mighty to Save', and these are the lyrics she wrote:

Everyone needs compassion
A love that's never failing
Let mercy fall on me
Everyone needs forgiveness
The kindness of a Savior
The hope of nations

My Savior
He can move the mountains
My God is Mighty to save
He is Mighty to save
Forever
Author of salvation
He rose and conquered the grave
Jesus conquered the grave

At this point, Louie lifted up the journal and showed everyone that the last few pages were blank. Ashley had wrote a little more after that about how excited she was about graduation which was coming soon... but she never finished the pages in that journal and she never made it to graduation because soon after, she got into a bad car accident and died of internal bleeding at the hospital. That was 3 months after she accepted Christ, and after Ashley was buried, her mother wrote a letter to Louie telling him what had happened to her. But even though she had died tragically, her mum told him that in the last few months of her life, she was a completely different, joyful person. And to thank Louie for his encouragement to Ashley, her mother and father sent Ashley's journal to Louie, allowing him to use it to tell her story to people around the world, as he was doing that night at the Passion concert. The Passion blog also tells a bit more about Ashley's story, as it shows the letter that she wrote to Louie and also the letter that her mum sent to him after Ashley died.

Of course, not many stories of people believing in Christ are as dramatic as Ashley's. Especially for people like me who came from a sort-of Christian family, where I known about Jesus all my life. Sure, at one point when I was older, I had to make one my own informed decision on whether to really believe in Him or not, and I chose the former, albeit with a few ups and down along the way. Sure, I've experienced the joy of being a believer and knowing no matter how crappy a person I am, God has taken care of it so I don't have to worry about anything. But naturally, being a normal human being, it's hard to remember that fact all the time, and it's easy to live a normal every day life and be... not so joyful. And I guess that's why it's good to go for concerts/ conferences like Passion coz' events like these give me the whack on the head I need to remind me of what God has done for me, and for all of US, and it gives me the chance to go crazy happy about it. We got that chance again after Louie's message, when the band got to playing more songs, including the wonderful 'Mighty to Save'. And everyone was singing, lifting their hands and jumping around even higher than before, which was all totally great fun. :)

Here are a couple of vids of the concert that I stole from Youtube to give you a rather foggy idea of how the concert was. First vid is of the song 'Mighty to Save' and the second vid is of them playing the song 'Sing, Sing, Sing', where you can see the good lookin' Chris Tomlin and sort of see part of the 4000 people there jumping like bunny wabbits throughout the song.

Unfortunately, the quality of the videos aren't great so you just need to imagine a much better sound quality and having 4000 other people singing around you to really enjoy the vids. OR you could go to the Passion concert next year to enjoy the REAL experience, or whenever they decide to come back, which hopefully will be next year coz' I want to go agaaaiiiinn.....!!!

Life Is Beautiful

2008-07-28T15:55:00.003+10:00

What a coincidence that Sel just recently blogged about what
song she wants played for her funeral, coz' I was thinking about the same thing... for no apparent reason other than when I heard this relatively unknown song by Sixx AM, I thought it would be such a fantastic song to play at a funeral. The song is called "Life Is Beautiful", and I really like the chorus, which goes:

Alive, just open your eyes, just open your eyes
And see that life is beautiful
Will you swear on your life
That no one will cry at my funeral?

I also like the song coz' it's one of the most soothing, beautiful ballads I've ever heard.

NOT!

Oh yeah, I'm sure no one will cry at my funeral when they hear this song. They'll be too busy getting through the brain hemorrhage.

Staring down 3 storeys

2008-07-28T03:28:00.003+10:00

My happy family of 7 gerbils spend a great deal of their time locked up inside their respective male and female designated cages. Occasionally I let them run around together in my closed room, so the males and females have a fun time getting reacquainted with each other (and the males never fail to have a go at the females, though the poor buggers always fail). Sometimes I will lock a lone gerbil in a transparent plastic hamster ball, so it can run semi-freely around the house, albeit in a claustrophobia-inducing hamster ball. And sometimes I grab one of the little fellas and poke it's head out of my bedroom window, just so it can have a look at what lies outside.

While inside their cage, they spend a lot of their waking time trying to get out of the cage, gnawing and chewing at the bars. Obviously they want their freedom... but every time I decide to grab a gerbil and pop it outside my window, usually the only thing it does is... well... nothing. It doesn't fidget. It doesn't move. It just stares at the big unknown world that lies beyond the window... perhaps in awe at what a great big wonderful world there is outside of it's cage, and perhaps scared to death that I'm going to drop it 3 storeys to the ground below.

I've been in the same place for a pretty long time, but for a while now something has been telling me that I need to get out there and go beyond what I'm doing now. And though I thought of listening to that little voice and stepping out, I was held back by some things. The main thing probably being that I enjoy my comfy little safe zone.... doing the same thing every week and hanging out with the same friends every week. But now a lot of changes have been happening and there's nothing really holding me back anymore, so I guess if there's any good time to step out and try new things, it's right now... coz' I don't wanna start getting back into comfy zone again and that little voice in my head is starting to get a bit annoying.

Ok, no more beating round the bush with riddle-ish talk then. Truth is that I've been thinking of going to another church, and I've been visiting other places for a while and pretty much decided on where I'm going to. Not that I don't like my current church, or that I don't like certain people in the church... I've learned and grown a lot here and I have a lot of good friends here. Just that, I think I've gotten too comfortable, I feel that I should be doing much more, and I'm guessing a major change of environment and people will be just the thing to kick me out of my comfort zone. Of course, going away from familiar things is extremely difficult, and I kinda feel like a gerbil being stuck out a window. On one hand, I'm excited at the possibilities of new things, new perspectives and learning new ways of doing things... and on the other hand, I feel a bit like I'm staring down 3 storeys and thinking I might rather be stuck back at home with the rest of my gerbil friends.

But still, every time I pray about it, I feel that this is what I need to do, and the place where God puts me is where I should be serving. For some reason, I feel like He's been asking me to into Youth Ministry. God knows why He wants me there... I don't even really like teenagers. They have the whole gossipy clique and hormone imbalance thing going on... yeah, yeah, I know that's a very judgemental of me. Sorry, all ye teenagers out there. I'm getting old and jaded. And yet the little voice continues to tell me to get out there and do it... do it do it do it! So I'm going to go to a church that is completely different from where I'm at now, and is very youth oriented. I see a lot of big things happening there, which is great... and hopefully I will figure out soon my place in the whole scheme of things.

Right now though, I won't be disappearing so fast from CBC, as I still do have obligations here. I'll still be around for the next 3 weeks or so, after which I shall pull my magic act and disappear. So far, only my cell leaders know, and as I'm too chicken to tell people personally that I will be changing places, I figure if you care enough to actually read my blog and want to know what's going on in Carol's boring life, then you have the dubious honour of being among the first to know. :P

8 Gifts

2008-07-16T01:54:00.005+10:00

At Sunday School yesterday, I started off the class with an interesting activity which required quite a bit of work beforehand, but hopefully got an important message through to the kids. I prepared 8 gifts… some were in nice boxes with ribbons and even one heart-shaped box, but some were wrapped in decorated plastic bags, and others were badly wrapped in old A4 paper or a box made of newspapers. I told the kids that each of them could choose one present each, and whatever was inside they could choose to keep it or they could choose to give it back to me if they didn’t want it. The girls, quite expectedly, all choose the nicely wrapped presents (also perhaps they got to choose before the boys), so the boys were left with the not so nicely wrapped prezzies. Unfortunately for the girls, when they opened up their boxes, they got crappy stuff like paper clips, stones and even a box of my old business cards. The boys with the crappily-wrapped prezzies, however got slightly nicer stuff like keychains and sweets.

