Josh Groban's Noel

This holiday album really did beat the hell out of celebrated A.I. 6 winner Jordin Sparks' debut album. It's a real winner. I downloaded the whole Noel album and the first song I heard from my iTunes: "Angels We Have Heard On High" was truly amazingly wondrous (give me another superlative!). His angelic voice is a gift from God. This song also feat. Brian McKnight who has a mellow voice corroborates well with Josh's, making the tune stuck in your mind whole night long. I can't sleep now. And it's 3am.

A must buy (or download :P) for everybody in this planet. Josh Groban himself have always impressed me even from his very first album 'Closer' and his hit single "You Raise Me Up". When I watch him acted in one of the episode of Ally McBeal, he sang "To Where You Are" and my eye got all teary just listening to that song.

"Noel" is a must buy album and a great gift for this Christmas season. I rate it 4 1/2 stars out of 5.

"Silent Night" really silence-off the other cool (and quite good, actually!) catchy song that keeps sticking in my mind - "Gimme More" by Britney Spears. With her life in such a mess, I think she did great with this song. It saved her face a little.

Seeing Red.

England cannot qualify for Euro cup! Yeerrrr...malu betul lah....never hear before soo 'charrrrr'. England's dismayal performance, to my honest opinion, was caused by Steve Mclaren's selection of players and no-show by any Manutd players. Well, anyway...I am not a soccer pundit, and not that I know anything about managing football. I think I will just stick to supporting ManchesterUtd alone instead of England as a whole.

My busy week continues with several good news along with some appalling ones too. I was pretty happy with the arrival of my research equipment called the 'granulator-extruder' directly from China. I've waited 10 months for that blooody thing that is now sitting at the back of my lab. It definitely eases half of my workload and time, where else before this, I had to resort to my mum's putu-mayam maker she bought from Mydin to extrude my chemicals. And earlier, the putu maker actually broke at its handle. So much for my 'innovation' :) Thanks mum, for giving me the putumayam maker, and though it broke, I wouldn't mine replacing a brand new one from you. It's 1000X cheaper than my new extruder from China. I'll go to Masjid India this week.

The appaling news, besides England's failure, was the work I had done on my research had one small-itsy-bitsy mistake on the calculation, which my supervisor fired me kau-kau after finding it out. It was a small-itsy-bitsy mathematical mistake, but according to Dr. Tan, makes a whole lot of difference in my final results. I couldn't understand my failure in detecting it, but damage was done. Nevertheless, we fixed the problem, but my reputation has gone down the drain.

This coming week, I had to present my work at a cool conference in Penang. Hope to gain back my reputation a little. Mum is tagging along and staying at the hotel. But mum, even if you insist, you cannot enter the conference hall!!! :P I am all by myself this time.

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Bersih and such

The opposition parties put on a brave front to go ahead with the permitless BERSIH protest. I wish I were there, but being a postgrad student in a pariah local university (just try finding my university in www.topuniversities.com), I had to refrain my physical self from rallying in what I support and believe in. Malaysia has rapidly fell in many ways with regards to democracy and in protecting its people's rights. It's getting worse year after year, even by the minutes! There's no freedom of religion. Government bringing down temples - and damn - for the first time I had to support SamyVellu :P There's no expressing your thoughts in anyway - not even in cool blogs or street protest. Then where else can we express the basics of all human rights which is the right to speak out. Did you say Dewan Rakyat?? Tell we why the Speaker always deny any motion that the opposition wants to debate about? When I was presented my scholarship in Kuok Foundation not long ago, I was glad to have met Azmi Sharom, the infamous handsome, long-hair, hippy, law lecturer in UM and his vocal presentation of the governments stupidity in handling almost every matter. He's my hero!! And now, where is he now?? UM's VC basically asked him to shut his mouth and no more writing sin the local newspapers...or else....!!

The local papers are dogs; they dare not put the BERSIH rally on the frontpage!!! Instead, they put the deputy PM's face or what not portraying the govenment's 'help' in formulation a better subsidy scheme to counter fuel price rise. Helping us....tak payah lah.....we have not been helped for a long long long time. Why do we need help now?! The UMNO also said that if we chinese do not support BN in the next general election, we are shooting ourselves on the foot. You have crippled us long before; we are aready standing in one leg. Shooting another foot/leg won't make much a difference. In fact, it make us much stronger.

