Where the Wind Blows

I am a lucky, lucky girl

2009-08-04T22:27:00.001-07:00

I was lying in bed last night and I realized something, I've never had a bad birthday.

When I was a kid my mum always made a big deal about birthdays. We got parties with games, treasure hunts, and one time I had a costume party where I was Princess Jasmine.

And my last 3 birthdays have been pretty awesome. This year I got to turn 21 in a country I'd never been to before, bungy jumped, and then came home to a party with all my favourite people. I even got to wear a tiara!

Last year I turned 20 in Venice, my second favourite city after London. Possibly the most romantic, amazing, mind blowing city to spend your birthday in.

And the year before I really wasn't feeling my birthday. I woke up feeling bleh, another year feeling like I wasn't completely whole and that my broken heart wasn't completely healed. But then my friends threw me a surprise party that I was actually surprised about.

So 21 years and not a single bad birthday. I hope it stays that way. I love all of you who've made my birthdays special in some way.

I'll have my cake...and it eat it too

2009-07-31T05:40:00.000-07:00

Belated birthday posting! I spent my 21st in Auckland by design. I wanted to avoid a big party at home (though that kinda happened). So I figured a great way to spend my birthday would be with some people I really loved in a place I'd never seen.

Oh and also jumping off the Auckland harbour bridge but that's a story for a different post.

The night before my birthday Marsha and I went to bed and then she got up and said she had to do some work for her mum. I was like huh? So late?? What are you doing. And she was like urgghhh I dunno lah she's gonna piss me off.

Then as I tried to sleep I heard some very strange noises coming from the kitchen. It sounded like she was drilling! I was in half a mind to have a look when it occurred to me she was making my birthday cake. Hehehe. And I knew she's be royally pissed if I did spoil the surprise. So I stayed in bed.

And I was right! She made me a red velvet cake! One of my faves.

The candles kept relighting. I had to blow them out a few times. Inset a dirty joke about my blowing abilities.

I forgot to make a wish until I was cutting. Haha. It was yummy! And I was so touched that Marsha made me a cake. I don't know if I had even mentioned to her before that I liked Red Velvet cake. But it was gorgeous and the nicest thing to have sitting out for me on my birthday.

Thank you Marshy Parshy!

Apologies

2009-07-29T20:47:00.000-07:00

Okay so the ol bloggedy blog blog is a little neglected. I promise I have things to post. I am being thwarted by my camera being on the fritz. So when that's sorted I promise more postings!

This is How Deborah Lives Life

2009-07-10T14:41:00.000-07:00

I think that I've changed a lot. I noticed some of the changes, and others were pointed out to me by people I've recently met.

I'm not as shy as I used to be but I still think of myself as socially awkward.

I'm not as angry and pissed off as I used to be. I've finally realized that hating people and things takes up a lot of energy and that energy is better channeled into something more productive. Yes Rachel, you can say I told you so.

I'm a lot more cautious now.

I used to be really impulsive, and I never saw it as a bad thing. But when I got older I could see how the whole leaping before looking thing can not work out so great. So I've been trying to be a little more careful.

It's great and all not completely falling all over the place and waking up in the morning not going, "Oh shit...did I really do that?"

But it's also kind of boring. And sometimes it's really boring.

In the last few weeks I've discovered that my impulsiveness (spontaneity?) isn't completely dead. And I'm glad.

Winter Holidays

2009-07-08T18:37:00.000-07:00

I've been referring to these last few months as summer. Because at the end of summer I go to school in NY.

But I'm in New Zealand now, and it's winter here. I underestimated the weather. I thought I could handle it no problem. I'm alright though it can get a little cold. I was freezing yesterday even though everyone else seemed fine.

This holiday is everything I expected it to be. A long sleepover...with late nights spent talking, DVD marathons, lots and lots and lots of junk food, and some drinking (if there wasn't any drinking you know it's not me on holiday).

I'm too lazy to blog about anything else. I took pictures the other day though this holiday has been pretty light on the photos. Also we haven't done anything AMAZING. Yet. Watch this space for updates. ;)

2009-06-25T13:33:00.000-07:00

My night started out bleh.

Graduated to ok.

Then went to full out awesome.

How could it not? Any night you find a Russian model grinding on you is ok by me.

Oh yeah.

;)

I'm fehmus behbeh

2009-06-19T10:51:00.000-07:00

So the other day I was hanging out with Sharm at Oldtown Kopitiam because she needed to check some work on her Mac somewhere with wifi.

We were minding our own business when this lady approached us and asked if we would like to participate in a short survey. She said that it would only take a few minutes. The survey was about spelling.

They wanted to test our spelling. I look straight at Sharm and burst out laughing (she is going to kill me for telling you this, but then she doesn't read my blog, and if you are sorry!). Me and Sharm used to take literature tuition together and our teacher was always pointing out her spelling mistakes.

So she told the lady I would do it. She gave me ten words to spell and I did, while I was spelling there was a photographer who was snapping away. It was a little discomfiting having the camera clicking away.

Anyway I got 7 out of 10 words correct. I spelled pronunciation and millenium wrongly, and manoevure too. Though apparently correctly in American English. It came out in the papers. You can read it here.

The picture isn't as bad as I thought it would be. But Miss Tyra would say,

"Girrrrrrl where's your neck at?"

*arches neck arches neck*

Lol.

Hope and a Cosmo

2009-06-15T04:27:00.000-07:00

So I've been babbling a lot about how I'm worried about my US visa and all the blah blah blah that's involved with going away to another country. The last time I applied for an important visa it got declined so I was pretty nervous about this one.

I couldn't imagine anything worse than having my student visa declined. Everyone told me it would be fine but I was still worried. So I decided to power dress. I always do this when I'm nervous. Rely on clothes or some kind of accessory to make me feel better. I have had so many lucky dresses/shoes/bags it's not funny.

I decided I wanted to project Audrey Hepburn. Grown up but still fun. I woke up anxious but hopeful. I even managed to smile!

I have a problem smiling for the camera when told to smile on cue. My visa photo is pretty awful I look PISSED OFF. Lol. This is the closest I can get to friendly and approachable in a posed picture.

I bought this dress specially for the occasion. I figured it was elegant and still comfortable. Also it made me look more grown up. I look about fifteen normally. Recently this aunty asked me if I was in Form 1!!!!

The other kids applying for visas at the American Embassy were a lot more casually dressed. Either in a simple collared shirt and jeans, or a kid version of formal. You know what I mean. Boys who are trying to look more grown up but don't have the formal clothes to pull it off.

A striped dress shirt with a tie, pants that are not slacks. Girls who don't have a nicely cut shirt that looks awkward or an ill fitting skirt.

Anyways it took forever and at one point I wanted to pee soooo badly but I didn't dare go to the bathroom in case they called my number. The interview went pretty well.

Except for the guy implying I've been a slacker for the last 3 years of my life.

Visa dude: So is this a graduate program?
Me: No, it's an undergraduate program.
VD (hahahaha VD): But you're like 21/22. What have you been doing since you left school?
Me: Well I did A levels and then I took a year off.
VD: So you've just been relaxing?

Kurang ajar betul!! Lol. He was kinda friendly though. And when I told him I wanted to be a writer he said he hoped to see my work in ten years. Then he said,

"Congratulations! Your visa has been approved."

He was actually quite cute. Chinese American. Or at least a Chinese guy with a very convincing American accent. But I don't think you can fake that accent.

So it's done!!!!! There's only one way to celebrate a momentous occasion like this. With.....

ALCOHOL! Hehehe. *Hic*

I took my ladylike ass and had me a cocktail and a burger. Mmmmmm.

My mouth is still watering at the thought of that Downtown Tokyo burger. Deep fried softshell crab. Wasabi mayo. Rocket. Heaven. Mmmmmm.

Must I paint you a picture?

2009-06-03T10:04:00.000-07:00

Lately I've really had to plan my life around taking meds and being really careful about what I eat and don't eat. All part of the process of recovering from anemia. It's also a gradual start to rethinking how I live to deal with an underlying condition I've been diagnosed for a while.

It gets depressing as hell sometimes. And I will be very glad if I never have to walk into a hospital/drs office in the next year or so.

I was getting my medical for the states sorted and my mum said she had lost my baby immunization book. So we had no proof of my shots. The doctor said I would have to get quite a few shots again. Including the polio one I think.

Geez man...if I'm 21 and have no signs of developing polio thus far what are the odds right? I was really pissed at my mum...specially since she had my brother's baby book.

Maybe a bit unfair since she probably wasn't expecting that to come in handy 20 years later. But I didn't really want to get anything more jabbed into me.

Things are looking up though! She found the baby book. Due to my guilt tripping about her being a negligent mother who loved my brother more (I know, I'm going to hell) she went through her records a third time.

She finally found it. So I can skip the unnecessary shots. Yay!

So even though it feels like I'm swimming upstream sometimes I have to remember it's not all bad. It could be worse.

And something I didn't know I wanted is just around the corner waiting to make me happy. I just know it.

Now I just have to believe that for a while.

I'm dreaming of a different horizon

2009-05-25T21:48:00.001-07:00

I woke up this morning smiling and so happy. I haven't done that in a long time. Which is a shame...life's too short to be sad all the time. Not that I'm sad all the time. Just bored a lot of the time.

I'd had the most amazing dream. Sam was in it! I was just so happy to be with one of my oldest friends, even if it was just a dream. Sappy huh?

But I really miss all my friends. There's a long list of people who are not here anymore and may never come back to Malaysia.

Sam, Ming, Son, Galvin, Marsha, Marcus.

Not that long. But out of that list I've known some of those people since I was seven...been friends with them since I was nine or ten. And now I only get to see them once a year and who knows what will happen when we all start work in different corners of the world.

I must have been having a major nostalgia trip last night because I started thinking about my trip to Sabah. It was one of the best holidays I've had in a long time. I got to hang out with Son in her hometown and see a part of Malaysia that I've never really seen.

Everyone's moving away and I can't wait to as well.

I'm a little nervous about my visa after my British visa fiasco last year. I hope that all goes well with my US visa. I'm waiting for my I-20 form from Sarah Lawrence and hoping it won't mess up my travel plans to NZ. Sigh...I hate bureaucracy.

There's nothing to do but wait.