This whole activity was to lead up to me teaching the story in Acts 10, which is about Peter meeting Cornelius, a Roman officer. Peter was a Jew and Cornelius was a Gentile, and back then the supposedly holy Jews were taught not to mix with the supposedly unholy scoundrels that were the Gentiles. But in this story, both Peter and Cornelius received visions and messages from God that led to them meeting each other. Once Peter found out that God was speaking to Corny too (or at least, that what I’m guessing all the kids at school used to call him), he learned a good lesson… that if God doesn’t discriminate between Jews or Gentiles, then he shouldn’t either.

If you haven’t already figured it out, the whole purpose of the 8 gifts was to teach my kids that the gifts are like people. There are some people who look nice, pretty, handsome or well-dressed, but they are aren’t very nice and are just full of crappiness. However, other people who may be poor, fat, ugly or look completely different can turn out to be nice, friendly, generous people. And of course, most people fall in between the two spectrums … but the main thing is that we cannot judge, discriminate or make fun of people based on their looks, coz’ even though they may look different from us and they have different cultures and languages, God still loves them the same as you and me, so we should love them the same too. And to further drive home the point, I had the wonderful idea of inviting Erhire, a Nigerian studying in Sunway who goes to our church, to come to my class and talk to the kids about his country’s culture and help them understand that even though he looks quite different from us, he is still a brother in Christ. Though later into the session I was beginning to think it wasn’t such a good idea after all, coz’ some of the kids were asking Erhire those weird questions that only kids will ask… like do they eat worms/lizards/bugs in Nigeria, and how tall is the tallest person in Nigeria (in cm). I had a hard time resisting the urge to facepalm.

Of course, teaching kids a lesson like this is simple enough. But getting them to believe it and live it is quite a different matter altogether… especially since practically their parents and practically all adults have some form of prejudice or another, which they will pass on to the kids. I have people in my own family who have nothing but unpleasant things to say about Africans... perhaps because of the many stories of Africans committing crimes in Malaysia, but I think it’s also because they just perceive black skinned people as ‘dirty’, unrefined people. Which totally ticks me off coz’ they don’t even know any African people and are just making judgments based on looks. I’ve met quite a few Africans like Erhire, who are all perfectly well educated, very friendly and fun people to hang out with.

Having said that though, I’m not totally blameless myself. It’s kind of hard not to sometimes make unkind generalizations about certain people, especially growing up in a country where the government condones giving handouts based on race, instead of merit. We all know what I’m talking about, so let’s leave it at that. Over time though, I’ve met people of this certain race that we all know about are also quite nice, usually generous and some quite hardworking (contrary to a certain dictionary that once defined this race as the laziest bunch of people on the planet. Needless to say, there was a big hue and cry, so they had to revise that definition. I do agree, that was a pretty mean definition).

Well anyway, before I start to blabber nonsense, I’m just saying… sometimes the disparity of living in reality and teaching rosy lessons in Sunday School gets to me.

A fascinating lunch trip

2008-07-08T15:00:00.003+10:00

I went out for lunch today with a friend, and when the waiter came over to take our orders, I had a look through the menu and found that local policemen was apparently one of their specials.

I decided Chicken Cop didn't sound very appetizing so I went for the Fish and Chips. I wasn't too sure about what to drink, so I told the waiter, in usual nonchalant Malaysian style, "Anything-lah!". My friend also couldn't decided what to drink, so she said, "Whatever also can!". So the waiter went off and came back a few minutes later with exactly what we ordered.

My 'Anything' turned out to be orange flavoured while my friend got a nice drink of ice lemon tea in her can of 'Whatever'. After our meal though, we both had immediate emergencies to attend to before going home, and found just the perfect place to do so.

So after we had happily completed our 'business' at the very aptly signed ladies toilet, we hopped into the car and I had to send her home, but got rather confused at one of the U-turns along the way...

I spent a good 5 minutes at this U-turn stopping and moving my car every few seconds, just to make sure I didn't go against either one of the signs. I didn't get caught by any chicken cops, so I think I did a pretty good job of abiding by the law.

Once I dropped off my friend and I got home, I decided to practice some good dental hygiene by brushing my teeth after every meal. So I got out my toothbrush and my favourite brand of toothpaste (which is the new and improved version of Oral-B).

Oh yeah, who knew brushing teeth could be so much fun? Hmmm....

And to make sure my mouth was truly and completely free of germs, I rinsed out with a cup of 'Isteri'.

And that was my fascinating lunch trip! And after you've recovered from my horrible Oral-Me joke, here's the rundown and where all these fascinating photos were taken:

1) The Chicken Cop - It's part of the menu at the cafeteria of Wisma Guthrie, the building where I work. You might also have noticed at the bottom of the pic that they spelled 'Rice Dishes' as 'Rice Disher', and somewhere on the menu (not in the pic), they also spelled 'Noodles' as 'Noddles'. Obviously whoever made the menu did not pass their spelling tests in school.

2) Anything and Whatever - I went shopping at Mydin for some chicken nuggets to cook for my cell group's potluck dinner tonight, and saw packs of these canned drinks being sold at the Mydin main foyer. Apparently some genius in Singapore came up with the idea of calling their drinks 'Whatever' and 'Anything' to cater to the indecisive people who can't be bothered what to drink when they go out to eat, so they just order anything or whatever. The drinks were more expensive than the usual canned drinks, but I couldn't resist getting a couple of packs to share with my cell group. I also got two free postcards, and one was of a hot chick posing with a can of Whatever, so I gave the postcard to my cell leader, since he was the only single and available male there that night and I did not want any girlfriends/wives killing their boyfriends/husbands due to over-ogling at a postcard. He seemed pretty happy with the postcard. :)

3) The funny ladies toilet sign - It's a real sign for a real ladies toilet at Sime Eco-Retreat at Kempas, Malacca, one of the places I've been going to quite often to prepare for an upcoming audit. We ladies definitely know where to go in case of emergencies.

4) The Stop and Don't Stop road signs - The signs are right next to each other at the U-turn right next to SS23 on the LDP highway. Perhaps it's a way for policemen to make extra 'duit kopi' by catching motorists there... one way or another, drivers have to go against one of the signs. Yeesh.

5) Oral Me - It actually is the latest version of Oral-B toothpaste. I think the name says it all...

6) Listerine becomes Isteri - This ad for Listerine is at the Bangsar LRT station, and it seems some joker had the smart idea of removing the 'L', 'N' and last 'E' from the name to turn it into a completely different word. I don't condone ruining public ads for amusement... but it IS pretty funny. :)

Some things are harder to believe than others

2008-07-06T15:58:00.003+10:00

I'm among this strange group of people who believe that about 2000 years ago, God made a virgin pregnant and she gave birth to a boy who turned out to be God's own son.

We believe that this boy grew up to become the one and only perfect person that ever has and ever will walk the earth.

We believe that this person this some really cool miracles like walking on water, healing people's diseases and even bringing a dead fella back to life.

We believe that this person took upon Himself all the sins of everybody else and willingly died a cruel and exceedingly torturous death on the cross as the ultimate sacrifice to save us from our sins.

We believe that 3 days after his death, He resurrected from the dead and went to heaven, to be with God.

We believe that God this all this because His love for all people is so deep and so unfailing that until today, even though many still refuse Him, reject him and mock his name, He still loves them and He never stops trying to show them His love.

