Surprise!

On Wednesday night, Sean and I threw a surprise birthday party for Ming Zen. His cousin, Joce, bluffed him that they were going for a little family dinner. Haha. Smart! And he fell for it. He had no idea that he was heading to TGIF in One Utama to meet us.

There was so much anticipation in the air while the rest of us waited for Ming, Jermayn and Joce to arrive. Finally, they came in and Ming was walking in front. As if on cue, all of us stood up and shouted: Happy Birthday! His expression was priceless.


There were around 24 of us.
Ming, Sean, me, Isaac Chek, Isaac Wong, June, Vivian, Justin, Cerys, Melanie, Trina, Summer, Josephine, Jer Mayn, Jocelyn, Carolyn, Amelia, Daniel Yee, Adam, Marcus, Lewis, Joy, Shana and Lucas. The food was alright. My favorite would be the fried mac and cheese!



Ming received presents and a free dessert. Too bad he wasn't asked to do the birthday tradition. At Itallianies, TGIF and other similar eateries, the birthday girl or guy would have to stand up on the chair and give a speech in front of everyone. Lol. Oh well. :)

Anyway, the dessert was a single scoop of vanilla ice cream and two layers of raisin cake with powdered sugar. That was even nicer than the normal chocolate mousse cake that they serve there.
It was so good that everyone wanted a taste of it. XD

Adam: Sean!! This is so good I tell you. You have to try it.

Sean: Sorry Ming.. I can't resist.
Ming: Wait!! Don't cut so much ah. Cut this portion. The rest is for me.

Okay I was kidding. I made up the conversation. Lmao. But you get the point; the cake was nice.

My besties were there too.

I love you both so so much! :D

And you too, the birthday boy :)

CNY

Chinese New Year only comes by once a year, and this might be my last year celebrating it in Malaysia with all my relatives. I'm blogging from my grandmother's place in Negeri Sembilan. I brought my camera along, and my ipod and my phone - the 3 electronic devices I cannot live without - and what a smarty I was. I brought chargers for the ipod and phone, but not for the camera. And my camera battery just died five minutes ago. LMAO. >.<

What do you like most about CNY?

I like the angpaos. And I'm being dead honest here. I'm not money-faced. It's a nice feeling to receive cash so freely. You don't have to work for it. Just dress decently, put on a big smile and say "Gong Xi Fa Chai" to a married adult and seconds later, there's a red packet in your hand :)

I like seeing my relatives too, but I just saw them last month so seeing them again doesn't make much of a difference. :D Lol.

I played Chor Dai Dee several times today. And then my cousin taught us a new card game called "41" . Have you heard of it? It's similar to BlackJack, except your goal is 41.

Firecrackers are present at every festive season in Malaysia. My cousins were playing firecrackers earlier. I wanted to take pictures of the fireworks but my camera passed out halfway.

I'm currently in a very small town, where the lifestyle here is simple and relaxing. I kind of like it, actually. I mean, it's not all that bad. The only bad thing is that they lack shopping malls.

Haha. I'm kidding. The place is alright =D

You cannot have Chinese New Year without food. But the problem with most Chinese families is that the adults force everyone in the house to eat. The ratio of food to human would be like 10:3.

There's always surplus of food waiting to be devoured, and people like me don't like being forced to eat when we're not hungry. I just had lunch, and I was already full. Grandma brought me a bowl of Chinese soup, and I finished that too. Then as I was getting ready to leave the table, my aunt said, "There's still some more rice. You ate so little. You should eat more."

And I was like, "No thanks. I'm full. In fact, I think I ate quite alot today."

"Aiyohhh, this is only once a year. Eat more lah!"

I managed to escape into the living room, and as I sat down on the couch to watch Tv, another auntie offered me some cookies. I was going to give her the same excuse, but she added that she made them herself. How to decline, right? So, to be polite, I agreed to take one.

"Is it nice?" she asked me.

"Yeah, it's nice." I replied. I thought that it was going to stop there.

