Yee ‘O Lost Souls

I wanted to blog a post the night before MUET but if I turned on the PC who knows what time I will go to bed. So no heh. Instead I spent the time brainstorming on the remake of my old story! Hehehe. To me, when making a story it’s not as easy as to just stuff characters here and there to fit a certain role. It takes time and a lot of imagination. For instance, if I can’t imagine this scene happening, I can’t see how it would fit into the story. Usually as I sit in class or something, the vision would come to me and I could get the gist of the situation, the emotions, and the dialogues. Now that’s inspiration!

But I suppose if you don’t force a certain part to fill a gap in the story, it wouldn’t work either. If it’s a good idea, but you can’t yet ‘imagine’ it, why not use it right? Exactly. I had just started on it just now. I even opened up one of my old story books for reference. It’s been a while since I read that book. But I still loved that story. It’s a Ghosts of Fear Street compilation book. It containes three stories, all the leads are twelve year olds. I remember buying every book with R.L. Stine’s name on it, but I have moved on to other genres. At one point when I just started high school or that time during UPSR, I exchanged books with other people who have titles I don’t have. And most of those books I didn’t get to see again. But surprisingly, I don’t miss them :/. I mean, looking at the book situation in my bookshelves now, I have no reason to complain. *grins*

Oh man, MUET. I think I have serious listening problems. I mean, what the fakk, I was sitting in the front row! And the time for the writing paper is just stupid. Whoever the fakk the guy in Parliament who suggested only one hour and a half for writing a full lenght essay and summary must be a complete moron. Maybe he should go and write those papers in the given time limit. And we see how he does huh?!

But I survived. Somehow. Anyway after MUET I still have to attend my Mandarin class. It was the last one for my Intermediate Mandarin Class and all of us, except one, qualified to join the Advanced class. It sounds so impressive. The Advanced Class. But how come I don’t feel impressive? What have I been doing anyway? I barely speak Mandarin outside of the class. I suppose Lao Shi is right. No matter how good of a teacher he is, he can only help us went past our psychological barriers. If you want to be good in the language, you have to speak.So its up to me. So speak damn it.

I finally emailed the essay that I should have emailed long before. But it won’t make any difference I suppose. After all, if you send close to the closing date, your wait is shorter. Anyway it’s out of my hands now.

Last night was the Anugerah Industri Muzik 13 award thing. I was hoping to catch some cool performances, but most are boring as expect. When I changed channels, there were at least two other shows on, live. One was the Rhythm of Champions and the other is a Bicara Siswa forum kind of thing. That forum show was interesting. I actually watched the rest fo the show. I mean, the forum ‘manager’ I forgot what that is called, was very witty. There were three panels, the vice president of the college’s student counsil (where the forum is being hosted), a professor of the college and also another important student. Can’t quite remember.

But the questions being asked were all ‘hot’. It revolves around ‘are today’s graduates as good as they claim?’, ‘why do you think most graduates are jobless?’, ‘do you think youths today should be given more chance to voice their opinions?’, ‘if today’s university students are better than before, why are so many jobless?’. I mean, wow. I never thought I’d like these kind of shows. But it was interesting. The audiences were all alive and listening and the manager-type person was funny. At one time, one of the students in the audience asked a question to the panels. But instead of asking the panel to answer, the manager asked the student what she thought. And she answered quite spontaneously. His comment afterwards made everyone laugh.

Oh man. I suppose I agreed with most of the things they talked about. After all, the forum was very realistic. Too bad it was only in a small meeting kind of room with limited people. And it was broadcasted the same night as the AIM13 show! What a bummer. But it’s not like I enjoy watching the local artists sing anyway. Mawi…eew.

I could still accept Ruffedge though. Since they always have this choreographed dance whenever they perform. I thought it’s really cool. Way cooler than those artists whining on the radio saying how we are not supporting the local English acts and without our support they should stop singing and rapping and open a satay stall.

If you ask me, I’d say, open that satay stall. See if they can make good satay or not.

The local entertainment industry is strained, somehow, by too many restrictions and regulations. The government should just stop trying to be an over-protective parent.

