Back from Khmer.

As usual, it feels awesome when the plane touchdowns at Changi airport and I know that I'm less than an hour away from my comfy bed and home. It's been an awesome 5 days at the land of Khmer - Phnom Penh, Siem Reap and Battambang have been three contrastive places, but still, I'm (always) happy to be back.

Made a realization this trip, and that is, the only times when I go to and get out of bed early are when I'm traveling! That's supposed to be good for me right? Maybe I can use that as an excuse for more traveling :p

While on the buses where long hours were spent on the roads, I managed to finish a first reading of Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist. And it's managed to make me feel mildly flustered, with the recurring themes of dreams (both the sleeping and aspiration kinds), spirituality, beliefs and love. Out of my disbelief of most things spiritual, I barfed a few times in my mind when the author described scenarios which had a lot to do with religious faith (which is totally inappropriate, I admit and apologize for it). And yet, at the same time, I felt as though I could identify so well with the dreams Santiago (the protagonist) had and some of the mental states of mind that he went through in the book. Something that Paulo wrote about love in the novel also struck a chord with some stuff that's been on my mind recently; stuff that a new friend talked to me about a few days back, and that's made me start to re-think the path that I've set for myself awhile ago. 

It's made me think that perhaps I shouldn't be basing my life for the next few years so rigidly and irrationally on just one path, and not offering myself any alternatives. Who knows, like Santiago, I might just fall head over heels in love with someone whom I'm going to meet in the desert; someone who will not get in my way of living life to the fullest.

Okay, best to stop before this turns into some mushy stuff. 

Pictures coming after I've finished clearing them of the multiple dust spots. Sensor/lenses are dirty as hell.

A happy kind of tired

because holidays are here again!

It's been a long week, long day and I'm just really glad that things are over.

On a slightly irrelevant note, I'm feeling kinda sad about the effects of the late nights this semester :(

Sometimes, all we really need is a short break to clear our minds before we can move on with our lives.

Like an auntie

I miss using Cantonese on a daily basis, however unproficient I may be.

So when I saw a cooking workshop that would be conducted in Cantonese while browsing through PA's website last month, I signed up for it almost immediately; after checking my availability - and ignoring that it'll be held 3 days prior to my last university exam.

There was much joy as I watched how steam escaped quickly and furiously from beneath the bobbing pot lids, smelled pungently aromatic whiffs of garlic and fermented beancurd paste that filled the room, and listened to the sounds of the knife on the chopping board. Hearing Cantonese phonemic syllables roll off the instructor's tongue was somehow comforting too, strangely enough.

It was more of a demonstration since the participants were only involved in the observing of processes (and not getting our hands dirty) and sampling of products at the end of the session. Here are the dishes that were cooked during the session:

#1 玉兰鸡; boiled boneless chicken with ham and kai lan.

#2 腩乳扣肉; pork belly and taro in fermented beancurd paste.

#3 粉葛排骨汤; pueraria with pork ribs and dried oysters.

#4 龙珠果花鸡汤; chicken breast with tofu, carrot and flower of dragon fruit.

I liked the chicken and pork-ribs soup best after trying morsels here and there; they reminded me strongly of grandma's cooking, from which my very first impressions of Cantonese cuisine came about.

Keeping fingers crossed that I'll get down to cooking some of these dishes for my family when the exam is over.

Expectant

Like a pregnant mum who is expecting the arrival of her baby on 23rd (with no complications, of course).

That's exactly how I'm feeling right now; towards 440, that is.

Calm, but not surprisingly.

Giddy with excitement, but not going to count the eggs before they hatch.

4 days

Waking up is the most difficult thing I have to do every single day. Once I get my lazy ass out of bed though, everything will be fine and dandy. 

 

My desk's a big mess right now, and it'll probably remain this way till my paper's over; speaking of which, that will be the last examination that I'll need to sit for as a degree student!

Caught up with some of the ktowy guys last night at Beer Market, and we had a good time recollecting some of the good old times. It's hard not to notice how everyone's grown so much over the years, though we can still behave like the bratty kids we once were back in CCHS. Last night made me really thankful for the 10 years of friendship that we share between us. Things are probably going to be different in time to come - in fact, it's already happening; about twice as many people come for gatherings these days because of boyfriends/girlfriends (twice the fun). But I'm just really glad to see that everyone is doing fine!

Attended a workshop on travel photography this afternoon, and I had quite a fun time learning some photography 'cheat-codes'. The instructor highlighted some points that I've never really considered while on my previous travels and I thought they were valid and quite useful. Took some pictures around the Bugis/Rochor area too, though I'll most likely put them up only after the paper.

