Smack and die x_x

today's quite an ouchhh day. before FOB tutorial, the message we got from D was really shocking. let's just be more careful on the road alright.

then before lecture started, there was this big lalat that landed happily on ZS's book, and the next second its life ended miserably on the same spot, but totally deformed. eeeee. HK's heroic act - smacked the lalat to death until HB's file was torn. can you imagine the impact the lalat felt before death? no i can't!

i told my sister about it and she said, "really pity those little insects, it's so weird how people can kill them without feeling a thing.......that day outside my class also there was a beetle, one of the girls was scared so KH just stomped over it...."

then i tried to put myself into the insects shoes (don't think they have shoes though -.-). their lives must be really tough with so many killers (humans) around! more challenging than the 21st century managers wei x)

*

eye-opener. 

my elder sister just came back from a trip to Sarawak on Monday. more like a trekking trip where she went climbing up this hill. 4 hours of climb to reach the orang asli settlement, i don't think i can or will ever want to go for this kind of trip, so i shall just listen to her stories about the trip.

few things that made me go "whoah"...

#1 this guy in the picture is called a porter. he carries their bag packs up to the hill (4 hours), RM50 one way for 20-25kg of load. and that's what he does to earn a living. my sister said there are also girls doing this job, some only about my age. without them, who is going to lessen the burden of the trekking people?

#2 the orang asli there. according to my sis, only the oldest generation still follows the tradition of putting those metal bangles on their legs, up till the knee. basically, they cannot bend their legs at all. to get to the position they're in as the picture below, my sis said it looks as if they were falling down. and they actually have to work at the sawah padi. but i guess it's something to be proud of in their perspective...

#3 preparing some alcoholic beverage for all of them to try, and the alcohol content was 52% o.O don't play play.

#4 did he come out from our sejarah textbook?? seriously traditional. my sis also said they have a lot of tattoos... where the colouring is obatined from burning some wood, not too sure...

#5 souvenirs for us! fried sago (first time coming across such stuff), layer cake, Bario Highlands rice, unpolished rice, salted fish... 

interesting :)

an inspiring book.

the other day i saw my sister bringing home another book which her friend recommended her to read. and then i didn't quite remember about it as i'm never too keen on reading, unless it's really short or proven to be interesting/meaningful. 

then one afternoon when i got home from college i saw my sister with swollen eyes, thought she just woke up or what. who knows she told me she actually cried reading the book. yikesss. and that was the reason why i got myself into reading this book. also to see if i'll cry or not. 

this is the book, tuesdays with Morrie...

well, in the end it turns out i did not cry at all, neither did i have the urge to cry. aiyo my sister is too emotional i guess :') 

during the recent Raya break where my family went back to the hometown in Johor, we actually watched this Japanese drama "one litre of tears" if you've heard of it before, and both my sisters and i together, used up so much tissue. 

maybe i'm just not that good in putting myself into the story when i read, so the feeling wasn't so strong. watching the story through a drama on TV is a different story altogether. 

apparently, the book bears much of a resemblance to the drama. 

both are based on true stories. 

both revolve around the life of a perfectly normal person who discovered about the disease they got and how they lived through the remaining days in the most optimistic ways anyone can ever think of. 

and both died in the end, but with little regrets since they already made the most out of what they were left with.

the diseases i'm talking about here are similar too, the girl in one litre of tears was diagnosed to have Spinocerebellar Degeneration, where her muscles slowly degenerates and slowly she finds herself having difficulty controlling her body movements, talking, eating, and every action that involves the usage of muscles.

whereas in this book, Morrie is a very dedicated lecturer, who was stunned when the doctor explained his disease to him - Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), which will eventually lead to death. similar to the girl's disease, he'll slowly lose the ability to walk, talk, and do the most basic tasks in his daily life, including wiping his ass (it was mentioned in the book). it's just like reverting back to living as a baby. 

the author of the book is one of his students who really admired him when he was back at college. after leaving, he lost contact with his lecturer, Morrie who taught him social psychology subjects. he began chasing his dreams, or so he thought. in everyone's eyes too, it's pretty hollow. where everyone's so caught up with what everyone is SUPPOSED to be doing, SUPPOSED to be getting, SUPPOSED to be the way it is...

but the question here is WHAT really is the SUPPOSED way of living? 

it was only after Mitch found out that his lecturer was suffering from such a disease through a TV programme where they interviewed Morrie, he went back to find his lecturer. and most of the time on Tuesdays, like how they used to have appointments back in college times, on Tuesdays too. 