And oh, have you heard of the Nintendo Wii? Hilarity.

That’s all for now. Ta’ra!

p/s I ate satay this morning. Satay good.

Hello! I know it’s a little late but I still will introduce my cake! Now go and drool on this! These are images of the cake before I dress it up. You can see my dad’s hand pushing the little plastic tray thing hehehe and the latter are pictures after I dress it up with chocolate and a little flag on it. Kinda crappy, I know. But who cares.

I intentionally took close up pics to make you drool. Hehehehe. Oh and it was Mars Bar Cheesecake. If you want to have more of this cake, go to Bing. they go for 8.5 a slice. So some people are lucky to have free slices from me (my grandma, for instance). Hehehehe.

Oh yeah, you notice there’s a little ‘S’ in the F chocolate. That’s to spell out Sarah. And my mom since her birthday is today and tonight we’re going out to dinner. I’ve had three birthday dinner reminders already now. Its getting annoying.

Man I’m hungry already. I wanna eat steak tonight. Or something. I’ve been thinking of steak for a while now. Or maybe I should just go for the buffet. Hmmm.

Oh yeah, on my birthday we went to eatThai food at the Bangkok Thai Restaurant which is actually part of Lok Thian restaurant. Buttered lobster yum yum. Umm I think I’ve mentioned this before.

Anyway, I’ve had new ideas on a remake of an old story of mine. The original one just got too ridiculous. Consequently I’m planning to make a website to host all my stories. Whee. Gonna break them down into chapters hehe. I already registered at a Norwegian site. Free with no ads, but limited space. I later found out there’s also another free site with no ads but twice as much space. Damn. But anyway, Ill just…sort this out later.

So for now, ta’ra!

Heya! It’s my birfday tomorrow (Saturday, 22nd April, write that down and remember it) wheee!! And on the same day we have a marketing test! Whooo…

I’ll be nineteen (one-nine), the last teen year of my life! O_O wow…it sounds so big when I say it like that. Next year I’ll be twenty…ack

So anyway, on to happy things. I know my birfday is on Saturday but I specifically asked for the cake on Friday evening. I even ordered the cake myself! Muahahaha! From Bing! Because the cake was just that good. I’ll take a pic of it later.

Just now I went to the trouble of writting individual letters onto small chocolate plates. I melted white chocolate over boiling water and surprisingly, the chocolate remains liquid for well, quite some time. I thought unless we add water it won’t stay liquid. But I did not add a drop of water and it stays liquid. Amazing! That Women’s Weekly magazine people got it right!

Anyway, everything is in the fridge now. Next I’m gonna do a little flag to write ‘happy birfday’. Since the cake doesn’t have a single wording on it. Have to make it look like a birfday cake on camera one way or another. Why do I go to all this trouble for the cake you ask? Well I suppose its my birfday, it doesn’t hurt to go that extra length to customize it, don’t you think? Yeah, that’s right.

Or I just ordered the cake wrongly…

I forgot to tell them that it’s a birfday cake so it just came as a regular Mars Bar cheesecake|:{…therefore void of any sign of a birfday.

But it would still turn out cool right? How many people actually do hands-on costumization to their own cake anyway? Not a lot! Besides, I’ll be sharing this birfday with two other people; namely Sarah and my mom. The chocolate plates I got was just enough for the names of three people. It’s easy when the only difference between my name and Sarah’s is the F and S in front.

Also, the trial and error risk was very little when  I did the chocolate melts. I sacrificed just one chocolate plate. I didn’t inted to eat it. But I couldn’t find anyone else to consume it for me. Honest!

Oh man so many assignments this weekend. But tomorrow night I’m looking forward to a dinner at a Thai restaurant. Actually was debating between a Thai restaurant and the Japanese restaurant just next door to it. But I’ve already had my birthday dinner at a Japanese restaurant before. Thai is a good change. Also, they have nice buttered lobster there yum yum.

I’m drooling already.

Right. Now I’m gonna shower and do marketing revision. Ta’ra!

For once I want to stop thinking. Somebody please take the rein of my life for a moment. Thanks.