Well, Kenny the Law - you've done well, and you are already my hero. Let me promote your blog here in my space for once: www.darnmalaysia.com

I love Malaysia, but why doesn't Malaysia love me back?! You may advocate that every country has it's discrimination. Yes. But let me tell you...This is our own GOVERNMENT discriminating us. I've never seen in any country where the government openly discriminates with their policies.

Busy like a Apis mellifera.

....that means: I'm busy like a (honey) Bee.

This week onwards 'til end of December 2007 would be a stressful one for me as I am soooo not used to getting pumped up for writing and presentations. A whole lot of writing for me this year end for my research and one major test/interview. Because I'm soooo busy: I would like to say sorry to my dear friends: Ee Meng - for ffk all every year to your xmas choir in your Ipoh church; Beh - ffk your Aquaria visit although it brings me great interest; Chris - cannot come out yum cha at night because I'm on a diet (unless you can sponsor me HerbalLife)(Thanks for 'ada hati'); sorry for Myself - because I paid like soo much for my bloody gym but went only once this month; sorry to my labmates because I can never answer your entomology questions and pesticide calculations because I am actually not smart - I also google everything. Sorry to my parents because when they come KL, I make my mum cook my favourite petai belacan dish and forced my dad to service my car so that he pays for it :( And sorry Jon - because I wish I could change how things work here in Malaysia - bloody red tape. I love all you guys sooo much.

Bangkok - Day 3

I thought waking up late on our 3rd day in bangkok as the day before was an abuse on even my athletic legs. In wendy's guest house, we get free complimentary breakfast, but Jo woke up earlier than I to get in touch with her beau called 'boy-boy'. We didn't know where to go, but decided to go to the silk house called Jim Thompson. Well, we both do not know about the whole silk story that Jim was involved in and we didn't ask either. We plan to just wiki the whole story. The silk was rough. I guess Miss Wong from my early-days-geography teacher was right: Thai silk is actually not as smooth as China or Jap's silk.

Next to Jim's, we discovered a secret alley that led us to a part of Thai's biggest river/longkang and also the most polluted and black- coloured water I've ever seen. I love Klang River now!!! Is teh tarik colour (Klang River) better than the Chao Phyra river/longkang (black/grey)?? And this longkang ferries government (yellow-shirt locals- you will notice definitely) to work. While taking pics of the longkang, we managed to see a guy living by the longkang dumbed 4 bags of rubbish into the river without a blink of remorse. The river swallowed it immediately like as if it was its favourite lunch set.

Another river emerge faster than the Chao Phrya that Malaysia also got: flash floods in Bangkok!!! We managed to see the terrible floods around bangkok city because we were lucky??

Our tut-tut tried to avoid the huge banjir water all over the city. I love him. My tut-tut driver is cute and he's also 26 years old. And he said he would accept any amount we quote him, because he's already gotten gasoline subsidy from factory after we bought jewellery from the jewellery factory earlier! Of course, why shouldn't he?!

In Bangkok, there's organization in chaos. And in chaos, there's beauty - the beauty that is sooo hard to grasp in just one trip.

More pictures with captions and storyline: Click HERE.

Bangkok! - 13 and 14 Oct 2007

reporting from Bangkok!!! - from our ciplak hostel - wendy Guesthouse! see: www.wendyguesthouse.com near Rama Road I.

It's day 2 here in bangkok. weather is almost the same as malaysia, and it rains every evening too! well, it didn't spoil our trip to patpong in first day. we actually went to watch the ever talked about 'ping pong' naked act by those fat naked girls, and i am still wondering how they blew off those candles using air from their servical openings. we drank in the same pub that showed us the performance and got cheated by giving too much tips (we enjoyed the show, that's why!). Patpong was very happening - we ate authentic thai food by savouring hawker/stall food = phat thai, barbequed chicken liver and pork, and try to refrain from fast foods restaurant and starbucks as to maintain our primary purpose of learning only thai culture. The night crept in tooo quickly.