each time he pays a visit to his lecturer, they would be chatting about something, things that bring him closer to discovering the true meaning in life and what he really wants for himself, not blindly following what the world is expecting from him. 

isn't it plain amazing for Mitch to have met such an inspiring person in his life? a respected lecturer who has changed him so much in every way. 

and it is even more amazing for me to see how optimistic Morrie could get even when he's in one of the worst conditions in life - counting down to the days left for him when he's already losing so so so much as compared to us. 

since he lost the ability to walk, he stayed home most of the time, all he could see was through the window frame from his room. there were mornings where he woke up feeling terribly awful, thinking why must he be getting this disease of all things, there are so much more that he wants to do as a lecturer, a family for him to love, but he's going to die.

so he cried alone in bed. then he accepts it, forgets about it, and life moves on like that. 

reading this story on Morrie's left me feeling different. of course i feel lucky that i'm healthy and really happy with the family and friends by my side, i have little to worry about, but sometimes i do wonder, life is so unexpected, why not do what i can when i still can, the moment wouldn't always be there for me, opportunities that come by don't stay. 

and it's really a lot about how i can choose to see or perceive things, sometimes, it is that one split second which is going to change the ending of a situation. just got to think right. 

*wooh, attended the first ever student assembly at MPH today. nothing much except the SIFE club which sounds pretty interesting :)

**ohya, the something which i was unsure of in the previous post, i got an answer to it :) :) so glaaaaaaaaad.

OMG FOB test on chapter one and two tomorrow! study study study study study study....

to live life meaningfully.

i am always amazed by how things work around us. the sun the moon, gravitational force, the universe, what's beyond the universe, how humans came about, and how everyone is so entirely different from one another...

come to think of it, every single day i live is a blessing. and sometimes i really think nothing can be too bad as long as long as we're still healthy. the recent allergy experience i had really made me realise that when i'm unwell, everything around just follows to go down too. and the thing is, it doesn't only involves me and myself. the whole family was worried and every second just seemed to pass so slowly when there's nothing much i could do. 

there're just too many incidents that show how vulnerable life really is. i seriously do treasure everything that is happening around me. but there are also some things that i'm very curious to find out. and certain things are happening without me understanding why it actually happened.

if i were given a wish, i would like to know what you think of me now. (not mentioning names)

by the way, it was mid-autumn festival on the 22nd this month. neighbour's house was quite meriah with all their relatives, both adults and small kids playing with lanterns & bbq-ing. my family didn't have any special celebration other than eating mooncake. the moon was really rOund though!

view from my house..

close-up shot to see if there's any "chang er" or "yu tu" on the moon xD 

* * *

some time ago, my elder sister's colleague bought a present for Ador - milk biscuits for baby rabbits! at first Ador didn't really like it, probably cause he was taken away from the mother when he was still so tiny. now suddenly feed him with milk biscuits, not used to the taste i guess?

but after eating it for a couple of times, he's now totally addicted to eating them. can hop and run as fast as possible to you whenever you bring out the biscuits. scary o.o

can't read the Japanese words on the box :/ 

for BABY rabbits especially x)

surprisingly it smells really nice you know. 

and this is the thing eating milk biscuits yikes.

younger sister's friend lent her a book, apparently she cried reading the book. i'm so going to read it! 

When too many farewells happen at once

today, i actually woke up at 7.05am! and that was without the help of the alarm clock or anyone calling me, quite unbelievable even though i've been going to bed early nowadays, it's not because of that. apparently, i woke up to realise that i was having a dream T_T a dream so sad that i was suuuuuper glad to find out that it was just a dream. 

so, it was a school assembly at Yuk Chai (primary school haha) and the only familiar faces to me were alina, huei-wen, pei ying (yes she was back with us!) and tse wei. the rest of the students were all indians (not being racist or what, it just happened to be that way in the dream). then i heard this one announcement that really caught my attention, it goes something like "huei-wen will be leaving malaysia next year....." my eyes really popped out (in the dream la) and was really REALLY sad cause all the while i was thinking she'll only be leaving in another 2 years time. 

i didn't get a chance to speak to her in the dream but on the way back to class alina and i were both telling each other how we cannot believe what we just heard. then i woke up. *phew*

it must be all the farewells recently that contributed to that dream. i really don't quite like this feeling. 