"Good. In that case, take some more lah!" and she pushed the whole jar toward me.

It's like they force you to eat everything everytime. Lol.

Anyway, have a wonderful Chinese New Year! :)

May you all be full to the brim with delicious food.

And angpaos ;)

Take care!

Indecisive

Truthfully speaking, I am quite a fickle-minded person. When presented with a wide range of choices, I become extremely indecisive.

Last year at college, I spent 30 minutes of my free time deciding where to eat, and the next 30 minutes at the shop deciding what to eat.

On certain days, I take almost an hour choosing what to wear.
Then I complain that I don't have enough clothes.

I can spend an hour in a shopping mall, and still not buy anything because I believe in the "buy-the-best" theory, which means I need to spend my money on the things that I really, really like and not the ones that I think are quite mediocre.

But when I set my mind on something, it's quite unlikely that I'll change it. Unfortunately, I have a hard time fixing my mind on something. My thoughts are always racing through my mind, thinking of new possibilities.

I wish I could be less fickle-minded. Then I wouldn't have so many blank spaces in life.

My major concern now is my university. Almost everyone that I know has already applied, or is planning to apply to a certain university. But I don't have a clue where to go. I'm still considering a handful of universities... like UNL, UCA, and maybe this small little university called Graceland Uni... but I'm doubtful.

If I've made the right decision, I would feel the peace.

But I'm NOT peaceful now. Because suddenly, a new option opened up: Australia. Now my choices have spread over to a different continent, and it's even harder to decide. At the end of the day, there's only one university that I'm destined for.

How do people make decisions so easily? I'm impressed and envious at the same time. They save the time and trouble wasting thoughts on unimportant issues. If only my mind could function like that. Lol. Then I'd be a really different person.

I think I know my middle name now.

Carissa Fickle Gan.

Extraordinary

Monday, 12 January 2009.

I awoke to an unpleasant start when my aunt next door rushed into my house and began calling for my mother. She was so noisy. I reached for my phone and saw that the time was only 5.45 am. I noticed that the sky outside was a bright, glowing shade of orange.


Being a little groggy from my sleep, I assumed it was probably sunrise or something. Had the earth tripped on its own axis while spinning? Maybe that was what the whole commotion was about. The bright orange thing in the middle was probably the sun, and the whitish stuff was the clouds. But as I listened carefully, I detected notes of panic from both my aunt and mom in the hall outside. And then I was awake enough to remember that clouds don't look as ferocious as this.

FIRE.

The fire started in one of the factories across my apartment, and it was spreading so wildly that soon, the entire factory was erupting in flames. I could hear explosions even in the safety of my bedroom.

And well, I told my mom that I wanted to go there so I could take pictures. She gaped at me as though I was crazy, but being a typical Malaysian, curiosity got the best of her and she said, "Okay. Five minutes. Go get dressed."

The site was only about five to ten minutes away, but she drove anyway. Who feels enthusiastic to walk all the way at 6 in the morning? There were quite a number of people already gathered there, some taking photos of the scene. The air was filled with excitement, fear and anticipation. I just couldn't wait to take some pictures of the scene. All I cared about were the pictures, and a good story.


From where we stood, I could smell the unpleasant smell of the smoke and feel the intense heat.
The fire brigades arrived not too long after that, followed by several police cars. It was like watching a movie - except this was real. You know what we were missing? Popcorn.

Some curious youngsters ran forward, closer to the burning inferno to have a better look. They got chased away by the police. Some of the bystanders got chased back by the firemen. I got chased back into the car by my mom.

As she drove me home, she said, "Why are you so interested in taking pictures of that?"

I instinctively replied, "It doesn't happen everyday."

When I went back to bed, it was almost 7 am. Before drifting off to sleep, I heard the muffled sounds of the sirens blaring and the amplified voices of policemen shouting orders through their loudspeakers. Realization began to dawn upon me, and I knew what I'm passionate about.
Photography and writing. It was all I actually thought about as I picked up my camera.