I have movies and animes stocked up but haven’t the time to watch them. Either that or I’m just lazy. Instead of watching them I’m doing up the priestess story I did back in highschool. I have recently got some fresh ideas about it so…you know, started doing them instead. I have found myself pretty bad at multi-tasking sometimes. But multi-gaming is even harder. At least I can still play games and write stories at the same…season. Let’s just call it season since these things come and go.

You see, I found out there’s a certain mood or state of mind you have to get into for these things. When I am in a receptive mind, I will go and read books, especially educational books relating to business or management or just some new skills I could show off to people. But when I am not in a receptive mind, I will go seek instant gratification. This is where mangas, animes, games and movies come in. Also fiction books, if there are some ‘in season’. And when I’m feeling creative, I will shut out all those above and create something instead. Normally either comics or stories. The latter is more common since they are easier to make.

Right now I am in the third state: feeling creative. With a strong desire to create something. I like feeling productive. Not literally of course :P.

But just as I am feeling creative, I am bombarded with homeworks that are stretching my linguistic skills to the limits.*Sighs* Well those homework aren’t going to do themselves, so have to go clear my mind and do…something first.

Ta’ra.

Hello! Its another boring Sunday afternoon. I just did some of the English exercise our MUET teacher gave. Boring stuff. I never thought I’d be doing multiple choice questions like that again after high school. They are quite a waste of time for me :P. I mean, come on. Flipping through pages going through the passages so many times give me a headache. Especially when you’re reading them upside down. Certainly not in a receptive mind right now.

Anyway, let me tell you about this old hag yesterday. She wasn’t old, really. She’s about my mom’s age, but I wouldnt call her that words that starts with a b and rhymes with stitch or the word that starts with w and rhymes with bore. Because I am a civilised person.

So I was driving down a three lane road see, heading for my Mandarin class. The road was meant to be two and the one on the right split into two as you get to the traffic light. So since I’m going straight I go into the middle lane from the left. But although the light was green, there was a bit of traffic in the middle lane, so naturally you have to slow down or you’ll be kissing the butt of the car in front of you. As I was joining this queue, somebody honked at me from behind.

For what? I don’t know. If I go any closer, I’d hit the car in front. So to stop this irritated driver from irritating me, I tried my best to close the gap between me and the car in front. After a while, the line moved more clearly and I kept hearing honking behind me. Like, two or three impatient honks. Annoyed, I slowed a little as I neared the traffic light and beside me, came a silver MPV with an Indian lady (with big curly hair) making hand gestures at me that means something like "don’t you know how to drive?!". Like, non stop, until I bypassed her and she turned to the right. I only waved my hand dismissively at her, which I think she didn’t notice, due to her constant hand gestures and big hair, probably. :P. I should just give her the finger and stick my tongue out at her, really.

So was this old hag teaching me how to drive? I don’t know what’s her problem. Because I really don’t care. After all, she’s just contemplating on things that could have happened, but didn’t happen. I imagine she always goes around teaching people how to drive like that. She could go and do that to everyone on the road if she pleases and I would be happy just watching her on the side. And occasionally, challenge ehr nerves :P. But I wouldn’t bother with rude drivers. So you complain about them, they nearly hit you, but didn’t. So what? Things like that happen all the time. But doing what she just did not only takes her attention off the road, it’s bothersome.

Therefore, she is a certified old hag. If anyone sees her on the road, please do her the courtesy of a honk from your car ;). She would really appreciate it.

I have no more story now. Ta’ra!

That game in my phone has proven to be addictive. And I’ve just found out about it today! After so long! God I’m so slow…

I won’t talk about my short vacation anymore now so rest assured :P.

You know, I have always been a very active kid. In primary school I liked to play around a lot. But in our school system, playing is bad. Yes, they actually labeled active kids as ‘delinquents’ especially in my school. I knew it was a bad idea to go to an agama-type school. They discourage physical activities. Well at least the uniform was good. Ours is the only school in the state that uses pants as uniform for both boys and girls. Other agama schools do the same too, but only for year 1 to 3. We wear pants from year 1 all the way to year 6. Except on Friday that is.