20th Aug, had lunch with Yi Xin before she left to HK :)

19th Aug, before Dorie left to US :)

9th Sept, last dinner with Pei Ying before she flies :) it's nice to see her beautiful pictures at Manchester ♥ 

okays time to work on fob assignment! (i'm doing it last minute again *---*)

ohya i think i'm almost fully recovered already other than 1% of the red spots that still come back occasionally :/

feeling @_______@

eeeeks this is so terrible... :( and it all started when we were halfway gossiping before FOB lecture, i suddenly felt my cheeks and chin feeling feeling hot and slightly itchy but didn't have any idea at all what it was.

then i noticed little red spots growing on my elbow until they slowly joined with each other and turned into bigger patches. worse still we had to finish an essay there and then, so i finished mine very uncomfortably, bet i'll be getting less than half of the full marks. 

by the end of that two and a half hours lecture, the patches on my hand kinda resembled the pattern of a map. other than the hand, my face felt swollen too. quite worried what it was cause i never had anything like this before.

so i got home and my mom made me a cup of wheat grass to drink. this thing it is, apparently wheat grass is quite nutritious, i never really knew. after bathing and all i went for a nap, was damn sleepy due to the lack of sleep in the previous nights. 

by the time i woke up, it was around 6pm  and i felt even worse. the red patches spread all over to my legs, fingers and everywhere. went downstairs to drink a cup of water and i started to feel giddy and felt like throwing up so i headed towards the toilet. 

my mom from the dining room asked me if i was okay, very dizzy or not, i remembered myself replying okay, can still walk. and the next second i found myself sitting on the floor next to the kitchen door with my mom beside holding me cause she heard some noise when i hit the door. honestly my vision was quite blur at that moment, and it almost felt as if i didn't belong to part of the house. then i realised i was cold sweating, and my lips was so pale. 

but shortly after that, i felt better again. at night my parents brought me to the doctor we always go to. and it's been such a long time since i last went there that my last record was no longer kept. we waited for an hour before it was our turn. 

can you imagine how packed the clinic was? so many people were feeling unwell :O and while waiting i saw this little indian kid coming out from the room with stitches on his head.. ouchhh. and noticed a lot of them who came straight after work cause they're still in their office attire. saw one guy who brought his mother there and he kept playing bejeweled on his phone while waiting, some went alone, some with their other half... 

after waiting for so long i started to feel nauseous again. this time i really vomited. thank goodness i went to the toilet in time. by the way, i seriously dislike the feeling of vomiting a lot, the throat really hurts. after coming out from the toilet a while, i finally heard the nurse calling my name. 

the doctor took my blood pressure and said it was lower than usual. told the doctor how bad my rash was (because by then it wasn't that swollen or red anymore) and that i felt dizzy and vomited. she actually got quite shocked and said allergy can be life-threatening, and very dangerous too cause the body reacts to the allergy by lowering the blood pressure, that's why i felt dizzy. but i'm still not sure what it was that caused the allergy.

the doctor actually suggested me to take a jab to suppress the allergy, but i'm really super scared of injection so she said i could take medicine as an alternative but the effect wouldn't be as fast. anyways i wasn't feeling as bad already, so she said medication's fine too. *phew*  the doctor mentioned that if the rash comes back, must quickly bring me back to the clinic for injection though. i was given a cup of water and four tiny pills right away at the dispensary. 

slept in my parent's room at night. and my mom didn't sleep the entire night cause she kept waking up to check on me. i could really see how worried she was while my brother and sisters still tried to make jokes to make me laugh. thank you mama, papa, jiejie, gorgor and meimei :)

this morning itself i woke up at around 9.30am, then went back to sleep again in the afternoon cause i felt very drowsy after taking the medicine. (had another scary dream, someone placed a time bomb in my house wth!) i was still feeling quite bad that i couldn't even answer jy's call when my sister came running up with my phone. sorry jy, i'll call you back.

i think it's recovering, slowly though. still feeling a bit itchy and red patches are still there. at least not dizzy! hopefully i can still attend tomorrow's AIS replacement class. 

my family members keep telling me not to sleep late at night anymore cause it's really bad for health. found this in a website "The phase intended for detoxification is from 10 pm through 2 am." actually my mom has always been telling me the same thing for many times already. but it's so so so rare that i sleep at 10pm. come to think of it, i sleep at 2am most of the time. 

got to start sleeping latest by 12am from now onwards, unless it's for important stuff. 

ohmygosh, i haven't really started on my fob assignment!