Don't sound like I'm all that nervous for the paper (though I really am feeling just fine), do I?

A moment to express gratitude

Had been feeling pretty off the entire day, no thanks to someone who'd made me doubt and question my stature as yet another insignificant individual.

This was supposed to be a self-loathing, self-indulgent, emo and whiney entry that would make me seem like some self-pitying expert, but I'd just watched a documentary that described hardships faced by some of our founding mothers and got a timely reminder of how fortunate I am to be born in this day and age.

Tonight I'm thankful for many things, and just to name a few:

I'm thankful for the roof over my head,
I'm thankful for the food in my belly,

I'm thankful for my comfortable bed
(and blankie which I'll snuggle under in a few moments!),

I'm thankful for the love from my family,

I'm thankful for the laughter and joy my friends have brought me,

I'm thankful for the hot water showers I can get,

I'm thankful that I only need to turn on the tap when I am thirsty,

I'm thankful for the many opportunities to travel,
I'm thankful for the education that I've received,
I'm thankful for the opportunity to give back,

I'm thankful for my very existence (however insignificant),

and most importantly,

I am thankful for being able to express my gratitude for these little things that make up my life

- yes, even at the expense of sounding like the most naggy person on earth.

So, thank you dear Samsui ladies. For contributing to the early progress of our nation, and for the timely reminder that nothing we face can be as tough as the hurdles that you've had to get through during the peaks of your lives.

Dolphin-sighting, en routes to Tai-O

Pictures were taken in February or March earlier this year. Audrey was doing a module on environmental issues at IEd, so after helping us get clearance from the tutor in charge for the dolphin-watching field trip; we made our ways down to Tsing Yi (somewhere near the airport) all the way from Tai Po early one morning and got on board one of those speed boats.

Hong Kong's probably one of the last places that you'd expect dolphins to be found in the wild, but hey, dolphin-sighting's quite a common occurrence here!

#1 Adorable Audrey - I miss her so much!

#2 Best gals on exchange

#3 Lone fishing vessel

#4 Yvonni - Someday I'll visit her and Doris in Switzerland and Liechtenstein.

We were rather skeptical about sighting any dolphins initially, since Audrey's tutor had told us to expect the worst and to just enjoy the boat ride; apparently some luck (something that I usually do not seem to possess) is needed. Dolphins in the wilderness of Hong Kong, against a backdrop of heavy industrial settings and pollution, you got to be kidding right? 

But as luck would have it (I bet there were probably some very lucky people onboard with us), we did spot some dolphins!

#5 The first of a few more to come.

#6 They're called the Chinese White Dolphins, but they aren't exactly white in colour.

#7

#8 

#9 

These mammals sure made everyone onboard squeal with much joy, in amazement; with every leap out of the water surface, "oohs" and "ahhs" were bound to ensue. The noise that we were generating probably scared them off at some point in time.

It was a really great experience, and I have Audrey and her tutor to thank. Dolphin-sighting in HK, who'd have thunk?

#10 Pavilion found on Lamma/Lantau Island, can't remember!

#11 Next up, arrival at Tai O!

酸

source

It's hard not to think about Why.

But whatever it is, I hope you're happy now.

feeling awfully weird now.

Crash course on Star Wars

A friend gave a quick run-through of the 6 episodes and I couldn't help but thought of this set of photos from Clubsnap that I came across sometime ago:

For full set of pictures, click here! 

I think they're funnier/cuter with the captions.

It sounded much more interesting than I'd always thought it would be, keeping fingers crossed that I'll have the time to catch all 6 movies when exams are over next week.

Laid-back Berastagi, en routes to Lake Toba

After leaving the hostel where we'd spent a terrible first night, we winded up at a bemo (i.e. mini-bus/van of sorts) interchange and spent 15 minutes searching for a bemo driver who would get us to the main bus terminal, without ripping us off too badly (which unfortunately, I think he did). 

#1 In the bemo; Yvonne and Tuomas.

#2 The driver made a few more stops along the way so that more passengers could get on.

Somehow, the bemo driver did not drop us at our intended destination and we ended up at some shopping mall instead. There was a local fast-food restaurant, and quite a number of little stalls run by Indo-Chinese stall-holders that peddled stuff ranging from handphone accessories to clothes and snacks. After withdrawing some money from the ATM at the mall, we were good to go!

In order to prevent ourselves from getting ripped off big-time again, I decided to check with some of the stall-holders; and approached a couple who looked like they were in their mid 50s or early 60s. I started asking them questions with my awfully-limited Hokkien and halfway through the conversation, the man decided that it was a good idea to switch to Mandarin so that he could better understand what I was trying to say. I was quite embarrassed by my half-past-six grasp of Hokkien and yet, at the same time, more than thankful that they expressed an understanding of Mandarin.