It doesn’t restrict your movement but the teachers were keen on making you walk ‘properly’. Baaah. We’re kids after all. We need the exercise no matter how much we hate to sweat. But playing is fun. T_T

I pretty much lose most of my agility and flexibility during my five years of primary school. Because the school discouraged physical activities, I actually followed their words. After that though, I started filling up. And the trend just went upwards. Even now, I’m still paying for all those negligence. A certain teacher was also keen on making me all ‘lady-like’. All advices which I gladly ignored :P.

Things got worse in high school. The rule was ’strut your stuff and die’. Well, pretty much. I just let you guys know how much I adore my school.

But after watching the EMC monkeys I have decided that I will do my best to gain back all my agility! I don’t care how long or how hard it takes! I will achieve it!

Mwahahahaha! Xin Sarith Azuma is the coolest!

Ta’ra!

OOoh Miss Kumi just struck me at all the right notes^_^. If you need a reminder, this is Miss Kumi. This is a pretty small pic though. I am not a fan of Kumi’s. I just like her song Chase. She’s pretty slutty in manner of appearance and her songs remind you of Ayumi Hamasaki. Nothing very original. So just listen to whatever that fancies you, really.

Anyway, I mean to continue my tale of Yogyakarta today. Right, we arrived in Solo at night and drove to Yogyakarta which was about an hour away. One of the things that you might notice as soon as you arrive there are the number of KFCs. There’s about one in every corner of the street. And they are all big, like warehouse sizes. Some are even stand-alone buildings. And the buildings themselves were impressive. They carried traditional Javanese designs, a bit like the Chinese pagodas. Real nice. There’s also a lot of McDs, but KFC outnumbered them. I didn’t go to any KFC though. I prefer the local treats heh. I tried the bakso.

This is basically chicken soup noodles with large fish balls in it. Nice indeed. If you ever get a chance to try it, please do! This can found all over Indonesia I heard. However, if you’re in a big city like Jakarta, you might want to be careful. Some notorious vendors made bakso out of rats to cut cost due to price competition. *shudders* I think you can tell the different between chicken and rodents, right?

The ‘akad nikah’ was on the second night we’re there. It was really something. I mean, the house was too small for guests so they set up chairs on the narrow street outside. The arrangements of the houses in that area itself is interesting. Anyway, here’s what I meant.

Took us a while to get there and we were well, fashionably late as you might call it. After all, we’re technically from the bride’s side and we came all the way from Malaysia just to attend this wedding. So the hosts quickly offered us seats. In addition, our seats were directly in front of the house where the ceremony was taking place. Besides, it wasn’t our fault we were late. It was our driver’s fault. Stupidity doesn’t even begin to describe him. He was slow and clueless and on our way to the wedding he stopped to ask directions about almost every five minutes or so. Gaaaah. We’re foreigners after all. How would it look like if we suddenly burst into someone else’s ceremony (of a different country too!)? Yes, exactly.

In the end, he won the term ‘not how many’ which is a direct translation of the Malay version ’sik berapa’. The full term is ’sik berapa gilak’ which usually means that person is not very reliable/edaquate/good in certain aspects eg. financially, academically. But ’sik berapa’ on itself only means stupid in this context. Fortunately, the next day, we were assigned a different driver.

Anyway, the night’s ceremony was pretty traditional. Considering it was only an akad nikah. But the outfit was pretty. This is how she looked like that morning. After that breakfast we went sight seeing. Back to the night’s festivities. This whole wedding goes like this. I think this is generally how people there do it. After the whole akad nikah is done with, the couple and the parents of both bride and groom stood at the dais there. There’s even seats for the parents at both sides of the dais. Then when they are settled, family members and close relatives will start off to greet them and congratulate them. Then the rest of the guests will create a bee-line towards to the couple and the parents to shake hands and congratulate them. After they are done with this, they proceed straight to the food. The food are served buffet style so you will have a line coming from the guest seats, going to the dais, and on to the buffet counter.