:(

this is really quite sad, too much tears recently :'( but i think i'm able to cope with it better already after sending Dorothy off on my birthday itself. i like it how Pei Ying could still smile all the way, but the more i see her smile, the more i know it's exactly that smile i'm going to miss very terribly in time to come. more and more friends are leaving, and they would not be a phone call away anymore. so so far awayyyy.... and because of these farewells, i tend to think about the other also very close friends who will definitely be leaving in years to come. can die man. better not think too much. but i've a feeling i can't sleep tonight, so hello FOB :)

Definitely not as easy as it seems to be...

so i was reading this story book, "The Alchemist" by Paulo Coelho my sister borrowed from the school's library. i really don't usually read story books, especially when the title's not quite attractive. but this book, according to my sister's friend, is good for your spiritual side. i was like wah seriously? no harm giving it a try right. moreover, it's rather small and has less than 200 pages. okay i'll read it!

started reading it yesterday night until it was past 12am = time to send Steven a birthday message \\(^o^)// 

and it really turned out to be pretty interesting, it's about the journey of a shepherd boy to Egypt to find treasure, the many people he met on his way there, the many new encounters he came across and... (yet to find out, i'm only halfway through the book :P)  

few lines that made me pause and read again...

"Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own"

"The world's biggest lie is that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what's happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate"

"To do it successfully, you must have no fear of failure" 

* 

then this afternoon when i was reading the book, got a totally random call from Tse Wei asking if i had any baking powder at home. well, even the oven in my kitchen hasn't been touched for more than half a year i think, what more baking powder. about 10 minutes later, he called again asking if i wanted to join him in making his favourite apom since he was near my house.

now i think we can apply the third line i quoted from the book. sadly, the apom didn't turn out too well. there were two recipes, one from a malay blog, the other from a chinese blog. strangely, the difference between the two is quite big. 

for example, one needs 1 1/2 cups of rice flour, the other one only needs 1/2 cup + 2 tablespoons (such accurate measurement haha!) and the one with more rice flour needs less santan, something like that.

after all the ingredients and equipments were laid on the table, only we realised the electric mixer is missing its beaters -.- and there were no eggs left! drove out again and bought four eggs from the 7eleven near bu4 for 35cents each :)

then it was time to mix everything together! who knows the batter ended up really thick and sticky. so added more santan and some water to it until it looks more like the apom batter we see outside. left it to chill in the fridge for about 20 minutes while we played with Gopi who loves to eat grapes. very cute when he chews on the round grape, all the juice starts squirting out, then he'll lick the floor after eating it x)

next step was to fry it!! also the part where the kitchen got messed up. the tiny wok gets heated up real fast and everything starts to burn the minute you place it on the wok. even the butter turns brownish and white smoke keeps coming out. then have to wash and scrub the wok after every piece. anyways, we only managed to make two pieces which tasted like.....nothing. really quite tasteless, could only taste flour & egg. 

hence, innovation for the third piece. cracked another egg into the batter, added more hot water. then decided to use a non-stick pan this time! and sprinkled sugar + cranberries onto it x) slightly better lah but well, the third was also the last piece, wasted the remaining batter. 

how come people can make such nice apom? 

oh right, no fear of failure :) 

Say the right thing

i'm not sure why these few days i've been a little too offensive, damn bad mout. (intentionally spelled without the 'h'. sorry hw i had to use it on myself this time!) i know when i said it i didn't mean anything like that at all, but you know words that have been said cannot be taken back, and sometimes although i don't mean it, it's still not that pleasant for the others to hear. time to learn to speak more nicely. 

anyways i had another terrible dream the day before yesterday. probably cause i was telling my sisters a really sad but true story i came across just before we slept. the feeling of knowing that you are bound to lose someone you're so used to having by your side is really painful enough to kill. every minute or second becomes extremely hard to bear. it's like counting down to something you wish will never happen, BUT is definitely going to happen. 

dreams are still dreams after all, they don't make much of a sense. in spite of that, i like the surreal experiences i get from different different dreams. 

on a brighter note, my sister is so cute haha. i brought home a free hp balloon for her the other day, and just yesterday when i poured everything from my pencil case onto the table so i can bathe monkey, she used my highlighters, marker pen and the heart shape sponge thingy and made into this......

and then she brought it to Ador and claims that he likes it too cause it has bunny teeth just like Ador xD

a lot of tutorial work to do and lecture notes to study~ it's almost the end of week 3 already! :O