After a few minutes of explaining, which he felt wasn't of enough help, he came out from behind his stall, walked us to the entrance of the mall and tried to negotiate with two motorized trishaw riders to bring us to the bus terminal for a good price in Bahasa Indonesia. I was touched by his friendly and helpful gestures; felt a warm, sorta fuzzy feeling in my heart and found it a little hard to believe that people would actually go all out to help complete strangers (but yes, people do that and I'm more than thankful to them).

Three hours and a bumpy bus ride later, we found ourselves in Berastagi (approx. 86.5km south of Medan according to Googlemaps). Following the reviews on Yvonne's guide-notes, we walked down the main street where we'd alighted and into the courtyard of Wisma Sibayak Guest House. Got ourselves two rooms and that was half of what we'd paid for the lousy first night's beds.

#3 Tuomas: What's that funny smell, Yvonne?

#4 Now you see me, now you don't.

After receiving the keys to our rooms, we dropped our bags promptly and stopped by the dining area for our first actual meal in Indonesia.

#5 Gado gado for me.

#6 Our rooms; minimal furnishing in there - just a queen-sized bed, lights and a fan (if I'd not remembered wrongly), common toilet could be found outside the rooms.

#7 Backyard bike. 

#8 Guesthouse's courtyard

We stayed in Berastagi for 1 night. Even though the place's well known for its two active volcanoes Gunung Sibayak and Gunung Sinabung and the hot springs, we didn't trek up or visit any of them because we wanted to spend more time at our next few destinations. We did however, take some nice long walks down the main street. I loved the laid-back vibe of the town, where everyone just seemed to be happy minding their own businesses and are not particularly bothered by the visitors that stop by the town. It's the kind of place where not too many tourists visit, and hence, there are no pesky souvenir vendors trying to sell their ware at every corner of the streets.

Here are some of the pictures that were taken on our walk:

#9 Competition? Bring it.

#10 Lovely Doris behind the gate of a souvenir shop

#11 Happy school girls posing for a picture. It was around 11.30 am when these kids were walking home; school ends relatively early here.

#12 Venturing into the local wet market

#13 Peace!

#14 Why so grumpy, baby?

#15 One scruffy-looking dog

#16 Lovely Chrysanthemum

#17 Two cute little boys (yes there's one more boy at the back!)

#18

#19 :)

#20 What money can buy... found on the wall of our guesthouse.

YF: Jie I want to watch movie with you.

Me: Okay lor... let's watch Immortals.

YF: Don't want... it's a guy's show; I want to watch that with my guy friends. 

Let's watch a horror movie instead.

Me: *raises brow* Why?

YF: Cos if I get scared during the horror movie girls won't think I'm a weakling.

Me: *rolled my eyes*

There's a lot of eye-rolling when I talk to him sometimes haha. 

Every single time.

奇怪的人

小的时候，拼命的想长大。

长大后，拼命的想当小孩。

真的很矛盾。

Grey areas

As we grow older, things that could be easily pin-pointed as right or wrong in the past don't seem so clear-cut anymore; black and white zones are no longer mutually exclusive, and the grey area has also increased tremendously.

The accumulation of life experiences and lessons over the years has made it so much easier, and yet, also much harder to make objective judgements evaluations about the people and events in our lives. So much easier because we are now better equipped with the vocabulary to talk about it, but more difficult due to clashes of personal beliefs, or the realization that everyone can be unwilling victims of circumstance (sometimes).

I've been made to believe that I'm effectively bilingual since the secondary school days; my principal insisted we all were.

However, the bilingual module that I've been taking this semester has made me re-look at what defines an effective bilingual, and made me realize that I'm not so much of the competent bilingual that I've always thought I was.

I may have used to be slightly better back in the early 2000s, but I've now lost whatever language mojo I had back there :(

I want it back.

After this semester ends in a few weeks' time, I'm going to pick up some Chinese materials (books, magazines, newspapers, whatever) and read away!

Family Sunday

Mumsy always knows what I'm thinking; just like a worm in my tummy.

We were watching some travel show on telly earlier this evening when I felt a need to pass some gas. 

As I lifted my right ass cheek off the sofa, Mumsy shot me a dirty look immediately and asked: "你是不是要放屁?" before giving me a hard shove.

I love it when she can read my mind sometimes. Hehe.

The 2 most important men in my life.