Changing Perspective

2009-05-25T04:15:00.001-07:00

Sometimes the things you've always known change. The truth, once immutable, becomes laughably false.

Maybe because you've changed your position. Instead of standing with your nose to the painting you're standing across the room and can see the vulgarity of the whole picture.

Or you have a vital piece of information that makes everything else you've ever known turn hollow and devoid of meaning.

But it's nice to know that some things never change.

Like the fact that my mum's banana pancakes are the best.

:)

Bring Forth the Flux Capacitator!

2009-05-14T01:11:00.000-07:00

Dunno what my title means? Shame on you if you were a kid from the 90's. Now go watch Back to the Future.

I watched all the movies from that franchise endlessly as a kid. But the original is the one that I remember best.

Because I like writing and literature I tend to end up analyzing things too much. When you have spent a lot of time extracting the different connotations of a word used in a sentence or a poem it's probably not too far fetched to say you're like that in real life.

I'm not anal retentive. I swear, though I think that I might have an oral fixation.

This habit gets worse (the analyzing, not putting things in my mouth) when I have too much time on my hands. Lately, whether due to nostalgia or not I'm not sure, I've been reading my old journals.

It's funny to look back at what I was thinking and doing two or three years ago. Some of it is painfully naive and some of it surprisingly informed. Some parts of my journals seem to have this sense of terrible foreshadowing...reading it now it's all filled with dramatic irony. Seeing as how things turned out.

So would I do things differently if I could go back in time? Some things, but not everything. Some things were meant to be and some things were just mistakes.

I used to be obsessed with the idea of erasing some of my memories, courtesy of watching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. But you know what I think now? There's nothing freeing about divorcing yourself from the past.

Your past is there for a reason. You have the choice to learn from it. Without it you could make all the same mistakes again.

So I guess...no regrets.

But I'd still say, "Meet me in Montauk."

2009-05-10T09:13:00.000-07:00

I got my mojo back.

Yessssssss.

XD

Alone Time

2009-05-09T07:36:00.000-07:00

Part of what drives me crazy about being at home all day is not having alone time. Sure I could lock myself in my room...but it's not the same.

So I went out under my father's slightly disapproving eye (omg I feel 16 again!) to go look for second hand books.

I've decided to read all the Jane Austen there is...and actually just catch up on my reading in general. I feel like I've missed out on all the really great classics due to school, general laziness, and other things.

It was so nice to go look at books and wonder at all the potential of a good story in the pages. To thumb through, look at the recommended books, think of what I could read next. I always end up buying books...not always reading them. I have a lot of unread books waiting for me.

Right now I'm reading Pride and Prejudice (Marsha said we can't be friends unless I read this...and I see why). Still labouring through the last 100 or so pages of The Golden Notebook...and itching to read something new already.

It's kind of the middle of the year but I feel like making some resolutions:

Read more
Get into a writing schedule
Tidy my room (this btw has been on my to do list forever and will always be something I need to do...sigh)

I'm looking at least another month of enforced rest to recover. Grr.

Welcome To A Mad Tea Party

2009-05-04T22:49:00.000-07:00

Okay so I'm really bored. I can't leave the house much. I went out to dinner with the stepbrother last night and we were only out for a couple of hours and I was pretty tired after that.

And I'm sick of talking about how I'm a pathetic Victorian maiden stuck wasting away at home (so maybe reading Pride and Prejudice is not helping). So I thought I'd blog about something more pleasant.

Before all the drama that anemia has brought to my life (who would've thought I'd write a sentence like that ;D ), I went to a very special birthday party.

Becky Harding invited me to her birthday...with strict instructions to wear a hat. The theme was a Mad Hatter's Tea Party. You know that great scene in Alice in Wonderland where she's at the tea party? It's probably one of the most iconic parts of the book.

Some of us took the mad hat theme more seriously than others. Here I am with the youngest Harding and his very dashing lampshade hat.

This is a bad picture. Hmmm....but I am really lazy to take it down and put a better one up. There were lots of cupcakes there. Becky's mum made some really gorgeous chocolate ones. These beauties were from Wondermilk.

Here I am with Val and the birthday girl who was the Mad Hatter. Fitting. As you can see Val went all out with her hat too.

And the piece de resistance...the hat shaped cake. Three layers of moist butter cake with the best buttercream icing piped onto it.

It was a great party and everyone was very sporting and came with a hat. Though some people abandoned their headgear at some point. Can you tell I was a sexy cop?

How was your Monday?

2009-04-28T21:34:00.000-07:00

So...you know that whole anemia thing? It went from bad to worse. I ended up in the hospital.

I wasn't feeling very good on Monday and went in to get a blood test to see what my hemoglobin levels were. The lab called my doctor urgently at 4 to tell her they were at dangerously low levels. So she called the house to say I needed to get to the hospital asap.

It was very dramatic. My mother drove me into the emergency section of Assunta and they wheeled me into the ICU in a wheelchair. I would've laughed but I didn't have the energy, which made me realize for the first time that this was probably serious.

They had to take another blood sample. I was dreading this bit because no one can find my veins properly. So the nurse was prodding about before she called another nurse to come play stick the needle in something that is not a vein with me.

Everyone agreed that I needed a blood transfusion at about 4 in the evening. So when did I get the blood transfusion? 5 hours later. Brilliant.

My poor mummy I think she was really freaked out. I don't think you ever want your kids to be in pain or have a hospital stay. I told her I'd be ok for her to go home and I could handle staying in the hospital on my own.

She said no and I'm glad she stayed. It would have been one long night without her. It could've been a sleepover, we talked a lot during the night since I couldn't really sleep during the transfusion. I couldn't sleep because the nurses kept coming in every hour to check my temperature and blood pressure.

I had two units of B+ plugged into me. Despite the initial difficulty of getting the needle into my hand it went pretty quickly. I was so glad to get that needle out of my hand man. You have no idea.

I got out of the hospital the next day with strict orders not to overexert myself. Eat lots of food with iron and rest. I hate this. I hardly ever get sick so it sucks to feel not 100% myself.

Sigh...

Just when I got my car back. I have to sit at home and rest. FTW.

Oh...and I'm sure that y'all are gonna wanna know how I lost all that blood. My dad told John Joseph who came to visit me that I got knocked down by a car. Poor dude. I had to tell him the truth, him and practically all my guy friends the truth.

Which is that I had a heavy period. That is how I lost more than half the blood that's supposed to be in my body. For serious. I'm embarrassed too. Further proof, in my opinion, that God is not a woman.

But I'm ok now. Though I wish some of you could've come with Rachel to visit me and keep me company while I waited for the blood to come. Or brought me a DVD player...the TV in the hospital is just awful I tell you. Like 4 Chinese channels, one Indian channel, 8tv, some Malay channels (including some super melodramatic Indonesian shows), and one channel that played really, really bad English movies.

The food wasn't too bad though. I'm all about the silver linings.

I'm Anemic Royalty

2009-04-26T22:18:00.000-07:00

So apparently I am anemic right now...due to blood loss. No I didn't try to slit my wrists over the weekend. Have not been involved in a car accident. Do not have a vampire boyfriend...though if True Blood is anything to go by that would be awesome.

I'm feeling very sorry for myself. As someone who does not get sick very often it sucks ass to feel weak and headachey. I get winded walking fast...not cool at all.

Here are the Pros and Cons of Anemia According to Me

Pros

I finally get to live out my Victorian fantasy of wasting away and looking pale

I'm pale...apparently this is mistaken for fair in Asia. Fair=Pretty. Yay.

Cons

No energy to do anything but lie in bed.

I'm so pale that my lips are white.

Headaches.

Conclusion? Anemia=bad. The Victorian fantasy is only worth living out if there is a concerned young gentleman who comes to call on you in hopes his very presence will spur you into recovering so that you might consummate your passionate but chaste love affair.

I have no gentleman on hand. Victorian or otherwise. Feel free to feel sorry for me.

Love you all.

Gnocci in the Afternoon

2009-04-20T08:07:00.000-07:00

The problem with bumming for a long period of time is that you run out of people to bum with. Sunday nights are particularly bad...cos everyone is going to bed early or at least staying in getting ready for work and school on Monday.

Which means that Mondays I usually have nothing to do. Guitar (which I will blog about soon) at 3 and then Jazzercise at 6. I live the life of a tai tai, minus the income and the husband. :D

My afternoons are pretty empty usually...so when anyone is up for something unusual in the afternoon I'm all for it. My friend Shu Ruei asked me randomly if I could come over and help her finish all the tomatoes in her house...how many of you get texts like that? This is why my friends are awesome.

She warned me that she was going to attempt making gnocci (dumpling in case your Italian is a little shaky). We were making potato gnocci.

It's a pretty involved process. I came over at 12.30 and there was a lot of work to do. Boiling and mashing the potatoes. Adding flour to the mash to make a dough. Shaping the dough. It's probably not the best meal to make when you're stressed. But neither me or Ruei have much to stress us out in our lives I think.

Having taken a pottery class Shu Ruei is better than I am at shaping gnocci. Hers came out all neat and purty.

She beats the stereotype of the messy artist. Look at her gnocci all lined up to be boiled in the pot.

We were famished when we sat down to eat. So it tasted pretty good. It helped I suppose that the tomato and pork sauce she made was fab. Mmmm...my mouth waters thinking about the smoky taste of bacon that lingered just beneath the rich tomato sauce.

I also made a Greek salad. Look at all the colours! I forgot to ask Ruei if she was lactose intolerant...and she is. Luckily though the feta I brought was goat's cheese and that's okay for her to eat. But still she doesn't like to eat too much cheese just in case.

It was a great lunch and she even played guitar and sang for me. I actually jumped a little in my chair when she started singing. I never expected her to sound like that...as one of her friends so aptly put it, "You speak like a girl, but you sing like a woman."

I need to practise guitar a lot more to come even close to how good she is.

Since I got back I've been hanging out with one of my older friends a lot. And he lives pretty unconventionally for someone in his 30's...I once told him he was a man living like a teenager. But all props to him.

I dun wanna be a grown up...it's overrated. He said he can't date someone with a normal job cos she'd be too tired to hang out late at night and she's only free on the wekeends when he's working.

