au revoir, year of two~thousand~eight.

this past year's been good... from getting my stpm results to visiting beijing to entering HUC to my surprise birthday bash, and S's kidnap and my trip to jakarta plus other things... whew... so much's happened in just a year, and it dont feel like a year's gone by at all, actually...

could probably say this year was a turning point... several interesting incidents took place, met lots of new people, lost some others... i hope this bond we have among ourselves now'll last longer than the last clique i was in... it was heartbreaking watching it falling apart, and i couldnt bear for it to happen to this particular gang...

the ladies played some britney spears classics that birthday night, and somehow, recalling them last night made me think about our generation's teenage years... remember how cassette tapes and walkmans were all the rage? i remember buying scores of tapes (garnering mum's wrath) and recording all those pop songs (britney, nsync, bsb, A*teens, then later linkin park, lol) with my cd/cassette player... then came the discman fad, and i was crazy burning cds instead...

strange how all the discmans disappeared (mine's still stashed in my drawer somewhere, and my walkman dysfucntional already) once the mp3 players and ipods came onto the scene... and ever since i got into downloading music, i barely touch my cd player anymore, since i play all my music on the computer...lol... ahhh... nostalgic.

speaking of all these electronic toys.. last night i popped off to saberkas to see if the phone model i'd lost could be found... sadly, no, not a sign of it to be seen anywhere.. it isnt produced anymore, and what made things even sadder is that this style seems to be completely out of fashion too. bar phones and slide phones're all the in thing now, and their designs blocky and clumsy to boot. i dislike broad, wide chunky phones, since my hands're pretty small and its hard for me to carry them around. so imagine my dismay when i glanced at the display case and saw only a wide array of those big wide things. no more small compact clamshells, the way i like them. sad, sad, sad. dad berated me saying i was making a big fuss when i chose not to buy a single one of those things. i mean, why buy it if you dont really like it? i'd probably regret it later when i chance upon a model i do like, if i simply pick a run-of-the-mill one now. makes sense? lol.

a rather disorganized entry, if i might say so... lol... i'm supposed to go out with mum now. doubt i'll be able to post tonight, since i promised to go watch a movie with someone and head to SoHo's for the countdown. so yeaaah. the next entry you'll be seeing'll come in 09. good bye again, y2k8. i'm gonna miss you.

P.S i finally added the reds into my hair yesterday. a tribute to Die-san, the gorgeous redhead guitarist of dir en grey.. it was his flaming red locks that first caught my fancy anyway. ;)

a case of women gone wild... *laugh*

if you think ladies over the ages of 40 with children all grown up dont know how to enjoy themselves and go wild, you're sadly mistaken... as i witnessed last night, they definitely do know how to footloose. lol.

it was a birthday party, down at the junk. aptly named (or decorated, in the sense)place; the room was strung with a myriad of junk: a disco ball, a collection of old kerosene lamps, old texas license plate hung here, old toy bicycle there, woodwork everywhere; just a veritable assortment of junk. (i hear say the place's haunted: 1. the shop block itself's old old old; 2. you fill an old old place with old old old antiques and junk, what do you expect?) but i digress.

my mum and i + our neighbour were fashionably late, and i tried my best to stroll in like i knew everyone (actually i only knew two or three). of the old mahjong club gang, only these three i know, since the others've all left malaysia, probably back in their own respective countries. i miss you, pia, you all the way back in italy. and oddly i miss marion too, and all her tart (but well meaning) remarks. .. oops... i digress again.

if anything, last night was surely one of the most internationally inclined affairs i've ever seen. one long table, all expats except for my mum and myself. a few british, including the birthday lady (one fun lady if i do say so... which 49 year old has a tongue piercing???), new zealanders, irish... as for the asians... two koreans, one japanese, one indonesian, three singaporeans (one of which has turned australian), and mum and myself.

the night started out pretty tame, with light party games. dinner was a casual affair, and i sat right at the end of the table. the company was good too. spent most of my time conversing with the korean lady on my right, swapping polite conversation. it was later when the karaoke machine was turned on that the wild-ness arose... ABBA took off with some of their choice hits, and then a whole slew of other oldies, to which the ladies ooohed and ahhhed in satisfaction. the madness really began with 'wake me up before you go-go'; a long line of young hearted women dancing and yelling out the lyrics and laughing for all they were worth. pity i didnt catch that on video. it was real funny watching the ladies trying singing along to fergie belting out my humps too... risque stuff, tsk tsk.