For me, the last part may be the hardest to understand. I can accept that to an all-powerful God, miracles and resurrections must be easy peasy stuff. But if God has feelings... and He must have feelings since He is capable of love, then how does He deal with being rejected by so many of the people He loves? For any normal person, I think, being pushed away by just one person they care so much about would just make them want to implode. And considering people can so easily disappoint, most of time it's just easier not to care.

But for a loving God, I suppose not caring is really not an option. He continues to love and continues to deal with the rejection even though it probably hurts a heckuva lot. Somehow or another, He doesn't give up on people. And if God doesn't give up on people, then I don't think He'll let me give up so easily either. Even though it hurts heckuva lot. Aarrgh!

Meet Rufus

2008-07-01T01:44:00.004+10:00

I caught this little bugger minding it's own business at one of the estates last week, and I decided to adopt it as my blog mascot. My dragonfly identifying friend wasn't online tonight, so I had to try and identify it on my own... and from some pictures I googled, I figure it's of the species Rhodothemis rufa... so I decided to name him Rufus. And why does my blog need a mascot? Well... why not??? Rufus will be stuck on my blog sidebar from now... promoting the freedom and rights of dragonflies all over the world.

I also got quite up close and personal to this rather big grasshopper, that was taking a walk around on a coffee table.... and since I was a bit too free at the time, I caught a short video of it.

The grasshopper got a tad bit TOO up close and personal with me at that last bit. Should be enough to satiate my fascination for bugs for a while... at least until the next trip to an estate, that is.

Babies & engagements (no, not MINE!)

2008-06-30T01:26:00.005+10:00

I still one of the surest ways to make me feel old is watching a kid grow up almost right before my eyes. My niece, Elizabeth is now one year and 4 months old, and when I look at her now, I can't help but wonder how come these things grow up so dang fast. It's like just yesterday she was this helpless little tiny thing (she was born slightly premature, so she was a bit underweight). But soon after that, her inate cheekiness started coming out, and I dare say that my niece could contend with Jim Carrey for the having a rubbery face, what with all the funny expressions she loves to make. Case in point...

I have a feeling she's going to be a bit of a handful for my bro and his wife... she's starting to be naughty enough to give them a bit of a headache, though thankfully not enough to drive them mad. One of the best things now though, is that even though she only sees me about one every couple of weeks or more, Ellie can already recognize me. And though she can't quite talk yet, aside from the usual nonsensical baby babble, she can indicate she wants me to carry her by lifting up her arms to me, which is fantastic considering most kids usually only want their parents to carry them. I'm starting to have cheeky plans of becoming the fun aunt that takes Ellie out for fun trips and buying her ice cream every time. And I would take her to the zoo and tell her that she is free to try and touch a tapir's butt if it's close enough to the enclosure wall, but make sure she must wash her hands well after that. And I might get her a mini guitar to play with... though she seems to like banging chopsticks on the table, so I think she's more cut out to becoming a drummer. She also seems to enjoy dancing to music, so I could try to train her in the fine art of playing DDR. Heheheee... She's just the cutest kid on the planet right now. Until when I might have my own kids, then of course, they will be the cutest kids on the planet.

In other family news, my other brother in the US just recently got engaged to this Korean chick whom I haven't met face to face since they're halfway around the world, and she has a name I still have trouble spelling, but apparently she's the best thing since sliced bread... to my brother, that is. It seems he popped the question while they were on top of a bunch of big rocks, and he got on his knee and the whole shebang. Gah! My brother's a romantic!!! I learn something new every day... :P You can read the whole story at my bro's blog. So anyway, he was like "Will you marry me, Kyeonghi? (I *think* that's how it's spelled)" and she was like "Yes!" and so now I'm like "Yay! Congratulations, Bernard!". Now I have a good excuse to go the US for a holiday. :D. Though I need to start saving money for the plane ticket... :S. Ah well, God will provide. I'm quite sure when my bro has kids, he'll definitely get them to learn guitar... so I just need to be in charge of taking them on zoo trips and teaching them how to touch the animals without getting bitten. Heheheee.... I'm KIDDING, of course.

The celery slider

2008-06-16T14:07:00.003+10:00

My cell group was designated to do a presentation in church yesterday for Father's Day. Somebody severely lacking in foresight decided to tell us about it ONE week earlier, and since my whole cell was kind of busy working throughout the week, we only got to meet up for our one and only practice on Saturday. Night. At 9pm. Ok, so a bunch of us met at McD's for dinner at 7.30pm and chit-chatted for longer than we should've... bygones.

Somehow or another we ended up deciding to perform Eric Clapton's "My Father's Eyes". I was on acoustic guitar, Gavin played the guitar solos, Theng Terk was lead singer and everyone else just had to sing "Look into my father's eyes" twice during the chorus. And Gav didn't have a proper slider to do his guitar solos with, so he decided to improvise!

Ah yes, the amazing things you can do with stuff lying around your kitchen. He didn't actually use the 'celery slider' during the real performance, of course, though I think it would have made our performance a bit more entertaining. After looking through the lyrics of song, I realized that it's actually very meaningful... but I fear the meaning was totally lost on our mostly Chinese-educated church parents. Plus, none of our fathers in our cell group actually come to our church... so our performance was only for other people's fathers.... -_-' Oh, the irony. Oh well, at least we still managed to pull off a decent rendition of a classic song after only 3 hours of practice. At least, I hope it was decent, as opposed to horribly mutilated.

I'm assuming no one reading my blog is a dad, so hope all your dads had a good Father's Day yesterday. :)

Freeze for World Environment Day

2008-06-16T03:50:00.001+10:00

On Friday, in conjunction with World Environment Day, one of my colleagues had a fun idea of getting our officemates to 'freeze' for 4 minutes while holding an item to represent some sort of environmental issue. The purpose was to create awareness that we need to help protect the environment... and also made for an interesting video. Just ignore the girl walking around taking photos coz' that would me. :P

Karaoke, invertebrates and other ramblings on Sandakan Bay

2008-06-14T19:41:00.011+10:00

I've been at my office for a grand total of 8 working days in a row... which is the longest stretch I've been in office so far. And every day I have to fight the incredible insane traffic jam to get to that office. If I leave the house at 7.30am, I reach office only at 9.00am (and works start at 8.30am). So now I have to drag myself out of bed much earlier than I would like to, so I can get out of the house by 7.00am, and cut my traveling time by half. At least when I'm outstation and I have to be ready to go by 7.00am, I usually get to enjoy a good view of nature first thing in the morning... which is, of course, MUCH better than the prospect of joining the rush of mad KL drivers. But then, being outstation means I have to miss out on stuff at home or hanging out with friends, and I have to get people to replace me when I'm supposed to be doing something at church. Which is annoying. It seems I'm at risk of being 'relieved' of certain duties due to my reduced availability. :'( *sob!* *sob!* *whimper like puppy!*.... Oh well, I can't get everything I want, and there are other areas to serve at church.

Anyway, my last outstation trip, which was to Sandakan Bay, was a pretty fun trip... it almost felt like a holiday more than a working trip. And we were there while an actual audit was being conducted on some of our estates and mill... so I think I supposed to be quite stressed out trying to ensure they passed the audit, but it was quite smooth sailing. I'd been for another audit before, which was conducted by SIRIM at Tawau... that was a bit stressful coz' those auditors would nitpick on the smallest details that no one in their right mind would notice as an issue. This time at Sandakan Bay though, the audit was conducted by another certification body called BSI, and the auditors were an Australian married couple named Charlie and Robyn Ross and an Indonesian named Iman, and though their audit was also quite thorough, they were not as stringent on checking details as the SIRIM auditors were. And they were also very nice people to talk to, so it was actually quite an enjoyable audit process.