I'm not sure what my work schedule will be like in the future but if it all goes to plan I won't need to wake up to beat rush hour traffic or wear a business suit. I actually don't mind the business suit part too much. Have you watched Samantha Who? I like all her work clothes. But a 9-5 job? Jhgdfigofsfadern. Translation, kill me please.

I want a man who's up for a trip in the middle of the week. Who can stay up all night talking with me and then have pancakes and spend the day in bed.

Fragmented

2009-04-19T07:46:00.000-07:00

I just the typed Gragmented twice instead of Fragmented in the title section. Ish.

I don't feel like I'm fully in the present right now.

A part of me is in London. A part of me is still sixteen. A part of me is in New York already. And a dozen other pieces of me are scattered around in random parts of my memory.

I don't want to be where I am anymore. This part of my life is over already. But I'm still stuck in it.

All around me everyone is heart broken.

It's been a while since I felt like my heart was broken. My god am I glad that that's behind me.

But now I don't know if I'll ever feel like I did when I was 18 and falling in love.

Why so emo?

Loooookeee Here!

2009-04-07T06:39:00.000-07:00

I don't always check my blog email as regularly as my work email. I check my work email almost five times a day. I keep forgetting about this blog email. Hehehe.

A couple of days ago I got an email asking me for an interview. It's for a website that gathers interviews by authors and experts on lots of different things. So syok sendiri.

You can read my interview here.

2009-04-04T02:20:00.000-07:00

I'm bored. And that's never good. I've done the world' stupidest things when I was bored.

Birds of a Feather...

2009-03-28T22:40:00.000-07:00

So lately I've developed a bit of anti zoo sentiment. I love animals and wanted to be a zoologist at one point. And a vet too. Unfortunately my sciences have never been very strong. So I think I'll have to say goodbye to my dreams of donning khaki and studying animals in the bush. :)

I've been to the Singapore Zoo before. It's actually one of the best zoos in the world I've been to. I've been to the Melbourne one and honestly it isn't as nice as the S'pore one. And it's really not very hard to beat the Msian zoo in terms of better landscaping and nice enclosures for the animals.

I've kind of decided though that I don't want to go to zoos anymore. Or take my kids to zoos. Breeding animals in captivity to live behind bars outside of their natural environments just seems sad. But I did go to the Jurong Bird Park in S'pore.

The first bird I encountered.

It's actually quite beautifully landscaped. And I think they've made an effort to recreate as much as possible the natural environment of the birds.

And the birds were very beautiful.

Besides all the bird watching we went to see a Birds of Prey show. It was actually pretty cool. The birds flew over the audience and caught piece of meat thrown into the air. They had vultures, American eagles, kites, and a bunch of other birds of prey.

Some of the birds flew so close over our heads we had to duck. It was a bit scary and I can imagine some small kids being afraid.

So would I go back. I don't know. I feel like some of the enclosures were definitely too small. Like the nocturnal birds section. There were some enclosures that had 3 or 4 birds in pretty small enclosures. And the poor birds didn't have much place to fly to. And then all the stupid humans pressing on the glass trying to make them do something.

And the penguins seemed too crowded together. Though at least they had water to swim in and it was a much better enclosure than one I saw at a country club in Rawang where one lone penguin looking miserable and bedraggled in a poorly air conditioned enclosure. Swimming all by its lonesome. I could have killed the stupid kids banging on the glass though.

My kids are gonna be deprived of all the regular kiddy childhood experiences. No zoos. No McDonalds. I'll let their grandparents do that stuff with them. Hahaha.

Interspersing Limbo with Moments of Lightness

2009-03-23T20:54:00.000-07:00

I float around in a state of limbo these days. It fluctuates between pleasant and intolerable. I have the deja vu feeling of being stuck in the past when I'm dying to be in the future.

My feet are mired in the past but my head is already months ahead.

Whenever I feel like this I feel the need to go away. So I hopped on a train to Singapore with Val.

Val's an expert at going to Singapore. She knows what's the best coach to take on the overnight train. Where it stops longest. What people do in the buffet car. Which line to pick at immigration. So I was in good hands.

We went to the PS Cafe in Dempsey Road. And shared orange cake.

Traveling agrees with me. Look at how happy and relaxed I am. Hahaha. Don't tell my mother. She's gives me a lot of grief about the fact that I never look happy at home.

Singapore is not how I remember it. I was expecting concrete and bustle. People pushing and buildings mushrooming everywhere. While the city center is very developed...it's not as concrete as I expected it to be.

Around Dempsey Road there were wide pavements, trees that were old, not piddling little things supported by iron stakes. The cafe had a terrace that looked out onto trees and greenery.

And it all made me miss London. The fact that you could take the bus and count on it to show up within the next 3/5 minutes. The MRT goes everywhere. And you can walk around without fear of your handbag being snatched.

I miss being able to get around without a car. I miss having a nice local cafe you can sit in and have a cuppa and cake.

It was a good trip, mostly because Val and Francis were great and showed me a good time.

Free Women

2009-03-13T03:48:00.000-07:00

Do you think the books we read choose us?

Sometimes I feel like that. It's happened a couple of times to me. Where I've read something that resonated with me so much that it seemed like fate that I picked up the book at all.

I'm reading the Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing right now. My cousin gave it to me as a present last year before I left England. I'm about halfway through right now. It's a very feminist book, it was written before the feminist movement in the 7o's but it's about all the things women from the 70's were fighting for.

The right to choose to be married or single. The right to choose whatever work they wanted. To raise children on their own. To use birth control.

But mostly it's about learning to be alone. Which is something I think I've only recently learned to do after the nuclear fallout of my first great love and heartbreak. It wasn't 'clicking' when I first read it...partly because of the structure.

But now I get it. And it feels nice to read something that mirrors how I feel.

There are a couple other books that I read that felt like they chose me, instead of the other way around.

When I was 17 I read Echo by Francesca Lia Block. It's a book that changed my life. I read it towards the end of school when everything was confusing and I was falling in love for the first time and it was all new and frightening.

Everything Echo felt and did I could identify with. More than anything reading it crystallized the vague idea I had of how I wanted to write. I don't write anything close to the type of liquid poetry FLB uses in her books, but it taught me a little more about my own style and how to write.

The only other book that's given me a light bulb moment was Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. I've known the whole story for a long time. I read the abridged version when I was little, I watched movie versions, and I watched a play.

But I hadn't gotten round to actually reading the whole book, until last year. I read it during my lunch breaks at TopShop. I read it on the way back from the British Embassy when I was crying in the back of a taxi because my working holiday visa was rejected.

Most of all I read it when my life felt like it had no purpose. When I was headed in a direction that wasn't my choice. I felt trapped and stifled. I felt like Jane. I felt just like this Victorian girl who wanted to be in charge of her own destiny. Who wouldn't settle for anything less than what she wanted. Who always knew what she wanted.

I wanted to be that strong.

I don't quite have Jane's strength. But I'm getting there. =)

What books changed your life?

Sometimes I'm a Lone Wolf

2009-03-11T23:35:00.000-07:00

I've floated the idea sometimes that I grew up like an only child. The age difference between me and David is an awkward one. Two years. So we're not very close and he grew up with Steven as his partner in crime.

I grew up with imaginary friends. But don't feel sad for me. They were awesome. No, I'm not crazy.

Sometimes I feel the need to be alone. I've started taking personal days. Not that I need to take personal days. I don't have a stressful job. Or homework. Or personal problems that are difficult to deal with.

So I dressed up and headed for Bangsar. Possibly my favourite part of KL.

I'm not the kind of girl who indulges in manicures. Not because I wouldn't like to. Most of the time I can't afford a manicure. And even when I can it's mostly a waste of money on me. I chip my manicures pretty quickly.

So my nails are usually messed up like in the above picture. But I felt like being girly so I splurged. And got the best hand/arm massage.

It's nice to have nice shiny nails. I like the colour, deep almost black red.

I was craving red velvet cake so i went to The Daily Grind for some. I had just had burgers (which were mucho excellente) the other day there.

I was expecting tender chocolatey cake crumb with pillowy cream cheese frosting. It looked like the kind of retro birthday cake that a mum might make in the 50's for her little ones.

Unfortunately it didn't come close. The cake was far from tender. And the frosting barely tasted of cream cheese. It tasted kind of greasy actually. Ick. But the apple and mint ice tea was nice. And I was having a good time writing in my journal.

Until this stupid tai tai wannabe came in and was loud and obnoxious. I wanted to throw the remains of my cake at her. People like that need to read Better than Beauty a Guide to Charm. My fave etiquette and how to be stylish book. Charm never goes out of style.

Do you like my dress?

Hittin it up thug style...

2009-03-11T07:17:00.000-07:00

I've been meaning to learn how to play guitar for some time now. And the urge has been getting stronger...the only problem? No guitar.

Not one that works properly anyway. I had a beautiful acoustic guitar that Steven borrowed one day and it came back thrashed. It looked like he had played rock star with it and ended the game by smashing my guitar on stage. No joke.

It was a present from my dad. It got patched up but it wasn't the same and then Steven le idiot gave it away to one of his friends.

I asked him back for it. He assured me he would get it back. But being nice doesn't seem to pay with these guys.

So I had to start playing dirty. I've had to resort to threatening and all kinds of other primary school bullshit. In the end my dad had a word with his dad. I dunno if even that is going to work.

Sigh....

Val has a guitar lying around in her apartment in Singapore that she said I could use. So either her boyfriend will bring it for me this weekend or I'll get it when I go down South next week.

I'm still deciding if I should learn on my own or take lessons. I had lessons for a while but I didn't progress much. The teacher didn't teach me songs I liked. He was more of a classical guitarist. And also I have the huge mental block that I'm not musical...I don't know if I should invest in lessons.

We'll see.

Girly Night In

2009-03-04T20:42:00.000-08:00

I'm not entirely sure how it happened but I've somehow started to hate clubbing...I was telling Val last night that I hardly go anymore. And I had to think very hard about the last time I went out...I only remembered today that the last time I went clubbing was in Sabah with Son.

And that was probably the first time in a while that I had fun while I was out...clubbing in Sabah is a lot less pretentious than it is in KL. People are genuinely out to have a good time. Unlike here where I sort of feel a lot of people are just there to show off, which I hate. Blame it on reading Catcher in the Rye at a young age.