Today was a family Sunday. Headed to Peach Garden at Orchid Country Club for a dim-sum and Peking duck brunch with Grandma and some of my paternal relatives since one of my uncles is back from KL for the long weekend. The food tasted pretty good in general; and I was quite happy to eat the 流沙奶皇包, even though they weren't really the best ones I've had so far.

Made our ways to the ever-crowded Ikea post brunch and the children had a good time running about. The Ikea visit ended with an ice cream cone for everyone. I can't remember when was the last time the different families actually came out for a meal and shopping trip like that, but it was good. Grandma looked really tired though; she looked like she could fall asleep while we were at Ikea.

And that's about it for today.

Came across an inappropriately-shaped cereal during YEP meeting last Tuesday:

They're supposed to look like rockets, but the cereal didn't quite match the picture that's been advertised. Rocket-fail. 

worst hostel experience so far

Few days ago, a friend remarked that I seemed to be very busy travelling this year and asked if it's tiring to be scooting around all the time. We sat down and counted the places I've been to so far in 2011 and it totalled 6 by the end of June (averaging one country per month).

It sure seemed like a lot of travelling, on hindsight, but it felt nothing like that when I was busy getting my passport stamped at the different immigration counters :x

Anyhow, I did a Sumatra trip with some of my new friends who were also in Hong Kong for exchange. Yvonne and Doris had planned to visit Medan, Sumatra, just before Chinese New Year, and asked if I was interested to join them girls (and Tuomas was able to make it in the end too). In all honesty, Sumatra wasn't a place on my to-go list so I didn't think I was going... that was of course until I finally got my tickets booked. To say the least, I'm really glad I decided to go for it, because we had such a great time throughout...

... okay, maybe not the first night.

We arrived in Medan close to/just past midnight, got a taxi amidst all that driver chaos at the airport terminal exit and ended up at some dodgy-looking street where our hostel's (Yvonne reserved beds for a night online) supposed to be. We had the impression that it was going to be a lively youth hostel, but our driver stopped us at the door-step of some weird-looking-building-that-turned-out-to-be-a-church. The owners didn't look too pleased to be woken up by a bunch of noisy backpackers, but after some verifying, it turned out that was the place that Yvonne made the online reservation with. The pictures, description and reviews on the website were one of the most misleading ones I've ever seen in my entire life; there was absolutely no mention that the so-called hostel is located within the same building of a run-down Catholic church. 

Digressing, Catholic's the religion of approximately 60% of the population in Medan according to our cab driver (need some verification with the figure though).

#1 Sleeping arrangements for the first night

Back to the room...

there were cockroaches scurrying around when we finally reached the 4th floor (i.e. top of the building) where our beds were; and there were even a couple of them on one of the beds. Tuomas didn't seem to have a problem with those insects so we gladly offered him that bed. The windows of the room couldn't be opened; they were taped up or something, and since there was only one standing fan in the room (that was falling apart quite badly; I was worried the entire night that the revolving part might just fall off the stand anytime), it turned out to be awfully stuffy.

It was near impossible to sleep. After tossing and turning on my grimy mattress for what seemed like forever, it started to pour heavily outside. Heavy raindrops were coming into the room through the taped-up windows, nice. Not to mention that it became increasingly stuffy with the downpour outside and lack of ventilation in there. It was about 3 plus in the morning that I finally dozed off.

You'd think that was the end of my our attempts (gone horribly wrong) to get some sleep...

But no... we had to be woken up by a rooster's incessant crowing at 5 a.m. (I looked at the time on my watch and cursed the crow). Things were so bad (blood-shot eyes from not getting enough sleep and all) that everything seemed to be funny all of a sudden.

#2 Rise and shine!

We pulled ourselves out of our beds and glanced across the beds at each other to acknowledge the fact that the night didn't turn out too well. Then we went on to wash up and pack our stuff (in fact, I didn't even bother taking anything out of my bag apart from the toiletries; tried to sleep in whatever I'd arrived in), and had some toast with jam that the lady-owner sent to our room.

I can't recall when was the last time (prior to this trip) I wanted to leave a hostel/hotel so badly, but I was definitely glad that we were not going to be spending more nights here. As we made our way down the stairs, we realized that the 2nd and 3rd storeys were areas for mass/prayers (complete with the long benches). An old lady (whom I presume is the lady-owner's mother) who was working in the kitchen saw us and bade us goodbye with a "Selamat jalan".

Even though that wasn't a very pleasant stay in general, I'm still thankful that we had a roof over our heads, and that the experience opened my eyes to the different worst case scenarios to expect while travelling, and provided me with a benchmark to compare unpleasant accommodation experiences with!


Thankfully, things got infinitely better afterwards :)