They also brought along two interpreters from Lahad Datu, James and Noryati, who were pretty much just along for the ride coz' they only had 'work' when the auditors talked to the workers or villagers. The rest of the time when they are in an office and the Aussie couple are looking through documentation, these two sit around and do nothing... so I got to chat with them quite a bit and in no time, we were all pretty buddy buddy. The 3 of us would be the crazy ones to want to stand at the back of the pickup truck whenever we had to go somewhere... just so we can enjoy the wind and the thrill of hanging onto the truck for dear life on the bumpy estate roads. Seriously, after a couple of extremely bumpy estate rides, I think the Motion Master at Genting Highlands would just put me to sleep.

On the last day of the audit, the auditors gave the good news that the estates passed the audit, so the estate managers had a celebration at one of the clubhouses that night... complete with good food, a pool table, and a karaoke session! Of course, I couldn't resist a go at the karaoke, and after a while everyone else just sat back and let me, James, Noryati and one of the managers do all the karaoke-ing... apparently we were quite entertaining. :P Here's the evidence of me and the two interpreters hogging the karaoke machine...

And this is a pic of the Aussie couple, Charlie and Robyn Ross, on the boat as we headed back from the estate the next day.

I find it quite fascinating that they can be married and still work together so well. Would be pretty cool if I could meet a guy who I can work with on the job... then I won't have to deal with being away from him so much when I outstation. And I'd have someone to watch my back when I'm doing nutty stuff like chasing down monitor lizards for a good photo. Or I would be taking photos of him chasing down monitor lizards. Though on the other hand, if I'm around him TOO much and we get into disagreements, I can't avoid him if I'm working with him, so I may end up starting to have murderous intentions. Plus he would have to be a Christian. Plus he would have to fulfill all my other less important but still significant criteria. Plus he'd have to like me too, and I'd also have to meet whatever ridiculous criteria he has for a girl. Hmm... I'd probably have better luck finding kangaroos living in a mangrove swamp in Antarctica.

Right, enough fantasizing about non-existent species then. Of course, as on all my trips, I was quite camera-happy in Sandakan Bay, and in addition to indulging in my usual flower fetish, I also took quite a few pics of some rather interesting bugs. And to make this boring post a bit more interesting, I'm going to play a fun game called.... (insert corny game show host voice here) "GUESS THE INVERTEBRATE!!!"

Today on "Guess the Invertebrate", we'll start off easy with this little fella, here, who's fallen and can't get up.
This invertebrate is glossy black in colour, is about 15 mm in length and is a member of the order Coleptera. Can YOU guess the invertebrate?

If you guessed it's a BEETLE, you would be just about as smart as anyone else coz' any doofus could guess that it's a beetle. Also, beetles make up 40% of the animal kingdom, so you would have a 2 out of 5 chance of being correct. The more accurate answer would be that this is a Black Beetle, or more scientifically known as Heteronychus arator.

It looked a bit more happy after I flipped it over.... Now... (still maintaining corny game show host voice) our second invertebrate of the day is a tad bit more difficult to guess.

This cute little larvae lives in a self-made casing made out of gravel, sand, twigs and whatever other junk they can find. Usually aquatic, it is rather unusual to see these creatures crawling around on a machine at a palm oil mill.... but nevertheless it does happen, as I can personally attest to. Can YOU.... guess... the... invertebrate???

If you have completely no idea, I can't blame you coz' I wouldn't have known either if not for the fact that I used to do research work in entomology. So I can make a pretty safe guess that this is a member of the order Trichoptera... otherwise known in layman's terms as Caddisflies. Simply put, when this little bugger grows up, it'll look something like a moth. And NOWS... you knows!

Finally (STILL maintaining corny game show host voice), for our last invertebrate for today, we have this fascinating looking little creature to boggle your brains!

This funny looking thing is only about 1.5cm in length, has a shell like a snail and can be found crawling around on bathroom floors... occasionally also in toilet bowls. Very unfortunate for them when I have to flush. It also appears to have eyes on protrusions on it's head.

So, can YOU... guess... the... invertebrate??? If you can... please tell me the answer coz' I have NO friggin' idea what it is either. :P

And that's all for today's episode of "Guess the Invertebrate!", so I'm dropping the corny game show host voice now... Of course, there was is no lack of other fascinating invertebrates I caught on camera, such as the following dragonflies.

Fortunately my uni friend, Yong, is able to identify dragonflies, so he was able to tell me that these three are Lathrecista asiatica, Neurothemis terminata and third one is *likely* to be Onychothemis coccinea or a female of some species. Yes, I won't remember the names either. No need to hurt your brains. Just look at the pictures and go "Oooohh... preeeetty..."

I also got acquainted with the neighbourhood millipedes...

Isn't that just the cutest little bugger face you've ever seen? :) And look, they know the phone number you need to call in case of emergencies!

And then there are the cute looking snails...

And spiders...

And kids...

Oh yeah, they're not invertebrates... but they can still BUG the heck out of you (insert lame joke laughter here). These are a couple of kids who lives one of the kampung areas near the estate. They were just too cute to resist taking a couple of pics. :)

Well, my long stint at office ends tomorrow as I head out for another trip to Malacca and Negeri Sembilan. Need to whip those estates into shape in time for another audit... by SIRIM unfortunately, not BSI. Ugh.

The Camera Face-off

2008-06-09T23:53:00.003+10:00

I had a little camera face-off with one of my older colleagues today. He's in charge of purchasing new cameras for company use, and I told him I'd done quite a bit of research on cameras so I could help him decide what brand to buy. Then I told him the specs of my Ricoh, and pointed out that the macro capabilities are really good. He has a Panasonic Lumix, which is a new model with 10x optical zoom (beats my cam which only has 7x zoom), but I told him flat out that when it comes to macro shots, my camera beats Lumix anytime. I know coz' I tested a Lumix before I bought my Ricoh.

Buuut my colleague didn't believe my somewhat pompous claim, and challenged my camera to a macro shot face-off! So we both whipped out our cameras, and took the closest macro shot we could of some writing on a newspaper. And of course, after comparing the results, my Ricoh (naturally!) won the face-off, and after my opponent sauntered off back to his cubicle, I proceeded to do the Chicken Little celebration dance at mine. Hehehe. Dun play play!

In other news that most people wouldn't give a hoot about, I've finally gotten round to installing a photo stitching program and stitching up all my photos I had taken over the past few years to make panoramas. A number of them were taken while I was in Australia in 2004... so it's taken me 4 years to get round to doing this. Now that's what I call procrastination. Anyway, I uploaded the finished panoramas here for all yer viewing pleasure. Enjoy!

Fulfilling a dream in 5 simple words

2008-06-07T23:43:00.000+10:00

When I was in college, and wondering what to do with myself once I completed my pre-U course, I told my parents that I wanted to do Zoology. Anything to do with Biology was interesting to me, but none was more fascinating than learning about animals and their various adaptations to living in the wild. And I found it quite sad that a lot of fascinating creatures are endangered and going extinct for various reasons... but mainly due to the activities of a certain species called homo sapiens. So conservation was something I really wanted to go into.

Being typical Chinese folks though, my folks shot down my dream by telling me zoologists don't make money in Malaysia, there's no demand for this kind of work, working with animals is extremely dangerous, I should get a more 'respectable' job, naggedy naggedy nag nag. So I kind of figured that I ought to just give up on the crazy notion of working with wildlife. I was still very interested in anything Biology, and then found out that Monash offers a course in Biotechnology. At the time, there was all this hype about Biotech being the next big thing after IT... so I put the course down as my course of interest while I was still in college. Monash also offered Environmental Management, which naturally sounded more interesting to me, but was also something my folks deemed an area with 'no future', therefore no big bucks (my folks come from poor families, so I can't really blame them for being so money-minded all the time... but it does get rather annoying at times)... so I fell back to Biotech. Later on, I was fortunate enough to be offered a full scholarship from Monash, which meant I could actually afford take a second degree. Thus I ended up doing a double degree in both Biotech and Env. Mgt.