So, I'm pretty convinced that I'll go into journalism. I hope that's the right choice.

I woke up late today, and as a result, I was late for my morning class. Lol. On the way home, I stopped by the site just to see the remnants of what was left of that factory. The poor building was scorched and damaged.



Oh well. At least that part of it still remained.

Back in College!

My classes started yesterday. I was so reluctant to go back to college because that would signify the start of stress (at least, that's what the pessimistic side of me said) but surprisingly, I actually forgot about the main thing that makes college interesting: the company. I'm glad for a bunch of jovial mates who never fail to put a smile on my face every time we meet.

I'm taking 3 classes this semester - Music, Politics and Anthropology. Similar to my first day of college in 2008, I got lost again on my first day of college in 2009. Haha. It was the same thing: finding the stupid class located outside of college. The Music class was along the shops... somewhere on the second floor or something. =/ At least this time, I had friends so I didn't feel so awkward going in late for class on my first day. The whole bunch of us got lost together. How cool is that? :)

Music seems pretty interesting. Although what we're actually studying is about the history of music and not exactly on how to operate an instrument, we get to go to concerts for our assignments! One of them is MPO (Malaysian Philharmonic Ochestra aka Classical Music Only) and the other is a concert of our choice - it could even be a dance concert, as long as it has music in it. Wheee! :) Oh, and we have to perform on English Day too. My lecturer is going to break us into groups and we're supposed to come up with a play. I hope it'll be fun. She sounded so convincing.

Politics is the bomb. It's all about American Government. It's a bombastic subject for me, because I've never been interested in politics until the recent election, and now I'm studying about American Politics when I don't even know much about Malaysian politics. I'm not exactly politically updated, you know. I don't like, check CNN everyday to find out what's going on. I leave that to my dad. Yep, he's good at it. :)

Anthropology is the study of people, from their history to their culture, etc. The lecturer, Ms.Lim, is so cute! Today was our first class and she told us to split up into groups for our field trip. All of us have to go to a rural area within Malaysia and do a report about the lifestyle of the people living in that area, preferably natives.
So she was telling us about how the natives have so many kids. 21 is a big number for a particular family. Over there in their culture, it's quite normal, really.
"What to do? They have so much free time ma.. and they don't have so many entertainments over there unlike you people. So they become bored. Then they have sex lah! It's entertainment what!" she said.
"But 21 is really ALOT of kids... how to produce so many?!" someone else said.
"Over there the people are more relaxed. Not so stressed up. So their sperm also got more energy."

Yup, she really said that. LOL.

My group and I were so indecisive of where to go for our field trip. One of the guys kept suggesting Terrenganu because of the beach and turtles. And then we were looking at the Malaysian map and we started pointing at the random places we should go.
"Let's go to Marang!"
"Why Marang?"
"Have you heard of it?"
"No..."
"Then that's why we should go there. Because it's rural."

I have a feeling that this field trip is NOT gonna be boring. Haha.

Okay, well I'll update with more updates soon :) Cheerios!! And have a good week ahead.

A New Beginning

2008 has been a roller coaster ride. There were ups and downs, loopholes, sharp edges, but most importantly, it was challenging. Nothing stayed the same for long.

There were many things that I was proud of, and yet there were things I wished I could take back.

There were bonds that were strengthened, and there were certain bonds that were broken with time.

There were times when I just felt like giving up, but despite the pain and failures, I held on.
And I'm glad that I did.

Because I got to see a whole new side of myself this year, a part of me I didn't know I could be.

I'm grateful for all the people who've been with me throughout the year, and the experiences I've been through. The memories of 2008 will never leave my mind. They will always be emblazoned in my memory somewhere, reminding me of the path that I've been through.

Now 2009 awaits, and I hope this year would be a different journey of another kind. But above it all, I hope the experiences I've carried with me will aid me with the new challenges this year has to offer.

Have a happy new year, all of you :)