Very interesting. Because here, the guests don’t personally walk up to the bride and groom. Except for the ‘tepung tawar’ ceremony. But even then, only family and relatives get to do that. In every aspect of the Malaysian Malay wedding, the couple is ‘untouchable’. They only communicate with you by waiting outside and bid you good bye as you leave. Then again, not all couples do that.

So I think this is very good. We should try this. Hehehe. Oh and the food. The food was good. They have soup. That’s different. And the satay was niiiiice. I’ve never had satay quite like that before. And the dessert was ice cream. That night it was yam ice cream with a couple of jelly slices in them. Usually you eat the jelly cake and ice cream separately. But this one they put the jelly slices at the bottom and put ice cream on top. I don’t have a pic of it but I do have a pic of the rice. Classy. We took some pics that night heh. And the mother of the bride was really traditional, with hair in her big bun of a hair hehehe.

The next day is the wedding or ‘bersanding’. I think the procedure is pretty much the same. Again, we were slightly late. But we didn’t intend on coming early anyway and we got a different driver so yay! Mr. Not How Many got on our nerves. We’re glad to be rid of him. After all, we paid good money to hire them :P. It was actually a double wedding. The groom’s brother was also included in the wedding although he and his wife were married about a month ago. Just wanted to make it more official I guess :/.

The ceremony was amazing. It was held in this open air hall which is actually a Hindu museum sort of place. A wedding in a museum! There were lots of those ’signs’ outside the hall. Mostly congratularoty messages from friends and family from both Yogyakarta and Pontianak.

The costumes were…wow. I mean, wow. I just can’t find the right word for them. Especially the groom’s. He wore earrings damnit! And there were many flowers. They really went all out in this wedding. After all, Bibah is their only daughter. The parents were no less amazing.

Its been proven! The lady in the Mustika Ratu logo does exist! And her name is Aunt Tirta!! She’s the one holding Sarah’s shoulders. Honestly, she really does look like the Mustika Ratu lady. She’s so much fun. The dangdut song was the background music throughout the wedding and she danced as she greeted us and made us dance with her! Hahaha!

I really like the theme of that day. They all wore traditional clothes. The women in pink, the men in black. There’s also a real keris on the back. See? I even took pictures with their reception girls. I just like their whole costumes I think they weren’t so happy that I interrupted their lunch hehe. The way to the dais was filled with relatives and you have to shake hands with each of them. Its kinda weird. But nice, heh. Coming from Malaysia, we must have looked like tourists to them. Hehehe.

The food was also buffet style. With ice cream and jelly again hehehe. After some more dancing and taking pictures we went back to the hotel and went out againt to do some sight seeing. Aunt Tirta wanted to join us but she couldn’t leave the on-going ceremony. Aaaww.

So! We went to that Chandi Borobudur! Yay! The one with the stupa things. I didn’t really touch the one you make a wish with, but I did touched one of them. The actual one was swarming with too many wishful visitors :P.

The stupas, or the large bells where there’s a buddha sitting in them were placed in three levels. the highest one being the biggest bell. Interesting stuff.

I’m trying to achieve peace by meditating here. Ohm…

After all, that’s what all those buddhas are doing hehehe. You have to admire the little details they put in each buddha statues. Buddhas facing different directions have different hand gestures. Pity most of them have no heads. The whole thing used to be underground due to constant volcanic eruptions nearby. The archeologists actually dug it up. The volcano is still active and recently it had been releasing smoke. Better be careful heh…

Please don’t mind the font |:{. Its custom made.

I think I’ll stop here for now hehe. I have stuff to do before bed. Tomorrow I will go to the gym. Yay!

Hope you guys are not entirely bored out by my tale of travel hahaha! Ta’ra!

And that is true. My lover, as you recall, will not be travelling with me anymore. Aaaah I miss my lover. I miss my room. I miss the gym. I miss my porns. I miss the EMC Monkeys. Gaah I don’t miss my homeworks. Anyway, I just got back a few hours ago. And am GLAD to be back. We spent three nights in Yogyakarta and one night in KL. Kind of like a transit thing.