After completing my degrees, I was interested to get a job in Singapore, and *still* hadn't quite given up my hopes to work with wildlife. Singapore is more developed and environmentally aware, so I was thinking they would pay more than if I did the same job here... so my folks can't complain. Thus I applied to work at a marine institute in Singapore. Didn't get the job. I also applied for a research position at Singapore Zoo. Heck, I even took the time to arrange a meeting with the person in charge of the research centre when I visited Singapore. She was kind enough to meet me... but I still didn't get the job. Eventually I gave up *again* on trying to do get into wildlife related work, applied to other places, and after a while landed myself in Mad Science. Working with kids is probably the next best thing to wildlife. You never know what to expect with those little people. Hyuk hyuk.

Now fast forwarding to the present, and I've found myself in a job where I can 'sort of' do what I wanted to do. I get to be outdoors, and I get to be involved in a few conservation projects, the main ones being the conservation of habitats for orangutans and hornbill, and also coral reef conservation. But of course, my main work involves the ensuring Sime Darby's plantations achieve certification for sustainability... which in a nutshell means making sure our company does not over-proliferate or over-pollute our natural resources for profit at the expense of future generations. The certification we are trying to get will meet with international standards, known as the RSPO Principles & Criteria. If we don't achieve sustainability, other more advanced countries will refuse to buy our palm oil products... which is of course, not good for business. So my work mainly involves going to our estates and palm oil mills and making sure they comply with the standards before auditors come to check if the area is ready to be certified. Naturally, I see more oil palm trees than animals... the work is interesting. But still not exactly what I've always wanted to do.

On Thursday in office, after a long month of going outstation nonstop, my team did practically little else but have meetings... three meetings in total, to be precise. One meeting was to discuss the status of an audit conducted at one of our plantations. The other was a general one to discuss admin details and general duties of everyone. My team consists of 7 other people, and our team head informed all of us that we assigned to specific projects for the unit. I was assigned to take on an Environmental and Social Project. The environmental part would be to monitor all usage of resources at all our estates and oil palm mills, while the social aspect would be about ensuring the needs of estate workers are met, that they aren't treated unfairly, that there is no discrimination, and so on. Of course, seeing how I have an Environmental Management background, it does make sense that I would be asked to handle this project... though the social aspect kind of threw me a bit as I'm not very interested in dealing with social issues. Somehow, dealing with the plight of people doesn't interest me half as much dealing with the plight of animals.

The third meeting was an unexpected meeting, but was the most interesting one of all. Our unit head (who is a bigger boss than my team head) called all of us into his room for a long-winded pep talk. I think we spent a good 2 and a half hour listening to him go on about making sure each one of us know what projects are going on and that each of us understands our role.

At one point, he started talking about how he wants each one of us to become specialists in a certain field, so that whenever anyone needed to ask anything about that area, they could look to that ONE person. Some areas that he wanted us to specialize in were trees (*yawn*), social issues (*double yawn*) and large mammals such as elephants, rhinos, deer, and so on. As you might expect, that last one certainly got me sitting up. The big boss went on to say that he preferred a male to take on this role and it would be quite rough and tough, but he didn't designate anyone at that point.

Then the big boss asked my whole team of 7 people, one by one, what kind of project they had been assigned to, and from there, he decided what kind of specialist he wants them to become. The first girl was in charge of the Hornbill project, so he designated her the Bird Specialist. The second girl, who has a Biodiversity degree, was to be the Biodiversity Specialist. Another girl (most of my team are young ladies such as myself... some even younger :)) who has scuba diving experience, became the Reef Specialist. And it went like that with everyone else... but no one argued with the big boss's decisions or made any comment that they would prefer to specialize in something else.

I was the last person in the line, so I had plenty of time to think about what to say when he asked me what project I'm in.... I knew that being assigned to the Environmental and Social Project means that he would tell me to become the specialist in one or the other.... but both are not the areas I'm really all that interested in. So when it came to my turn, he asked me what project I'm in, I told him, and his next line was "I want you to ignore the Environmental part and concentrate on the Social aspect..."

But before he could get to tell me that I was now the Social Issues Specialist, I interjected and said flat out, "BUT I'm interested in animals."

The big boss looked at me for a while, before asking "Are you really interested in animals?". I nodded. "It's a very tough area to be in, you know". And then he went on to explain that if I wanted to study animals, I would have to go into the jungle a lot and learn basic jungle survival skills. And he gave me a little 'pop quiz', asking me if I knew what is the most important thing I need to bring into the jungle to survive. I answered water... but turns out the most important thing is a good knife coz' it can be used to hunt, get water and do lots of other things. Water supply was the 2nd most important thing... so mine wasn't that bad a guess. :P He also said stuff like I can't wear fragrances in the jungle coz' it would attract all sorts of killer bugs. Hmm... not a problem for me, coz' I can't be bothered with perfume anyway. I think he has some preconception that because I dress well in office, I'm too 'ladylike' to be able to handle life out in the jungle. He even asked me if I've ever BEEN to the jungle before. Only like over a dozen times. Though, to be honest, most of the time it was only to go trekking, on a nicely made out path. On whether I've had to hack my way through a jungle, I'll have to admit that would be a no... but seeing how I'm crazy enough to swim after sharks while snorkelling and go into a forest by myself, I'm up for the challenge.

Eventually the big boss said ok, he won't be gender-biased and he doesn't mind letting me have a shot in this field... but he wants to test me by sending me out into the field, as in go into the jungle or working in an orangutan sanctuary for a while. He also mentioned that orangutans are not to be messed with, as they are strong enough to rip apart coconuts, and they could rip off a person's arm if they wanted to. Can't argue with that... I've seen orangutans rip apart coconuts quite easily. Wouldn't want to see them rip off someone's arm... especially not my own. But still I'm so TOTALLY up for going to work in an orangutan sanctuary! That would be SO awesome!! In fact, the only major thing I was worried about is how on earth will I tell my mum about it. I've already heard her worry about whether I'll fall down a cliff, get bitten by snakes or eaten by a tiger every time I go trekking, or into the estates. And the first thing she says each time I come back from a trip in the past month is that I've gotten darker, from being out in the sun. I can't imagine she'll be too happy knowing that I'm going to be the up-and-coming Wildlife Specialist on my team.... Oooh, that title just gives me the willies! ^_^

But this is what I've always wanted to go into and I'm pretty psyched that I get a chance to specialize in this area... of course I know my primary role is still working to achieve certification for the estates, and most of my work will be focused on that. But being able to do this as a secondary part of my work is... well... much better than what I expected going into this job. And to think, if I had just sat there quietly in the meeting like everyone else and didn't voice out my interest in wildlife, I would've been slapped with some boring specialization in Social Issues. Bleh. I'm so glad I had the guts to speak up and tell the big boss exactly what I wanted to do. And I'm glad he's a cool enough boss that he would give me this chance, even though I'm a girl. Though we still need a Social Specialist... and fortunately Swee Yin (the girl who introduced me to the job) said she's more interested in doing that than being the Reef Specialist. And she'd probably do a much better job in that role than me coz' she's much more caring about people issues than I am. I'd be more than happy to take on the role of Reef Specialist too... except that I can't scuba dive and I probably shouldn't take on too many things at once. Much as I would like to be an expert on all living creatures (land animals, marine animals, birds, insects, oh the list goes on and on!), I think land animals is enough to keep me busy for... a long time.