So with my clubbing enjoyment age prematurely at an end what do I do instead? Throw dinner parties! I found out that I love entertaining. I haven't thrown a dinner party since the last time I cooked a five course meal in London.

And I've been itching to do it. I would have done it earlier except that my parents took a little break from their Wednesday night date night for a few weeks, meaning I didn't have the house free. But last night they went out and the house was mine. Mwahahaha.

Ok so I didn't do anything wild lah...unless pecan pie is just something outrageous to be cooking up then yes I went full out last night (my god I'm becoming old before I'm even 21).

Val came over to cook with me since she hates cooking in her own kitchen. And we whipped up dinner pretty quickly. Astrid came halfway through our dinner prep and stood around asking us if we were sure the food was edible and if she would be poisoned.

Her comments were not appreciated.

Doesn't this look yummy? Val cooked the main.

For someone who complained a lot Astrid didn't mind digging in. So it wasn't poisonous huh?
Astrid?

I made pecan pie for dessert. It was really easy to whip up since I didn't bother with making my own pie crust (and still I couldn't be arsed to arrange my pie crust properly). It baked up while we had dinner outside.

Becky came over after futsal and this is her mid chew. I probably shouldn't let Glenn and Ben know I cooked for their sister. I anticipate at least one comment from Glenn about how I've forgotten them now David is gone.

It was fun and we decided already that were doing it again next week. This week's theme was supposed to be Southern hence pecan pie and I also made cornbread which you can see behind Astrid's hand in one of the earlier pictures. Unfortunately our main was not Southern cos I needed the oven too much so Val couldn't make her baked Southern chicken. The main was more Italian.

Next week is Mexican. With Mexican martinis! Hehehe. I don't know what a Mexican martini is but I'll report back.

;)

2009-02-26T09:52:00.001-08:00

Has your dating life ever been thwarted by the rosary?
Mine just did.

-_-

Dedicated Fashion Victim

2009-02-26T02:51:00.000-08:00

I used to work in Topshop and it made me not want to buy Topshop clothes for a loooong time. And I was living in Camden last year where everyone dresses punk rock or goth. Or very retro old time siren.

I've outgrown my punk rock look a little. I wish I'd never thought red fishnet arm stockings were cool. But I still like rocking a mohawk now and then. My style is more retro old Hollywod glamour when I can find the right clothes.

I'm trying to revamp my wardrobe cos I hate most of everything in it and I need to dig through everything to find anything I want to wear. And after seeing how neat Cassandra has made her room I know that my room is long overdue for a cleanup.

If you've been in my room you know what I mean. So I've been postponing shopping until I tidy up and get rid of all the clothes that I don't wear anymore.

But I gave in yesterday. I went to visit my Topshop colleagues and they told me it was the member's sale today. It's a sale open only to members and you get an additional 10% off anything on discount.

Being an ex-employee there has a lot of perks. I got along very well with almost everyone so they were very happy to show me the stuff on sale (they hadn't put up the signs announcing the discounts) and I found my size in the stuff I wanted and put it on reserve.

I woke up super early to beat the crazy fashionistas to collect my stuff. I spent a lot. Hehehe. I am justifying the expenditure with the fact that I hardly go shopping like this. I haven't been in ages actually. So yeah...I'm very happy with everything I bought.

Including this retro looking dress. It's Kate Moss for Topshop. Last piece. Tip NEVER buy Kate Moss full price. It always gets marked down pretty heavily during sales cos no one ever wants to fork out RM300+ for a summer dress.

I'm looking forward to wearing this dress. And the other one I bought. Stay tuned for more camwhoring!

Of Pictures I Didn't Take

2009-02-23T05:28:00.000-08:00

I kind of made a vague promise to myself that I would do more artsy cultured things this year. Like learning to take better photographs. Reading more (I have a long, long list of books to read that keeps growing). Learning to play guitar again (just got a guitar yesterday).

Mostly I've been lazing around the house. Not doing anything remotely arty except writing a bit more often.

I also always mean to go see art exhibitions here. They are unfortunately as widely advertised or publicized in the local media, so I usually miss them. Which is a shame because the local art scene is alive and kicking. As I witnessed last Thursday at the Central Market Annexe, which is a lovely gallery space and a nice place to spend an afternoon.

The exhibition was titled 'Dari Mata Turun ke Hati' with various Central Market artists contributing to the exhibition. There were a lot of impressive pieces there. And I found myself being quite awe struck.

We also managed to see an exhibition by uni students who entered a competition showcasing art as society's cosnciense. Most of the pieces were pretty bad. Hehehe. But there were two pieces there that were good, one which was I think phenomenal.

It was a mixed media piece using metal, wood, fabric, and chinese chess pieces about materialism and greed. It was like a giant collage and the artist made it the whole piece one giant board game. Not only did it look amazing but I think for a university student it was a very mature and creative way of interpreting the theme.

A lot of the other pieces looked like the type of posters that they made you draw in primary school for anti smoking, anti dadah, buy malaysian kempens. Sorry. I speaketh the truth.

Since I had extra time me and my fellow appreciator of the arts, Shu Ruei headed to Galeri Petronas to see more stuff. And there was a cool modern exhibition there too.

And I just realized why the crime rate in Malaysia is so high lately. When you are getting robbed, raped, murdered, all that the police are guarding the art in Galeri Petronas. Omg it made me soooo mad to see it.

I've been to art galleries in London and Europe that housed paintings by great masters like Picasso, Monet, Van Gogh and there were never police around. Just volunteers. Cos let's face it, it's pretty hard to steal a painting in broad daylight.

And you can't really call what the cops in GP were doing 'guarding'. More like sitting in the air cond place looking bored and playing with their handphones. Or flirting with girls who came to the gallery. AAArrgghhhh. It makes me so annoyed when I see how our police resources are wasted like this.

How NOT to Make Your THS

2009-02-20T04:02:00.000-08:00

Because I'm incapable of every finishing my work at a reasonable hour I usually end up staying up till some ridiculous hour at night working on my keyword articles.

Which leads me to watch weird TV when I can't stand to write about acai berries, horse riding equipment or all the other crap I write about. It's stuff I normally wouldn't watch if I was just channel surfing unless I was really, really, really bored.

I don't think they even show some of this crap when normal people watch TV.

This is how I ended up watching bits and pieces of THS: Paula Abdul. True Hollywood Stories are a guilty pleasures...and if you have Astro you've watched at least fifteen minutes of one at some point because there is never anything to watch on Astro.

If it's a big name celeb like Halle Berry, Nicole Kidman, any other A lister they don't usually get involved. Any interviews they give are ancient ones that have been spliced into the show. It's the B, C and D list celebs who give the best THSs. Cos you know they're all desperate for a little more of the limelight and will actively participate in their True Hollywood Story.

Paula Abdul is I would say a B list celebrity tetering on C list teritory (the fact that I am even analyzing this tells you how much time I have on my hands =), we can't all be trying to win the Nobel Peace Prize).

So of course she was present to give commentary on the events in her life they were talking about.

Which is fine, if you're someone charming and charismatic like Heidi Klum who can laugh at herself then you can pull it off.

Poor Paula. She is neither self aware nor very charming. It probably doesn't help that she was on drugs or something when she was giving parts of the interviews.

There were 2 seperate occassions where she was giving interviews. And in one she's totally sober and coherent. And in the other she's slurring and looks like she's about to fall off her chair. It was mesmerizing...I guess I would load up on perscription pills too if I was going to discuss my divorces and body issues on TV.

As you can see I clearly need some kind of job that involves leaving the house. I just wrote a whole post about Paula Abdul's THS. Hehehe

Fat Envelopes and Notes

2009-02-16T22:38:00.000-08:00

Whenever anyone asks these days what I'm up to I usually say nothing. Which is true...sort of. I do stuff but just not the socially acceptable stuff like working or studying. The things that people (read grown ups) think people my age should be doing.

I have been staying out late....driving to KL to hang around the Tugu Negara. Getting ripped off at Gengas. Driving to Rachel's and staying till 7 in the morning.

The other thing that I usually say is that I'm waiting for offer letters. Which was true. I was really waiting for one offer letter. The one from Sarah Lawrence. I already got accepted into Lewis & Clark, my third choice college, but I just wanted to know what the decision from SLC would be.

I spent the whole of Sunday checking my email. Just over and over logging in to see if they had said anything. And then on Monday running out to see if anything had come in the mail. So when the FedEx man called and said he was outside my heart skipped a few beats. I knew it could only be one thing...

The whole time I kept praying as I walked into the house with the package, please please please be a fat envelope. please God, St Jude, Mary, gaaaahhh

And it was a...

Hahahaha. I screamed like a maniac. I ran into the living room and jumped up and down. I kept screaming the whole way.

There's no way to be excited about this but the drama queen way. Trust me, it's more fun than smiling quietly and giving yourself a pat on the back. I love that they tell you it's a fat envelope up front.

This is the only college I've wanted to go to since I decided I wanted to go to uni.

And I got in. Life is good.

Speaking of college, a couple of months ago I stumbled across an old notebook that Sonya and I passed notes to each other with. We used to do this all the time in class. Even though we sat right next to each other. We're just dorks that way.

Also we sat right in front of class so we couldn't openly talk. We sometimes wrote on the tables to pass messages. This particular notebook (which I tried to write homework in but I never got round to doing said homework and abandoned writing assignments in it after like 2 pages) has a whole conversation in it. This is part of it:

Lol. It cracked me up to read about Son getting busted for going out and drinking. The conversation goes on for another page. I remember this exactly. Hehehe. And then I found another note inside that had me going huh???????

I recognised Son's writing right away. And I vaguely knew what we were talking about. I had lent Son my Coraline book and so that's what the button eyes thing is about. But the PURE EVIL thing had me stumped. I know the 'yes' is written by me...

Son reckons we were talking about my Socio teacher. Mwahahaha. I think she's right. Cos I loathed her. And Son disliked her too...probably not as passioantely as I did. She was responsible for our whole class getting 2 grades lower than our forecasts thanks to her very, very, very lenient marking that had us all thinking we were socio geniuses.

I got a 'D' for my AS, which to the uninformed was 50% of my final grade. Everyone else in class did pretty bad too. I led a mini coup in class and confronted her about her marking. She started crying in class...and I don't feel bad about it at all. Cos she admitted to marking us leniently...to apparently give us confidence?