Our plane to Indonesia landed and departed at the very small airport in Solo which is a town an hour away from Yogyakarta because Air Asia apparently doesn’t land at the airport in Yogya itself. But anyway, first thing that comes to mind when we arrive in Solo was…people. Lots of them. All along the way, wherever we go, regardless of the distances, there’s bound to be people and houses and shops lining the streets. Literally. There’s small padi fields too here and there, followed by well, more people. Another thing that should be noted of Solo and Yogya or Jogja, whichever suits you, is that, the food are cheap. Like, insanely. Okay take it like this. One night there were 40 of us. And we ate at this restaurant. Not a freaking road side stall or something like that. Guess how much was the overall bill…

310,000 rupiah. Don’t let the 0’s fool you. That amount is about…126 ringgit.

126 ringgit.

For 40 people?

That place is thereby certified as insanely cheap.

If its not then I must be really insane.

Wait. I’m already insane.

Oh I brought some pics to show the airport which was, again, insanely small. Lookie here.

I just can’t resist, really.   The whole baggage reclaim area is really just a small space where they stuff your bags and you tell them what numbers are yours. Looks like those number stickers they attach to your tickets are useful after all. Anyway, the whole place is a dump, really. But glad to know that the staff are doing their work. There’s no trolleys of course. Instead, they have men in light blue janitorial-like uniforms with ‘porlep’ on their caps to carry your bags. I’ll just assume ‘porlep’ is Indonesian for ‘porter’. But despite the dumpy airport, the taxis are excellent. They don’t use the rickety cars like here. The taxis are mostly Toyota Corrollas. There’s a few saloon Chevys too. Imagine that. Even the taxis in KL are rickety old cars!

*yawns* I really have to go to bed now. I’ll continue my tale later then. Bye bye.

*reincarnates*

Looks like I’m not yet on the mokhsya level. :/ Since I’m reincarnated instead of going to heaven or something. Looks like someone wants me to stay and blog. *sighs* Fine. I’ll blog.

Regarding my plan to go to Solo, yeah it’s still back on. But of all weekends, this one the lecturers have decided they will start bombarding us with homeworks. Especially our ebil Research lecturer…there’s ebilness behind the cute little face.

I can complete all of the homework tonight though. Damn. I still have to pack my bag too. Looks like I won’t be having my 7-8 hours of sleep. D’: Aaah~ the price you have to pay…

After a long day of classes, homework is really the last thing you want to do. But I looked up the location of our hotel in Yogyakarta and found out that it’s really a vacationing place. It’s in walking distance of a famous shopping street (hehehe) and the world’s most impressive Buddha shrine is close by. I think that’s the one with the many large bells with buddha statues sitting in them. Yes…We’ll definitely make time for that. Hehehehe… I hope.

Anyway, I was just checking if the hotel has a gym because if I’m going, I’m going to miss two gym days. The hotel didn’t exactly has a gym. It’s called a ‘fitness center’ usually fitness centers are just a small room with some exercise equipments in them. They are not really a fully functional gym, but they will do though. Just that, sometimes the fitness center can be so neglected they are no longer operational and the website won’t mention it being stopped operations. That’s the sneaky part. Even reputable hotels won’t tell you they already closed down their fitness center. Frustration.

But I’ll still pack my workout clothes either way. When we come back it’s Tuesday and Wednesday is gym day. I’ll just do some extra work then. I would also need to remember to include my new Hyde porns into my phone. My phone…I need to give it a name…somehow. Orenji…Orenji no Taiyo…fitting name. Hahahahahaha!!! Oh hilarity!

Or maybe Katan. Katan from Angel Sanctuary. Katan is viciously loyal to Rociel. My phone has been nothing but loyal to me. So hmm…need to make a decision here. Ohhh this is taking up too much brain cells! I need them later to do my homework. I’ll think about it later :/.

Today was interesting. During lunch. It’s rare to have someone snapping away on their camera when you’re eating. Wish I had worn some make up. Hehehehe. Cool hair though, Liss.

To prepare for my long night of labour (slave labour?) I will first go and…wash my hair.

So, ta’ra.

*falls over and dies*