The tut-tut were crazy, drivers, and worst than me, so nuff said! :P

Chatuchak market was the best thing that ever happen in our lives! This weekend market is not for the faint hearted as it welcomes you with its spiciness and glaring heat, but slowly warms you down with the smiles of amazingly friendly thai people. EVERY local is basically friendlier than your door-to-door salesman in Malaysia. Yes, my ultimate aim was to purchase and bargain, but i finally gave up as haggling had caused me to lose my breath literally. I bought everything without reducing the price. Didn't buy much things, but bought much food instead.

Then we both went to do something I considered 'constructive' - visiting tourisy places! Visited the grand palace. Very GRAND. Well, was hampered by GRAND heavy rain too. To shed ourselves from rain, bought some jewellery from an authentic jewellery factory. Then, sorta regret it. But it's for my parent's 30th year of anniversary this Dec. 2007, so can't blame my dire urge to get something for them. Spent RM1500 there!! Don't ask me. Ask Jonie the whole jewellery story. She was the lucky one.

Went shopping til our feet sore and our asses sitting on every bangku available in any area. But, my best purchases was the very cheap authentic Levi's jeans! Plus, their new shopping centre Paragon is super nice. Nicer than KLCC indeed.

Til, tomorrow. See you all......sob sob ...in Malaysia.

Surprises during hair cut

I went for a hair-trim to trim-off the ends of my hair and also to shorten my fringe. And the most amazing comment came out from the hair-dresser's mouth: "Girl, your hair is quite healthy". OMG, I can't believe what I've just heard but there's this instantaneous smile carved out of my face!!! Well, either she doesn't know what hair is all about, or she doesn't know these truths behind my unhealthy(??) hair:

1. Swimmer since...hell knows! I remembered swimming EVERYDAY in month January 2005. My hair is browning due to excessive chlorine exposure.
2. Teached swimming every alternate day for 2 years already.
3. Innately, my type of hair is categorized as DRY and frizzy.
4. Wash hair almost everyday because cannot tahan sweat from Aikido.
5. I don't use conditioner.
6. May use 4 different shampoos in one week - shampoo from gym (unknown cimplak brand), shampoo in UKM pool (Dove), shampoo in the main bathroom at home (Rejoice), shampoo from my parent's bathroom (Pantene).

So, here you go. I should visit this hair dresser next round just to boost my ego a bit from her compliments. I'm happy somebody actually complimented my hair when nobody has. Ever.

Birthday Potluck

For all those mahjong-ers out there, to me, nobody is comparable to Chris Thoo! As of now, you are a born walking mahjong calculator. Fipink's house on a night ago was a "swimmer's" paradise. But I won like soooo many rounds of mahjong that I deemed was SKILLS (ahem!) rather than LUCK. Chris must be eating his brains off trying to beat me , but I would like to thank first and foremost - my sifu of mahjong since secondary school - Fipink!

Those not playing mahjong resorted to watching DVD entitled "Host". It's about a GM-mutated, giant, absolutely carnivorous, walking fish (read:tadpole) eating up the whole Korean town. This movie reminded me of "Black Sheep" but in Host, the mutated tadpole was working singly in mutilating everyone in the town. It's a movie for the 'pure-entertainment' seekers. Verdict: Lame.

I brough my home made salad and coleslaw to Fipink's place. Some bought pizza, chicken, satay, etc. but the ultimate crowd puller was mahjong sifu Chris Thoo's rectangular lasagne (but Chris insisted it was NOT lasagne). Whatever it is, it was this powdery sprinklets on top of the lasagne that cause a lot of suspicion!! :P And we all girls protested it was THAT powder that caused our instant addiction to his dish. Chris, you've made all those women out there looked like they can't even cook half-boiled eggs.

Thanks Fipink & Kenny for opening their homes and messing their place. And hi to Ee Soon and gf.





Next up: Aquaria, sleep overs, Serendah, Chris' b'day (yeah, Chris is cooking) :P

For pictures of Fee Peng's b'day party, please click HERE .