I don't know the woman was weird. Is still weird I'm pretty sure. She started using Oprah shows and E! Entertainment segments as sociological examples in class. Yeah...well I resat the paper and got a 'B' in the end. Though it still makes me sakit hati to see that 'D' on my AS cert...especially when I had to apply to uni with it.

Anyways I can't wait to see Coraline! I've heard nothing but positive reviews about it from friends and critics. I wanna see it in 3D. Someone take me?

And Happy Capitalist Cash Cow Day to You Too

2009-02-14T07:49:00.000-08:00

So it's Valentine's. I'll preface this by saying that I've never had a really nice Valentine's ever since I was sixteen and me and my date were trapped in different parts of KL due to bad traffic and both our lack of driving skills. I think it's jinxed me ever since (thanks Oli! I kid. You know I love you). Actually this year's Valentine's is probably the closest one to something decent.

Days before the actual date I got a card in the mail from Sam and it was a very sweet card. And this year she's my Valentine! It made my day.

And then last night I went out with Val and Becky and they made me drink. Hahaha. We all wished each other Happy V Day at midnight. Spending the eve of Annoying Show Of Affection day with girlfriends getting tipsy is not a bad way to start I say.

And so today I decided that I would make a pie. Because pies are awesome. And if there's a better way to beat the blues then a no bake peanut butter pie I would like to know of it.

You start out with Tiger biscuits. That have to be crushed up.

Then you mix the crumbs up with butter and a lil sugar. Press it into a pie pan and bake it for 10 minutes in the oven at 180C.

Mix in a bowl 8 oz of cream cheese, a cup of peanut butter, 5/8 of a cup icing sugar, 12 oz Cool Whip and add to the crust. You can add some flying kisses (I did).

Chill for 3 hours. And don't forget the m&m decoration! Hehehe. My 'm' in SAM was a bit cacat. I should have put the 's' further up on the pie. But it tasted good.

I only wish Sam could have had some. I miss her so so much sometimes that it hurts. I have no one to eat brunch with anymore. :( That depresses me to a degree most people won't understand. Because brunch is a special time of the day when you can eat breakfast foods even though it's edging into the afternoon. Oh and it's perfectly acceptable to drink at brunch. Really.

Some of you might have noticed that the blog layout has changed (and also that I'm blogging again hehehe). This is thanks to one Sonya Ong. Who hand drew my banner. You rock Son! I lub you! It would probably be the same old yuck blogspot layout if it weren't her. So hopefully I keep blogging regularly now. Since I really don't have anything else to do. =)

Happy Capitalist Cash Cow Day to all of you!

The Food of the Gods

2008-08-20T06:22:00.000-07:00

I love Mediterranean food. Love it. So the prospect of Greek food was exciting. Being on a backpacker budget though you can't always splurge on restaurants or expensive food. Luckily though Greek food is pretty cheap and you can eat very good food for very little money.

While wandering through the markets in Monistiraki we came across a couple of giros shops. Giros are cheap, usually not more than 2 euros and a quick way to eat while on the go. We accidentally came across what may have been a row of the best giros shops in Athens.

They were literally holes in the wall. And the first one we tried had sold out so we headed for the next one. I had giros a few more times in Greece but this one was the best beyond a doubt. It wasn't greasy and the meat was succulent and the filling delicious. It's basically Greek kebab but so much better!

The same night we went out to a restaurant near Plaka. We wanted to see the ruins lit up at night after dinner. The great thing about hostels is you make friends quickly. So we went to dinner with some people from our hostel and had some Greek starters to share.

We had the typical Greek salad of tomatoes, cucumbers and feta. As well as dolmades, stuffed vine leaves, and various dips. All really good. Dolmades are my new favourite Mediterranean food.

For mains we all had moussaka. The waiters were very amused at this. They came out saying,

'Moussaka, moussaka, moussaka.'

Moussaka is like lasagne except imagine eggplant, or brinjal, instead of pasta. Yummy. Oh and a potatoe topping.

And we had ouzo. It hits you hard and has everything looking topsy turvy after just a few sips. It tastes like liqourice and it's palate cleansing.

These are most of the people we had dinner with. From left me, Ashley, Izan, Jess, Ryan/Bryan and Cate who took the picture.

We shared our room with Ashley and Jess and they bumped into Cate and Ryan/Bryan at reception and that's how we all ended up going out to dinner. We were crossing a road when the green man turned red and left Ashley on one side of the road. She decided she didn't want to wait for it to turn green again and ran across when it was clear.

We all screamed, 'Go, go, go, go!'

Did I mention ouzo is strong? Hehehe.

And that's the Parthenon by night. No better pics cos well I'm not tall and couldn't be bothered to climb too much to get a nicer shot.

You'll just have to go yourself to see how amazing it is. =)

A Day with the Ancients

2008-08-20T05:33:00.001-07:00

Ah Plaka an oasis in the middle of the hot dusty bustling streets of Athens. Plaka is sometimes called Old Athens and is the site of Athens' most important ancient ruins. This is exactly how I pictured Greece to be. Wide cobbled streets, bright flowers blooming in the sun.

Unlike the dodgy, run down, third world place that our hostel was in. I swear that when I got out of the Metro it felt like I had taken a trip back to two decades ago. It looked a bit the way the old Soviet Union might look like. Old crummy apartments that were trying to look modern and everything needing a coat of paint, or two.

Anyway Plaka was a lovely way to spend the morning and afternoon. You should try and do this early in the morning as a) it gets HOT pretty quickly in Greece during the summer. And I'm talking about 40 degrees everyday kind of hot. b) everyone wants to see the Acropolis during the summer months and so there are hordes of tourists.

This was our first glimpse of the Acropolis. Ignore the crane.

Before you reach the Parthenon at the top you see other ruins. Like this ancient stadium. Can you see the black chairs at the bottom? This stadium is still used for live performances, they had an opera here a few days after we visited.

This is one of the views that you get once you start climbing up to the top. Isn't it amazing? In the background you can see a hill with a little temple on it. We decided to climb up there after our visit to the Parthenon and Acropolis to get a view of the Parthenon from above.

When I was doing my A levels I studied Keats who wrote a sonnet titled On Seeing the Elgin Marbles

It's a poem inspired by his first glimpse of the Elgin Marbles. Or as the Greeks like to say the Parthenon Marbles. You see there's bit of controversy about the Elgin Marbles. They were taken from the Parthenon by Lord Elgin to England and they are still in the British Museum today.

The Greeks believe the marbles should be returned to Greek soil and they even have a museum built in hope of getting the marbles back. Being poor backpackers me and Izan listened in on other people's tours while pretending to stare in wonder at the ruins.

Every tour guide mentions the Elgin controversy and they all sound very indignant that the Marbles are still in England. Also the marbles have been damaged due to bad cleaning procedures in the past, further riling up the Greeks.

So above is part of the whole frieze that the marbles were stolen/taken from.

Remember the hill in the background I mentioned? Well this is me on that hill with the Parthenon in the background. While the Parthenon and Acropolis are crowded this hill, which is a minor arcaheological site, is practically deserted.

I think me and Izan took the hardest trail ever to get to the top. We got to the top and saw these people who were climbing (and not sweating) up a paved trail. We had to go up a dirt sort of path and really climb in some places. Well it was worth it because the view was beautiful and we had it more or less to ourselves.

Next we went to see the Temple of Zeus (above). The Temples of Zeus is a bit of a walk away from the Acropolis but it's worth seeing. It's HUGE. It was started by one emperor (can't remembe, sorry) and finished by the Emperor Hadrian who added a gate (I think).

What amazes me is how advanced the Greeks were when it came to architecture and engineering. The Parthenon was built in such a way that all the columns look the same size and like they are in a row when in fact there are some smaller ones and they are not placed exactly in a row. It's only when you come close that you see this.

Even more amazing is the fact that these structures are still standing. Buying a ticket to the Acropolis also gets you tickets into the surrounding sites and so we did all the sites in one day even though the tickets are valid for three days.

So in theory you could decide to break it up and do a bit here and there. Some of the smaller sites are not much to look at and we decided not to go in.

Deciding to do it all in one day meant we kind of did everything there is to do in Athens in one day. And we got major tans. With our tank tops nicely outlines.

And yes I know this post was long overdue but what can I say, I got lazy. And when I get lazy I get really lazy. Why do things by halves?

I'm BACK!

2008-08-08T07:46:00.000-07:00

Hey people! I'm back. This blog has been crying out for posts and a few people have mentioned it to me. But what can I say, Internet was expensive while I was on the road. Also it's hard to be fabulous and blog at the same time.

So before I start blogging about Europe I thought I'd do this picture tag from Samantha. The rules of the tag are:

a) Answer the questions below by doing a Google Image Search and taking a picture from the first page of results. Do so with minimal words of description.
b) Tag 5 other people to do the same once you've finished answering every question.

So umm I cheated a bit. Cos sometimes the pictures weren't nice but I tried my best!

1. The age you'll be on your next birthday

Sam would think this would be an appropriate picture considering how we both seem to have a glass or two or more of wine. ;)

2. A place you'll like to travel to

Morocco baby!

3. Your Favourite Place

My writing!

4. Your Favourite Food

5. Your Favourite Pet

I miss Dash!

6. Your Favourite Colour Combination

Black and White: Classic. Elegant. Yummy.

7. Your Favourite Piece of Clothing

Pyjamas! I could live all day in my PJs

8. Your All Time Favourite Song

Go listen to it now if you haven't already. The video is awesome too.

9. Your favourite TV show

Mmm....Dr House.

10.First Name of Your Significant Other/Crush

Hehehe

11. The Town in which You Live in

For the moment anyway

12. Your Screen Name

My cousin would say this is really appropriate

13. Your First Job

Selling Books at KL Book Fair

13. Your Dream Job

Bliss!

15. A Bad Habit You Have

I know it's gross.

16.Your Worst Fear

:( Don't stand me up please

17. The one thing you'd like to do before you die

If not for Best Actress then Best Screenplay. A girl can dream.

18. The first thing you would buy if you had a $1,000,000

A horsie!

There all done. It took me forever to do. I don't really have anyone to tag. So um I'm bending rule number 2 as well. Go figure. But since Sons has a blog she HAS to do this one!

Thesseloniki...