Hmm... I have a feeling I'm going to get a lot of funny nicknames now, but I'm just starting out now, so please, no calling me the Terri Irwin of Malaysia just yet. Maybe in a few years when I've learned a bit more about jungle survival and dealing with snake bites and avoiding rampaging elephants and stuff like that. :P Weeee!!!

Rushing for fuel

2008-06-05T02:16:00.003+10:00

I've usually try to make it a point to avoid getting political on my blog, as there are enough blogs out there doing that. However, certain circumstances call for a break in my resolve. Like tonight.

If it isn't bad enough that the government insists a petrol price hike is necessary to 'supposedly' divert subsidies into more important areas that will help the poor (somehow I have a feeling that isn't going to happen, but only time will tell), some monkeys decided it would be a fun idea to announce a price hike of petrol from RM1.92 to RM2.70....starting from midnight tonight. And it seems the announcement was only made during the evening news, as I received a barrage of sms-es telling me to go fuel up tonight only after 8pm. I was with a friend at the time, watching a movie at One Utama, and both of us thought it was just a rumour at first coz' we didn't think the government would be so dumb as to make such a sudden announcement on the petrol price hike.

Sad to say, apparently the government is that dumb. On the way home after the movie, I got stuck in a massive jam along the LDP, and found that EVERY single petrol station I passed by was jammed packed with cars, rushing to buy petrol before the price went up. And I was extremely sleepy too, so much that by the time I finally hit Subang, I could barely keep my eyes open while driving and I was quite worried that I would fall asleep at the wheel. Fortunately, I made it home in one piece.

So naturally, the thing I'm wondering now is who came up with the ingenious idea of announcing a petrol price hike a mere 4 hours before the increase takes effect? Couldn't they at least announce it a few days beforehand to give people time to prepare? Did they not predict a huge rush of people scurrying like mad chickens to buy petrol? Or did they purposely announce it so last minute to prevent everyone from rushing to buy cheaper petrol and severely depleting the supply? Whatever it is, it was an extreme inconvenience for a lot of people... and I'm sure there were a lot of poor souls out there who were desperately low on petrol and couldn't fill up on time coz' of this mad rush. I wonder where the Opposition leaders were when this was announced. The people voted them in hoping for life to become better, and instead it seems as though they're just as bad as the devils before them. *Sigh* Migrating to another country sounds even more appealing than usual right now...

Condoms for thumb drives

2008-05-26T01:54:00.003+10:00

I'm wondering if I should rename my blog "My Amazing Adventures at Sime Darby" or something like that. All this traveling is enjoyable, but also pretty darn tiring. Especially when I have to wake up at 4.30am in the morning to catch a 7.15am flight to Sandakan...which I'm supposed to do tomorrow, so I really should be asleep right now... but since I'm already suffering from lack of sleep, I figure another 15 minutes won't hurt. I just came back from Tawau last Thursday, where I spent one week almost everyday waking up at the estate guest-house with an amazing view of a lake and rainforest, which all the pics I took will do absolutely no justice to.

I also got quite up close and personal to one of Sabah's famous residents, the hornbill, while I was at one of the estate offices waiting for someone to finish off some stuff. This particular fella was sitting at the bottom of a little cliff, so I couldn't see it til I crept close enough to the edge. And at first it was so still, I almost thought it was a statue of a hornbill... until, of course, it moved, and I was like "Coooooool!".

Ah yes, getting to enjoy great views and taking shots like these make the lack of sleep and rather long working hours quite worth it. What made me almost wish I hadn't joined Sime was when my laptop got hit by a trojan... or rather, a whole bunch of trojans, when I had to transfer some documents to some people's thumb drives. Fortunately, my antivirus program could detect and delete most of them. Unfortunately, it failed to get rid of one... and it caused my laptop to suddenly restart every now and then, and then go into a black screen with the words "Operating System not found". I was so totally freaking out, worrying that everything on my laptop would be wiped out. And it REALLY didn't help when I plugged in my camera to transfer some pics in for work, and it found another undeletable virus in my camera! I think it was from when I plugged my memory card into someone else's laptop to transfer some pics, so it picked up a virus from that comp. Bugs on my laptop is already bad enough... if all my pics were wiped too, I'd be pretty ticked off. Eventually I did calm down and told myself that it's just data and stuff that really not all THAT important after all. But the thought of possibly having to reformat my hard drive and reinstall everything over my weekend did not do wonders for my mood. I'd done it once before... it took up a whole day, and considering I have only a few days back to enjoy myself, I did NOT want to spend it trying to fix my laptop.

Fortunately, the viruses didn't wipe out anything on my comp OR camera. When I got back to office, I got an IT guy to help me clean out that trojan, so now my comp doesn't restart itself for no reason and display funny messages. And after transferring all my pics, I reformatted my cam's memory card and it's fine now too. Thank GOD. At least now I've learned something very important... scan every thumb drive I stick into my comp before opening the files. And avoid sticking my camera into strange computers if I can help it. Really, someone should invent condoms for thumb drives or something, to prevent transfer of strange viruses. I'm sure that would be a big seller. :P Now if only Sime would get those new laptops they ordered QUICK so I can use a company laptop and I don't have to worry about funny things happening to my laptop anymore...

Oh yeah, I also just bought myself a new pair of romping-around-in-the-jungle steel-toed boots. Do you know how hard it is to find a good pair of non-fashion boots that fits a girl? All the boots I saw were for guys with super huge feet. But on Thursday after I got back, I managed to find a good looking pair that fit me perfectly and is reasonably priced at RM125 after discount. Not exactly the most comfortable thing to walk around it, but after sludging around in the mud wearing my sneakers, I figure investing in a good pair of boots is worth it. Maybe I could make a fashion statement out of it too. Hyuk hyuk. Ok, time for bed.

I'm just travellin' travellin' travellin'....

2008-05-15T00:17:00.006+10:00

I was in Kempas, Negeri Sembilan and Tanah Merah, Malacca for the whole of last week, came back on Friday, went to Seri Intan, Perak on Sunday and just came back today. I'm certainly getting around in my new job... and haven't even spent more than 2 days in my office in Damansara. I haven't done any of the real fun stuff like scaring the orangutans and checking out marine reefs, and that probably won't happen for a while coz' right now we busy conducting the internal audits for our estates to make sure they are ready for the *real* audit which will be conducted by SIRIM in order to certify our estates' sustainability. And the real audits are starting in June, so we're rushing to finish meeting up with all the estates to make sure they comply. Right now, most of them are lacking in a number of areas, and those poor fellas have a lot of work to do to make sure they comply before SIRIM gets to them. And if they don't get the certification, heads will roll. Apparently some top shot in the company decided he wants all Sime Darby estates to be fully certified by 2010, just so we can be the *first* in the Malaysia to be fully certified in sustainability. Ah yes, to satiate a big shot's ego, the small fries need to work their butts off.

Not to say that I'm not enjoying my work. I certainly find it a lot more interesting than my old job... and I actually understand everything that goes on, which wasn't really the case in Accenture when people started talking technobabble and I'd be like "Huh?". The stuff I learned in uni is quite useful now... and I can point out stuff that doesn't look right at the estates and palm oil mills when we're doing the site visit. Like there was a chemical lab at one mill where the lab guy was walking around wearing slippers... and no one else on my team has done lab work except me, and occupational safety is one of the major criteria of our audit, so I pointed out that he should be wearing covered shoes when handling chemicals, in case they spill on his feet. Tsk tsk, don't even know basic lab safety!