2008-07-06T08:53:00.000-07:00

Me and Izan pulled up in Thesseloniki and we looked around and went...uhoh. It looked like a crappy town with nothing to do. And as a plus our h0tel was a few doors away from a strip club. Seriously.

We were thinking again if we could afford to cut our trip short and head back to Athens or visit one of the islands when we came across what looked like other backpackers. It's never a good sign when a town is totally devoid of backpackers.

So it was a welcome sight to see those packs piled up outside a giros stall. We went to sit near them and strike up a conversation. Turns out they were American archaelogists and were passing through Thesseloniki.

One of them had been in Thesseloniki previously for a day. He said that we needed to head further into town to see anything. Similar to what happened in Athens where we arrived and thought...this looks like a shit hole.

Anywho we ended up not doing anything in that part of Thesseloniki. I was trying to recover from a cough and we decided to just sleep in the hotel. For some reason we booked two different hotels in this part of Greece and today we took a 2 hour bus ride to the second place.

Turns out that the tourist board of Greece that led us to believe that Thesseloniki was filled with white sandy beaches and blue water wasn't totally lying. Oue new hotel is right in front of the beach. It might also be one of the nicest hotels we've stayed in.

Not 5 star by a long shot. But definitely worth the 22 euros per person. Our own room with a kitchen, tv, and WIFI (not that either of us has a laptop).

We just spent four hours trying to even out our patchy tans from Athens. So far no luck for me. Though Izan has had some luck with getting an even tan. You can still see where my tank top was when I was climbing around ruins in Athens.

We plan tanning some more. And possibly finishing all our sunblock.

Ciao!

PS When booking a place to stay do more than Google it...look it up on Lonely Planet and see what other travellers have said about it.

It's All Greek to Me

2008-07-05T01:31:00.000-07:00

I'm blogging this from Thesseloniki. We just did 4 days in Athens...which was cool. The biggest challenge so far has been trying to read the road signs and street names.

It's not so bad in Athens because underneath the Greek there are Roman letters. Though sometimes we would come across bus stops with no English and we would be trying to figure out what was an S, N etc...

Luckily though loads of people speak English in Athens and the Greeks are very friendly and helpful. Even when they can't speak English they try their best to help you. Or they find someone who does to help you out.

And....Greek men are so good looking its ridiculous. I mean...why are they all concentrated here? Why couldn't the good looks disperse and trickle down. Unfortunately Greek girls are very pretty so me and Izan can't be the exotic breath of fresh air.

We went to the Acropolis and saw the Parthenon and basically as many Greek ruins as we could. In one day we more or less saw everything there is to see in Athens. If you go to Athens visit Plaka, or Old Athens as it is sometimes known. It's exactly the way I imagined Greece to be.

Wide cobbled streets, balconies, cafes, bright flowers blooming in the hot sun. A complete contrast to the place we stayed in. We got off the Metro and we looked around and we were like....shit....what is this???

It looked like a third world country. And we kept walking around and it all just seemed to get dodgier. We were told by at least 2 people that the place wasn't so nice. Well what do you expect for 13 euros a night right?

We met some nice people and we had a Greek dinner on our last night in Athens with 2 Australian girls from our dorm, another Australian girl and a guy from Arizona. Then we walked to the ruins and looked at them all lit up.

No pictures now because I can't upload anything right now. Greece is a lot cheaper than Paris and I think it might be one of the cheaper European countries to visit. Breakfast from a bakery today cost like...3 euros. How's that for cheap?

Izan misses Paris and it sure kicked in when we arrived in Thesseloniki. We looked around and it didn't seem like there was much to do. Luckily we bumped into some American archaelogists (seriously) at a giros (Greek kebab) place and asked them what there was to do.

Archaelogists are possibly the only people who will describe a serving bowl in a museum as "fucking phenomenal". They were only passing through before heading to Athens where one of them had a house. There are a couple of things to do so we are pacing ourselves because we have four nights here before heading back to Athens to catch our flight to MILAN!

Izan is dying to go to Milan, I'm excited about Rome and Naples (place of the best pizza in Italy therefore the best pizza in the world). Ciao for now!

Paris Adventures Part Deux

2008-06-29T02:30:00.000-07:00

A cemetery might not seem like a hot spot on your tour itinerary but in Paris it is. There are several cemeteries that have famous 'residents'. They come complete with maps and hordes of tourists. Izan and I wanted to see Jim Morrison's grave and we thought it was in the Montmartre cemetery.

Luckily her landlord corrected us and told us it's actually in Pere Lachaise. Otherwise we would have spent a couple of hours wandering around, maybe finding Degas' grave but definitely no Morrison.

Francois (Izan's landlord) said that all we had to do was follow the tourists in the cemetery. They all go to see Jim Morrison's grave, and that's it. Everyone seemed to have maps when we got there and when we asked the lady at the entrance she told us that we had to go to a cafe Frances across the street and get it.

We decided to just take a picture of the map and use that as a guide. Izan was pretty sure that we would end up in the cafe only to be told that they had run out of maps,

"That's so typically French."

A lot of poets, singers, and artists are buried here. There are also quite a few family crypts. Like the one above. This one was open for some reason.

Most of the graves are pretty old but there are some from the 80's and 90's like this chic one above. It was difficult to find Morrison's grave despite how famous it is. We kept ending up in unlikely places. And everyone was looking for it and not finding it. Including this crazy Italian who asked us for directions in Italian, Izan gave him directions in French and on his way out he told us where to go in Italian.

Finally we saw a guy in a Doors t-shirt holding a bunch of Doors records who was practically jumping from one grave to another. He didn't even turn around and yelled the directions in French to us.

SUCESSS!

The inscription at the bottom is in Greek by the way. It's easily the most visited grave here. Edith Piaf and Oscar Wilde are buried here too but their graves are somewher at the end of the cemetery and the paths seemed to all twist, turn, and diverge. So we decided to look for a famour grave nearby. Which is how we came across Moliere's grave.

He's a famous French poet and he had a pretty generous gravesite. All fenced in and protected. We called it a day after that and headed to the Champs Elysee. Yes, I know that this should have come before the Part Une post but oh well....

xoxoxo

Paris Adventures Part Une

2008-06-29T01:51:00.001-07:00

If anyone has come to Paris and not liked it then they either don't speak French or had a lousy tour guide. I don't speak French but I have the best Parisian tour guide: Izan!

Izan and I went to school together but we didn't really hang out much in school. We got close after school and now we're going to travel around Europe together!

Izan's been here for six months and she knows her way around Paris pretty well. As a plus she also speaks French pretty fluently. When people talk to me in French I go...uhhhh...Izan.

Yesterday we did soooo many things it makes my head spin. We went to the Champs Elysee. A place Izan says Malaysian Datuks and Datins would kill to have coffee by.

According to her a particular Malaysian MP's wife (who is grooming herself to be first lady *hint hint*) loves having coffee there and tells the whole world when she's about to do it. Izan's been here long enough to call people like that poyo (posers). Lol.

Above is a picture of me with the Arc de' Triomphe in the background. Napolean had it built to celebrate his war victories but it wasn't completed until he had started to lose battles (hehehe). It's also the only Parisian landmark that Napolean built.

We walked along the river Seine and Izan explained to me that the bridge I'm standing on is in between what was considered Paris and what was once outside of Paris. If you crossed from the buildings on the right to the other side you were outside Paris back in the day. Now of course it's all become Paris.

Crossing over to said buildings you'll come to the Notre Dame. That famous cathedral that has always been linked with hunchbacks.

Isn't is beautiful? There are intricate carvings in each of those three arches. There are different saints, depictions of Jesus and the Virgin in each one.

Can you spot me in the sea of tourists? I should mention that this picture was taken at about 6 in the evening. It stays bright till about 10 at night during summer in Paris. Everyone eats dinner late here.

We went inside the Cathedral, there was a mass going on but visitors are allowed inside. I couldn't help remembering the scene from Amelie where Amelie's mother gets killed by a tourist from Quebec who throws herself off from the Notre Dame. No falling Canadians while I was there.

The church is gorgeous inside but Izan says there's an even prettier and detailed church, Strasburg I think. Notre Dame has huge stained glass windows and high ceilings to go with them. It's slightly dark in ther but the sides burn bright with candles lit by pilgrims.

Paris is full of tourists right now and Izan spends a good deal of time cursing at them. She hates that they walk slowly. It's full of Americans right now. Their everywhere...

Izan pointed out a tourist bus that kind of rips off tourists. She says it doesn't give you access to the museums, it only allows you to get on the bus. The upside is that they translate all the French for you. But she thinks its a waste.

I have to agree. The best way to see Paris is by foot and on the Metro. You can't beat a city that has ar installations in its underground tain stations. One of the stations near the Louvre has sculptures and the walls are marble. I wonder if the train stations in Moscow are like that?

I have figured out how to use the Metro and am confident of getting back to Izan's stop, Jules Jofrin, if we get seperated. The Metro is easier to navigate than the London Undergound and elpfully lists places of interests next to the stop.

Next: Paying respects to the dead!

Parlez-vous anglaise?

2008-06-29T01:06:00.000-07:00

Bonjour! Yes, I am in France right now. Paris to be exact. But before I go into the many, many things I've been up to in Paris let me blog a little about Toulouse. The place in France I went to.

I stayed with my friends' Ferlynda and Eric. Ferlynda says that if Paris is KL then Toulouse is Ipoh. It's a nice small French town in the south of France. On my first night there Eric cooked a typical Southern dish for me. Duck confit, preserved duck with potatoes and beans.

It was delicious. The duck is the meat of stuffed duck or the ducks that foie gras comes from. No, we didn't have any foie gras. The duck is quite fatty because foei gras ducks are force fed to give you that rich liver. I pretended that I didn't know this.

My first night in France was also the first night that I ate real French bread for the first time. Eric and Ferlynda took me into the little town with their two sons and we bought fresh bread from the little boulangerie.

Eric broke off a piece for me in the road. I've heard the best way to tell if French bread is good is to listen for the cracking sound it makes when you squeeze it. It really made that noise when he broke off a piece.

The next day I took the Metro with Ferlynda to the centre of Toulouse with the kids. This is where I ate French fries in France! Hehehee. I know lame. And sort of blasphemy to eat McDonald's in France but the kids wanted fries so who was I to refuse the chips offered to me.

I stayed in town to explore after Ferlynda headed home. I wanted to see the Musee des Augustins, mostly for the thrill of seeing something with my surname. It's a small little museum but seriously it took me hours and hours to find it.

I'm already handicapped with a lousy sense of direction (can someone please buy me a GPS system please), to add to this no one speaks English in Toulouse. Literally, parlez-vous anglaise (about the only thing I know how to say in French) didn't help at all. It could be the most useless French phrase ever.

Everytime I asked someone if they spoke English they would say no and I would still try and get directions. This resulted in me getting French directions and hand gestures. I as about to give up until I called Ferlynda and she told me the general direction in which to head to. I was in roughly the right area but I still couldn't find it.

I bought a bottle of water from a French lady who also couldn't speak English but I could kind of guess from what she was saying that I was very close. She told me through French and hand gestures to go straight and the museum would be on my right. FINALLY! I found it.

So was it worth it? I'd say yes. It's a small museum, it's housed in a former monastery with a central garden. It feels like going into someone's house, that someone having a very extensive art collection.

They had sculptures from various French artists and pieces of carved biblical scenes by an unknown artist. The paintings were from the French and Italian school of painting. They also had some cool gargoyles in the corridor you first enter.

I'm mostly proud of being able to find the damn place! I was supposed to stay in Toulouse until the 28th but Eric and Ferlynda were taking the kids to Disneyland in Paris on Thursday. They gave me the option of staying in their house or leaving for Paris earlier.

I opted for the latter since it was okay with Izan that I arrived earlier in Paris. So I went to get a new train ticket and it was off to Paris! Turned out to be a good idea since I've been doing stuff non-stop since I got here. More on my Parisian adventures later.

A Pie for Martin Millar

2008-06-18T13:34:00.000-07:00

The last time I was in London I went to a book reading at the Bookseller Crow (I think that's the right name, I've just had 2 glasses of wine and I can't be bothered to check) in uh....oh man the alcohol really messes with my memory huh? God it was something castle. Some place with Castle and Light or something. CRYSTAL PALACE! Okay. Deborah 1 Alcohol 200 million.

What was I saying? Right. The book reading. It sounds easy right. Just go to a book reading. I asked my cousin to follow me. And she said ok and even found a bus that would take us from North London to Crystal Palace.

Easy. No. Not easy. Why? Because the reading happened to be on either on the day of the horrific London bombings or around that time. Oxford Circus tube station was closed. Traffic was hell in London. It actually looked like KL traffic.

Our bus was literally in a standstill for five, ten minutes. We weren't going to make it to the reading if we stayed on the bus but we couldn't get off til we got to the next stop. Until...this woman sick of being on the bus reached out to press the emergency stop button.

My cousin's automatic reaction was to say,

'Don't!' in her usual authoratative and firm but still polite tone of voice.

The woman turned and asked in a perfectly inquisitive way, 'Why not?'

In the end the bus driver let the woman off and we soon got off. We decided to take the tube to Elephant and Castle and then the bus from there to Crystal Palace.

So we do. We get off at Elephant and Castle and it's probably the dodgiest bit of London that I have ever been to. There was a woman on the tube with us who I swear was on drugs. Her eyes were closed and she was dancing and walking and talking to herself.

Then this guy who had been hitting the bottle a little too hard came up to my cousin and says,

'Wot's your name daaaahlin?'

Uhoh. I got us into the mess didn't I? I was feeling kind of bad. I guess most people would have given up around then. We didn't. And guess what? I had never read any of the author's books. I had been reading his blog but that was it. Yet, I was determined to go.

So we asked around and then this lady kindly told us where to take the bus from so that we could go to Crystal Palace. End of story, right? Not quite. So were taking this bus that is supposed to stop at Crystal Palace.

It's just me, my cousin and another lady. Then a couple of stops before Crystal Palace the bus swings around and starts going in the opposite direction. We ring the stop bell frantically and the maniac finally stops. We climb down to the first floor of the double decker and my cousin says all genteel like to the bus driver,

'You really shouldn't have done that. You should have told us this was the last stop.'

The other lady decided to use the more effective,

'Fock you!!!!'

I wanted to start laughing at the two contrasts. So we got off that bus and tried looking for another one. This resulted in us running across the street (my cousin in her work shoes, pumps) to catch another bus and finally reaching Crystal Palace. After a bit of looking round we finally found the place.

Phew!

And we listened to Martin Millar read from his newest book Lonely Werewolf Girl. And it was worth it. I got two books signed. The Good Fairies of New York and the aforementioned book. Both excellent books. Exactly my type of book.

Ever since I have been reading Martin's blog and I love it. He is funny, talented, and can be self deprecating about himself. He's the kind of author that Holden Caufield was talking about when he said there are some authors you just want to call and talk to.

I can't wait to read more of Martin's work. And in honour of Martin and that fateful bus and tube ride I made this strawberry rhubarb pie (recipe here). He loves rhubarb you see. Rhubarb crumble in particular.

So if you have some free time, a lot of rhubarb and strawberries then you should make this pie cos' it's absolutely delicious.

Pie Love to You All

A Day in the Country (or maybe just Guilford)

2008-06-15T05:17:00.000-07:00

I woke up yesterday at 9! On a weekend! My darling cousin Yolanda called to make sure I'd rolled out of bed and was on my way to do things like shower and and brush my teeth, and other things that make travelling with a person more pleasant.

She called me again at 9.30 to ask what I was doing.

'Putting on clothes.'
'Good. You need to leave the house in about fifteen minutes.'

So scratch bothering with any makeup. It takes me about half an hour to put on eyeliner most days. It's not my fault that liquid eyeliner is so fiddly.

So why was I up so early on a Saturday? To go strawberry picking! So I ran out of the house and had just enough money on my Oyster card to get to Waterloo where I...waited, and waited for Yo and Rosemary. I thought I was late but after trying a gazillion times to call them both I figured that they were both still on teh tube.

Hah!

Hehehe. So I had time to have a bagel for breakfast while waiting for them. We missed the 10.45 train to Guilford but managed to catch the next one.

So Guilford is technically not really the country. Which reminds me of a coversation I had once with my mother's friend who lived out in the suburbs.

'It's nice to be in the country isn't it?'
'Oh bless. You townies think this is the country!'

Yo and Rosemary enjoying my witty anecdotes

Guilford may not be technically country but after about 3 weeks of living in London I'd say it's pretty country. They had all the key ingredients to be country:

ducks!

horses!

and to top it all off...sheep!

even the view from the train was green and quaint

We got to Guilford and Cubillas picked us up and took us to lunch at the White Horse, which is not actually in Guilford but in Shere. A pub that was once frequented by sheep stealers (ooo...danger) and smugglers. We didn't see any sheep stealers around after our very hearty lunch.

Then we decided to take a walk around which is when we discovered all the country animals. We also got lost and had to ask a woman where the Shere was. She gave Cubillas this *stupid city fol tourists* look before telling us that all we had to do was walk down a hill and go left.

We did that and found that we had only been 3 minutes from where we parked our car. >.< style="font-style: italic;">wild.

I didn't think that strawberries would grow so close to the ground but they do. I guess it's true that kids these days have no idea what food looks life before it's packaged and delivered to the supermarket.

The strawberries were sweet and juicy and they tasted like no other strawberries I've ever had. Maybe it was getting to pick them up that made them taste sweeter but I think it was largely the fact that they were so ripe and that they didn't have to sit around waiting to be delivered anywhere.

We found freaky looking little berries. Look at this one. It's got a face!

It wanted to hang out with my tattoo. I wish I had brought it home. If not to eat at least to scare the cat with. Hehehe. Shhh...I put it back amongst the leaves.

Cubillas found this one that has 'horns'. I don't think it got taken home either. Poor little freaks.

We even picked rhubarb! And asparagus! I have never tasted rhubarb before and I'd never seen asparugus growing either. Check out the asparagus:

That's how it grows! It literally looks like someone took packets of asparagus and stuck them in the ground. The asparagus brought out Rosemary's violent side. She was so excited to snap off the asparagus.

'I like the SNAP sound it makes.'

I got as much rhubarb as I could. This is what it looks like kiddos:

I'm gonna make rhubarb and strawberry pie. I'm soooooo happy with all the strawberries we got. Yo ate some of hers and tried to get me to give her some and I said, 'No!'

Rose kept giggling at how vehement I was at protecting my strawberries. What? It's not easy finding nice ones okay. It was a good day. And this city girl says it was definitely the country!

Romeo + Juliet

2008-06-10T15:39:00.000-07:00

A lot of people are put off Shakespeare by the language...it's too hard they whine. It's not. Really. It just takes some getting used to.

If you're in London then I think that at some point you have to go to the theatre. It doesn't have to be Shakespeare...London has plenty of shows and there's bound to be something you'll like. Come on even my dad stayed awake when he went to see Spamalot, the Monty Python musical.

So yesterday I got to see Romeo and Juliet at the Regent's Park Open air theatre. It was very different from what I expected. First of all I didn't expect the theatre to be so big.

It can seat a lot of people. And for an outdoor theatre the sound and lighting system was amazing.

The play was really good. The costumes were from the 50's, it was all influenced a bit by West Side Story (which is basically a musical Romeo and Juliet in New York). Romeo and Tibault used flick knives just like in WSS. All the fight scenes were very dancey.

There was a lot of red in the costumes. I was drooling over all the dresses. I kept thinking I want that I want that. Juliet's dresses were all very pretty flouncy 50's dresses. And even the Montague and Capulet ladies had some great dresses. I was really supposed to have been born in the 50's.

The weather was great for once. In fact this whole week the English summer have been just that, summer. Normally it feels like bloody autumn here, with more rain. So the last few days of actual hot sunshine has been very welcome. Too bad I've been working and not able to fully lounge around in the sun.

I want to go back and watch Twelfth Night. I'm sure it'll be good.

P.S. I DONT Love You

2008-06-07T16:43:00.001-07:00

I missed PS I Love You when it was in all the cinemas. And more than one person said it was good. And I felt like watching a chick flick tonight. I was going to got to the Odeon to watch How to Lose Friends and Alienate People and then I saw that the UK release date was October something.

BOO!

How can you deprive me of Kiki Dunst???? HOwwww?