Getting to stay near the outdoors is also fun. When in Kempas, I stayed in this fantastic chalet within the estate grounds, and every morning I'd wake to the sound of chirpy birds and the first thing I'd see when I open the door is green trees and a pond. Ok, the pond is pretty mucky, but that's to be expected in this country. The only problem I had there was when I left the night light on outside one night, went out for dinner, and when we came back, the whole front door of my chalet was swarming with flying ants attracted to the night light. I had no choice but to quickly unlock my door and get in as fast as I could without allowing the bugs in... but a few got in anyway, and I spent about half an hour getting all of them back out my room. Note to self: Do not leave night light on outside chalet room when next time.

Of course, I had a lot of fun taking pictures with my new camera... which turns out to be every but as good as I hoped it would be, especially when taking those close-up shots. Only problem is that I only have one lithium battery and buying an extra one is expensive. So when it runs out of juice, I can't take any more pics. Happened on the first day of my Kempas trip, when I saw this lovely orange dragonfly resting on the grass next to a pond. I snuck up to it, put my camera about 2 cm away from the dragonfly, held my breath to make reduce camera shake, pressed the shutter halfway down to focus, and then.... my camera battery died. And as much as I tried to muster one last shot out of it, it wouldn't deliver. All the while the dragonfly was still sitting there calmly... as if it were mocking me. I thought, "I'll get you next time, you little bugger!" Of course, I charged my battery that night, and made sure it was well and fully charged every day after that. And I DID get the little bugger on the second day.

I took my mini tripod with me this time, so there was no camera shake and the pic is fantastic! Though I still had to sneak up to it and sit on the grass next to the pond to get this pic. My feet were probably 5cm away from the edge of the pond, and I'm sure if someone mean came along and nudged me, I would've fallen in. Fortunately no one was dumb enough to try that, or else they would not be alive today.

Some other fantastic macro shots:

This little bug seems to be hanging on for dear life!

This flower in only about 1cm in size. Whoa.

A close-up of a canna. Major colour overdose!

A very pretty and rather sedated butterfly, which didn't budge even though my camera was 1cm away from it.

Probably the most perfect hibiscus I've ever seen. Looks almost perfectly symmetrical, in full bloom and no sign of withering. I took this at one of the estate manager's house (which btw, is super nice!).

Ok, a not-so-amazing shot of an ice cube... but it's interesting coz' it's from my cup of teh ais which I ordered while at a mamak, and I noticed some swirls of teh ais somehow got trapped within the ice cube. Looked quite fascinating, so I took a pic before it melted into a little pool of teh ais and water.

Of course, while I do enjoy the job and being outdoors, I am starting to see some problems with working here too... or it could be just the managers I've been going to audit the estates with. I've been travelling with two of the managers, one who just used to be from the PR unit and somehow or another ended up in our unit, so he's still learning the ropes, while the other is an ex-estate manager who is supposedly more experienced and is the leader of our team. I'm fine working with the first guy... it's the latter who drives me a bit insane. He's a nice guy...BUT he is SO slow in doing stuff. He's extremely slow at typing, so he asks me to do type. When we have to do the summary of the audits and I have finished compiling all the non-compliant issues, all he needs to do look through it and make corrections (even that is so difficult for him to type), and he takes forever to decide what changes to make. And sometimes he changes the wording to something that means exactly the same thing. For example, a sentence like "To develop a mechanism to monitor the blablabla...". He said he wants to change it "To develop a method to record the blablabla...". I told him it the first sentence means exactly the same thing as the second. He looked at me funny. This was when it was almost midnight and I was down with a cold and all I wanted to do was finish the thing off quick and get to bed, so I didn't argue too much and just changed the sentence. And if that's not annoying enough, he's such a hardcore smoker that every 15 minutes, he has to take a smoking break... which sometimes leaves me in the lurch waiting for him to get done with it quick to finish looking through my summary. And I'm not a big fan of stinky cigarette smoke breath too. And sometimes, during the meetings with the estate staff, they can waste a lot of time talking nonsense and having tea breaks when they should be working. So when the managers I'm with complain that they have so much work to do and not enough time, I just roll my eyes and try my best to refrain from pointing out why they don't have enough time.

At least since I understand my work, all I need to do is gain a bit more experience before I can start doing audits on my own... or at least without THIS manager... so I can finish my work faster. This weekend I have to go to Sabah... not for another internal audit, but to observe the SIRIM as they conduct their audit in one of the estates. I don't like having a weekend taken up, but I do like being able to see these guys and ask them first-hand all the nagging questions I have for them about what they are looking for. My goal right now is to learn as much as I can as soon as possible so I can work independantly and not have to put up with other people's bad time management.

My other goal is also to get through all my backlogged emails, coz' now I have more than 50 unread messages in the inbox. Ack!

I'm NOT blogging this right now

2008-05-06T11:00:00.001+10:00

I'm actually in Tanah Merah, Negeri Sembilan right now! Doing some plantation auditing! And I get to stay in one of Sime Darby chalets. I'm sure it's quite nice, but can't say right now, coz' I wrote this on Sunday night. :) Yeah, blogger has a cool new function where I can schedule when I want my entries to be posted. I did that for my last post too... which means I actually wrote FOUR posts on Sunday night. Yeah well, when I'm on a roll, I just can't stop.

Anyway, I'll be there til' Wednesday then going to another plantation in Kempas, Malacca until Friday. I imagine my future self will enjoy romping around the palm oil trees like in the bollywood movies, and getting carried away by mosquitoes. And I'll be putting my new red Ricoh cam to good use. Weee! Someone lower the sugar levels in my coffee...

Standing on the rooftops

2008-05-05T22:00:00.000+10:00

I mentioned this song a few posts ago when I was gushing about Lost Prophets and my fav song from them, 'A Town Called Hypocrisy'. I like 'Rooftops' too, but for quite a different reason. Other than fact that it's one of those songs where I like to hide in my room, crank up the volume and pretend to be a rock star on air guitar, everytime I listen to it, two lines in the song always get me...

"Will we make our mark this time? Will we always say we tried?"

Lost Prophets is not a Christian band. This is not a Christian song. But every time I listen to this song and hear those lyrics, it does make me wonder... am I making a mark to the people around me? Am I always going to say I tried to be better Christian, but couldn't?

As I start a new job and look back on how I was in my old company, I think I didn't make much of a mark at all. I bitched about the annoying colleague like everyone. I didn't make much of an effort to get know the people around me. I went into and left the company as skillfully and silently as a ninja, and was only close to a couple of people, though now that I've left I know I probably won't really keep in touch with them. Yeeargh.

I hope and pray that I don't go ninja in my new company.

Queen of Lame

2008-05-04T22:58:00.003+10:00

We were at lunch after church today and I was sitting with some of my cell group girls when Sel starts lamenting that no one appreciates her lame jokes...

Sel: No one appreciates my lame jokes! I made a lame joke just now and no one laughed...

Me: Oh really? Tell me your lame joke.

Sel: Well, Gavin (her bf) was saying how much he likes sweet things, and so I said "Yes, that's why he likes me!" *grins*

Me: ..... hehe. Heh. *retarded laugh*

Sel: *gives me the look*

Blablabla...we talk a little bit more until Sel notices I'm wearing a pink hoodie that looks rather warm.

Sel: Aren't you hot??

Me: Why yes I am. I'm a hot chick! *grins*

Sel: *gives me the look again*

You have a contender for the Queen of Lame title, Sel. Bwahahaha.

The Amazing Camera Hunt

2008-05-03T03:54:00.008+10:00

My good ol' Canon Powershot A420 camera decided to give out on me a month ago. The CCD blew, and so these nasty white lines would appear on my pictures after I took them (happened during Accenture's Annual Dinner and Dance, so I shall blame it on the funky bright lights they had there...might've overloaded the CCD). When I sent it for repair, it turns out the price to replace the CCD was RM215. So I thought, why spend so much to fix my camera when I can use the money and get a much better one? My A420 was limited in the kind of shots it could take, especially funky close-up shots which I love taking. And so I embarked on a hunt for the perfect camera for yours truly... which is not as easy as it sounds considering there are so many different camera brands and models out there. At least when I was phone hunting, I had already fallen in love at first sight with my Sony Ericsson W660i, and just did some online research to make sure it was a good buy and there was nothing else better (haven't regretted it since!). This time though, I really had no idea what camera to buy, so I had to research from scratch.

At first, I considered buying a DLSR (one of those big@$ cams that professionals use), but quickly decided that's not a good idea since I also want to be able to carry my camera around everywhere, and lugging around one of those buggers is quite a bit of work. And I didn't want to spend more than 1k on a camera, so DLSR's are way out of my budget, especially since I won't be earning anything from my pics (though I think I might try putting my good pics on those photo stocking sites and see if I get any buyers. ^_^). So I figured the best cam for me would be a point and shoot with certain manual functions that I can tinker with.

Thankfully, I had plenty of time during my period of extreme boredom to ask my shutterbug friends for recommendations as well as read up on reviews of certain camera models. I also had a pretty good idea of what criteria I wanted in my camera, which were:

1) It MUST be able to take very good close-up shots.

2) It MUST have image stabilizer, to reduce blurness in pics due to hand shakiness.

3) It MUST NOT be more than 8 megapixels. High resolution pics are nice, but the file size per pic would be a whopper... I don't need all my pics to be over 2 MB in size... my hard drive would fill up way too fast! And I don't want to pay more for a camera with more than 8MP.

4) It would ideally have a high optical zoom, as I like to taking pics of animals too and it would be good to take nice shots from a distance since they usually run off when I get too close.

5) Of course, image quality must be VERY GOOD, if not GREAT.

It would also be nice if the camera was red, but that wasn't really a big deal for me coz' I was more interested in a cam that would fit those criteria and usually the really good cameras don't come in choices of colours other than silver or black. Yes, sad but true fact. *sniff* Some photography freaks like OTHER colours, you know!!

*Ahem* Anyway, I came across a few models that I thought were pretty good and were seriously considering, such as these:

1) Panasonic Lumix Tz5

Lumix is apparently famous for good image stabilizing capabilities, and it has a whopping 10x optical zoom... which is very high for a compact camera. However, it's 9.1 MP (more than what I need), and when I tested it out in the shops, I found it couldn't take good macro shots. Plus, lots of reviews said pictures tended to be noisy. And it costs over 1k. So it was off my list pretty fast, and so were all the other Lumix models due to the noisy pics problem.

2) Canon Powershot A590 IS

This one has 8 MP and quite a few manual functions to play with. But the optical zoom is a rather paltry 4x, and the closest focal range is 5cm... still not enough for me to take really good close up shots. But because it's 'relatively' cheap at RM890, I still considered it.

After shortlisting these two cams after much online researching, once I headed to the stores to try them out, I also asked the store assistants to recommend me a camera that is less than 1k in price and takes very good macro shots. I got some interesting recommendations below.

3) Canon Ixus 80
Ooh, they come in colours! But unfortunately red isn't one of them. Still, I was surprised at the good macro shots I could take when I tested one of these little buggers, which is why I seriously considered it. Plus it's very compact and looks pretty cool. On the downside though, it has few manual functions and an even lower 3x optical zoom compared to the A590. And it's priced at a higher RM999. Still, the good macro shots made the Ixus 80 a reasonable contender...

4) Pentax Optio W30
Yes, I know. Pentax is not a very well-known camera brand, and I didn't think to look at the weird unknown brands until a shop assistant shoved this baby into my hands to test out. And I was VERY surprised that it took excellent macro shots... could focus even up to 1cm! Plus it's a waterproof camera, which was quite tempting considering it would be fun to go snorkelling with it and be able to take underwater pics. However, after checking online reviews, I found that general image quality and flash isn't very good. And after much consideration, I decided that good general image quality is more important than being able to dunk my camera underwater.

At this point, I was getting a bit exasperated as all the cameras I found so far didn't really meet my criteria, and I had already visited 3 camera shops in KLCC, 3 in Pyramid, 2 in Subang Parade and 2 in Summit. All that walking around gets quite tiring! Then I visited Digital Mall in PJ and saw one shop advertising a promotion for a...

5) Ricoh Caplio R6

7.2 megapixels. 7.1x optical zoom. 1cm macro focal range. Has Vibration Correction (which is pretty much the same as Image Stabilization). And priced at only RM799! Looked too good to be true. Even after testing it, I wasn't totally convinced. So once I was home, I got round to reading up reviews on it... all the reviews said it was an excellent camera. One even gave it a rating of 9/10 on several points... better than for any other camera I'd considered so far. And the reason why it's priced so low is coz' it's a old model. It came out in May 2007, and the camera shops are trying to sell off their stock so it's priced pretty cheap. How wonderful! I decided I was going to get it. BUT this is where the female in me kicked in. I also wanted to check out the prices in other shops and look for a better deal than the one in Digital Mall, as they did not include any memory card in their package, and I was hoping to get it with at least 1G memory card for the same price. Yes, we ladies always want to get the best deal for our money. :P

The problem was that most of the shops I went to don't sell Ricoh cameras, since it's not a popular brand. So on my next camera hunting trip to Mid Valley Megamall, I prayed that I would find this camera (I know, it seems to be a silly thing to pray for, but never hurts to try! :P). In the first 3 shops I visited, none sold the camera I wanted. Then I went to Jusco, and lo and behold... I found a stall selling all Ricoh cameras! And the model I wanted was going to for RM800, including a 1G memory card. Yay! Only problem was....

The stall assistant wasn't there!!!!

Apparently he was out for a break or something. I waited for a while, then decided to come back later and went out to scout a bit more. And strolled into yet another camera shop, which... lo and behold... also sold Ricoh cameras. Woo hoo!! And for the same price, they were offering a 2G memory card!! *GAWK* That was it. My hunting was over. I whipped out my wallet and bought a brand new Ricoh Caplio R6 on the spot. Also managed to weasel in a free screen protector for it too. *Grin!* All in all, an excellent buy if I do say so myself.

Oh, OH. And that's not the best part. The camera comes in other colours! And guess what colour I bought mine in? Just take your wildest guess before scrolling down..... :)

If you guessed RED, you are KOREK! Am I really that predictable? ^_^

I really should learn to spend my money on expensive girly things like makeup, branded clothes and facial products instead of gadgets.... but really, I don't see it happening anytime soon.

Slam your face into a book

2008-04-28T01:28:00.003+10:00

An interesting flirt I received from some guy on the Zoosk application on Facebook.

“I may not go down in history, but I'll go down on you...............”

With this I would like to add one more note to my post on how NOT to impress a girl....

Lesson #5: You will NOT impress a girl with lame pickup lines that will only make her snort in amusement

I don't think I need to elaborate much further. And apparently I'm not the only one who thinks Facebook has way too many applications and the gazallion invites I receive each week are a tad bit annoying. Do forgive some of the crude language in the vid though.

My sentiments exactly!