Yes. I like Kiki. A lot of people don't. But I have watched quite a few of her movies and some of my faves have her in them, if not in the lead role then somewhere significant. I always think that she brings charm to whatever role she's in. Yes, her roles may seem similar...but I would love to be friends with the girl she normally plays in movies. Namely that random, impulsiv but always fun girl who's egging you on to do shots and talk to that cute guy at the bar.

Okay off topic.

I watched the movie and by halfway through the movie I kept wondering how much longer it was going to take to wrap up.

The premise is that Holly (Hillary Swank's character) is a grieving widow who is sent letters by her hot husband from beyond the grave. The letters are supposed to help her grieve and live again.

It could have been an okay movie. Except that I hate on Hillary Swank the same way people hate on Kiki.

I think that Hillary Swank is the wrong kind of woman to cast as a romantic comedy lead. She looks like a man. Seriously. I think the wardrobe people went all out to distract people from her manliness with the clothes. Which were all very cute and feminine and pretty and made me want to buy a lot of 50's dresses and awesome coats.

Also...she is soooooooo annoying. In the scenes where her husband is alive she's so whiny and annoying.

And the letters that her husband sends are not poetic or touching. There's one point where the dead guy's mum says he has a way with words and his father says he should have written professionally. Really? Not one of his letters made me think that.

Also during the whole movie these thoughts were flashing through my head:

Hillary Swank looks better as a guy
She looks good in side profile though
I still think she looks weird
Wasn't that dress she wore to the Oscars ugly?
I wish I could watch a Kiki Dunst movie
Kiki was the best thing in Elizabethtown, and also watching Orlando Bloom try to act
I wish this movie would end
I should stop watching it
I have to know which guy she ends up with

As you can guess I really didn't like it. I really want to watch Little Women again.

PS Don't hate on Kiki

The Land of Brunch

2008-06-02T15:58:00.000-07:00

England, or London anyway, is a land of brunch. Before I came to England I was eating brunch a lot. Mostly because I didn't wake up before eleven much. Eating a nice brunch back home is either expensive or hard to get to.

Here there's a good brunch place everywhere. And it's not that expensive either (just imagine that such a thing as the exchange rate does not exist). I stayed over at Yo's place on Friday night (and woke her up by laughing in my sleep). We had brunch at Pain, a Belgian bakery on Marleybone high street near her place.

We had a different things for brunch, which was supposed to be light. It started out that way with just a couple of pastries and a waffle. Some frothy cappucinos. Ladylike brunch stuff.

The waffle was Belgian by the way. Cakier in taste than an ordinary waffle. Not crispy...delicious without any syrup, and just the juices of the fruit that it came with.

We ate more stuff after that. A hazelnut flute thing. Smoked salmon. It's a nice bakery, a chain I think. And I want to go back again, I think I might tomorrow after dropping off a tuna pasta bake I made for Yolanda. It's not pretty so I didn't photograph it. And also I tasted a corner of it before rushing off to meet Yo.

It tasted good.

On a non-food front I went to the Orange Prize short list readings today with Yo, and Patrick (who is not an optimist so that he can never be disappointed).

The Orange prize (that Yo thought was the Orange Booker prize, ha ha) is a literary prize exclusively for women. All six of the short listed women (from all over the world) were there to read excerpts.

One of the judges was also there to introduce the works and to ask questions. There was also a question and answer session with the audience. I didn't ask any questions though.

Some of the books seemed very interesting. I want to read this one and this one. I am very proud of myself for managing to take the tube to Waterloo and find the Royal Festival Hall (where the readings were held) without getting lost.

I <3>

5 Birds and the City

2008-06-02T04:56:00.000-07:00

Isn't that pretty? It was 6 something when I took that picture but the lighting was gorgeous. The sun stays up till 9 sometimes here.

I went to see Sex and the City this Saturday with my aunts and my cousin. Before we went I made this fabulous chicken. And I mean fabulous. It's the first time I've ever made roast chicken but it turned out really well.

I served it with a goat cheese and red pepper sauce that was pretty darn good too. I had the leftovers for lunch yesterday and the sauce was even better. Creamier and the taste of the sweet peppers even more pronounced. The four of us made short work of the chicken. I was going to send some leftovers to my cousin Sidney but the leftovers would have looked a bit sad so I kept them for myself. Hehehe

After dinner we had drinks at 55. A bar that boasts 180 cocktail. The drinks were pretty gao* and not too expensive either. We only had 1 each though.

I'll be going back to 55 for sure. Probably on Tuesday when everything's 2 for 1. ;)

The movie didn't disappoint at all by the way. I won't reveal anything about the plot...I hate it when people do that *ahem Rachel*. I really felt like prancing around in flamboyant frocks after that. And buying shooooooooooooooooessssssssss. And also getting married.

I'm helping Rosemary (my cousin's housemate) to plan her wedding. So that's only adding to my desire to have a wedding. Note that I haven't gotten knocked up (which is what a friend asked when I told him I had already found my dream dress) or engaged. It just pays to be prepared ok. I have most everything in place...oh except you know a groom. Small detail.

Anyway go watch Sex and the City with your girlfriends. Have a Cosmo (or two, or three) before you go.

PS The link will take you to the recipe. I followed it mostly except that I used 2 Romano peppers instead of regular red peppers.

Afternoon Tea

2008-05-31T17:06:00.000-07:00

What happens when you've been working nights for four nights in a row? You start to see crockery hanging from the ceiling...or maybe you just wandered into the cutest tearoom ever.

I met my cousin for brunch in Borough Market on Friday afternoon after she finished her night shift at the hospital. No pictures from that because we wolfed down the falafel wrap and chorizo sandwich (chorizo was the better of the two) and 2 pieces of baklava.

We were still feeling a little hungry from our respective exertions of the day so far. Hers was extreme aggravation from the nurses. Mine was getting dressed before noon. Hehe. So we wandered into Shipp's Tearoom.

There was no backing out after we saw the cakes on display. Yum

So we decided to have tea for two.

We split a cupcake.

And a scone with jam and lots, and lots, and lots of clotted cream. And of course a pot of Ceylon tea to share.

I love that it's not a posh tearoom so you can come in looking dishevelled (like me) or a bit grotty (like Yo) and no one will sniffily put you at the table where the toilet door keeps banging on your chair.

The furniture is all mismatched. And the teapots and teacups are all from different sets. Very cute. The cupcake was a bit dense but it had yummy icing, so all is forgiven. The scone was not bad too, and a gold star for being so generous with the clotted cream. Which was thicker than ice cream and tasted slightly buttery, great on scones and even by itself from the spoon (don't tell my hips).

All I seem to do here is brunch. I have forgotten what lunch is like. Even when I do eat lunch it's breakfast things because I can't be bothered to cook proper lunch things. I save that for dinner. I already want to go back to the tearoom and try the other cakes. I guess it's a good thing that I walk at least 2 miles a day in London.

Au Revoir

2008-05-29T07:21:00.000-07:00

I remember writing that exact word, Au revoir, in a friend's autograph book before she left for Canada. We were 13 I think and I thought French words casually inserted into a goodbye message was cool. So cool my friend asked me what it meant.

'Like resovoir?'

>.<

Noooooo.

Anyway these are a bit late up because I was too lazy to unpack and find my camera cables. And when I finally did I realized that the CD I thought was my camera installation thingy magiggy was the wrong one. It was for a different camera. Oops.

Luckily I still managed to upload my photos.

Before I left I had a small farewell party. Not everyone I invited came...but those who did really made my day. I don't think it struck me at the time just how long I will not be seeing any of the people in the photos. And when I do go home some of them won't be in Malaysia anymore. Sam is off to the U. S. of A. So is Sharmini. Galvin will hopefully be off too. And me....well I don't know what will happen at the end of this six months away from home. Hopefully good things.

Sadly I don't have pictures with everyone who came. Keith and Ronald are MIA from the pictures. They were so sweet to come. Even though Keith told me he had to go home by 10. Of course he stayed until 2 am. And then got a call from his mum asking where the hell he was. Did he not realize he had exams on Tuesday?

He did what he always does. He said he was on his way home and then didn't go home until an hour later when she called again. Lol. I'll miss that boy.

Some of the group

me and rachel, this is the face she makes whenever i call her and say something stupid until i realize it

rachel and sharm (in a dress I gave her!)

me n sams in our pj's

Rachel was supposed to ask me if it was ok that she and Sam stayed over. She asked me this at the party after we had all had dinner. Lol. So typical of her. My parents told me not to let anyone who couldn't drive go home.

My dad specifically said, 'Tell Sam she can stay over if she's not alright to drive.'

Hehehe. Good thing he said that too. I've never seen Sam sooo drunk. Everyone was torturing her and trying to make her do the times table.

We all drank that night. A lot. I only realized this next day when I tallied up the bottles that we finished. I didn't have any beer but the boys did. And I know we finished one bottle of white wine for sure. And at least haf of another. And Galvin brought some vodka....and there was more but I'm too embarassed.

I told my cousin about the party and she intends to take me to the tube to look at a poster that says: If you drink like a man, you'll look like a man.

I really don't need the warning, I've watched enough 'Who'll Age Worst' to know what binge drinking will do to you in 20 yrs. She thinks she's so clever because she's a doctor (okay, her and my whole family).

Below is my bedroom for the next 6 months or so. Needless to say I already kinda messed it up. *must tidy room today* My mum will kill me if she knows how at home I've made myself in my aunt's place.

I'm Free

2008-05-25T06:59:00.000-07:00

I had a dream last night that I was writing a postcard for Postsecret. I wrote: I'm Free on a green postcard in big black marker.

Ahh...well only partly true.

I'm in London. After a lot of missteps I finally got here! First there was the visa that didn't come through. Then the scary immigration ordeal.

They could tell I had been rejected a visa. Just not what visa. Luckily I had a lot of documents to prove that I had no reason to overstay. So after about fifteen minutes of questioning and consulting they let me through!

I didn't expect it but I felt my heart clench ~~a few times~~ a lot. And how could I not? I'm leaving behind my family for the longest time ever. And some of my closest friends.

Who spent the last two weeks or so that I was home reminding me how much they love me.

I hope I'll be able to keep in touch with everyone with this blog. While I'm traveling and chilling out in London and hopefully doing the things that need to be done.

Pictures soon.

xoxo