in any case, it was a fun night. at least i wasnt the youngest; the youngest two were the teenage daughters of the birthday lady. happy birthday to angela again, even though its a day after.

aha. just a little time off. XD

ahhh... a post from jakarta itself... if i were to use a word to describe the place, i'd use the term 'patchwork'. the entire city feels like a quilt, with different patches tacked on to it haphazardly... to get to the housing estate i'm staying at, you first have to pass a very dilapidated area with crumbling shops and dirt everywhere... right past that, you get awesome italian-styled homes, definitely for the extremely wealthy. i must say they have so much more taste compared to *ahem* some malaysians. beautiful porticos and graceful columns, sweeping steps... see that back home? hardly... lol...

as it usually is with air asia, the flight was delayed by an hour. bad air asia.. the winds were so strong right before landing the plane was shaking violently... turbulent affairs... i remember closing my eyes and feeling the weightless sensation of being tossed around... scary and exhilarating at the same time. lol.

spent the first day strolling one of the most exclusive shopping centres around town: grand indonesia shopping town; inside those walls, no one is poor. everyone has money to spend and they're happily spending it, as it seems. outside's a different story, however. children beg for money in between the cars on the streets, standing next to your car and playing a violin hoping for just a little bit of that money. big difference, no? though one interesting character was a 'lady' sitting next to the road, very heavily made up, with flying eyebrows... lol... i guess you know what that means? pondan laa... haha... too bad i didnt manage to snap a photo of her; she was waving at us... lol...

i spent christmas in lembang. before that, we were in bandung. where we had dinner, Valley, the view was quite spectacular, in addition to a warm ambience. the food's another matter, though... it gave two of our party tummy aches. as for my tenderloin, it was badly cooked. cost quite a good bit. the next stop at lembang was awesome though. sangria resort has a breathtaking view of the mountains and valley, plus the way the place's decorated simply enhances the feeling of being in nature. well placed dim lights, a bamboo huts on stilts... i'll probably toss the photos up on my poetry in motion blog. the climate there resembles spring or autumn in some far-away country... celebrating christmas mass in that weather was beautiful; the slight chill makes a difference, somehow.

two more days till i go home. i miss my dog awfully and i wonder how he is. probably miserably lying in a corner of the cage waiting for days to pass and for us to come collect him. come january 3rd, i'll be back in kl, and seeing everybody.

ahhh... i'll be heading to jakarta tomorrow night....

ahhh... i'll be heading to jakarta tomorrow night... while initially i'd just wanted to stay home and enjoy, i guess mum's enthusiasm about the vacation's kinda infectious after all... back in kay elle it sounded like such a drag, but now some of it's rubbed off on me and i'm looking forward to the trip as well. will be in jakarta for about 3 days, and bandung, and probably medan as well... as everyone seems to be telling me jakarta's apparently a shopping paradise... i predict handling the cash'll be a headache though... how on earth do you go about carrying millions in your wallet? XD

even then, i look forward to shopping since i do need clothes and all... was at padini with mum just yesterday... i dont know how she conned me into getting those garish bright colours, so now i'm the proud owner of bright red, blue and orange clothes... i'll insist on my darling black next time round. granted, she allowed me a single black, and another white... but gah. why orange? (><) neither do i recall how she persuaded me to buy those jeweled slippers i wouldnt even have dreamed of looking at... flimsy satin, jeweled things... when ever am i gonna use them? oh well. charles and keith sure know their stuff, if it can attract an anti-jeweled-slippers person like me. lol...

plus, today i got dragged to have my hair cut; now my hair no longer falls to my back. it's shoulder length, just managing to brush the little expanse of back right below my shoulder. hat off to the young man who did my hair. i took him for a young trainee, but who knew he was a maestro? just slashed at my hair, snip snip snip went his scissors, and lo and behold my out-of-shape mess's now transformed into a chic layered style. i miss feeling my hair on my back though. will probably attempt to keep it long, though mum predicts i'll hack it all off by the middle of next year. i'll add some colour into it when i get back from jakarta. red? mum doesnt think so. chestnut again'd be so boring...

lol... when have i ever been into fashion anyway? since i turned 19? i remember past times when i'd get into horrific fights with mum just cuz i didnt want to wear skirts and later when i refused have any speck of makeup on me. plus back then i'd rather quarrel with her than allow her to con me into buying bright colours or jeweled sandals. still am not that particular about fashion, but i guess i'm paying more attention these days... seems like i've grown up, huh? armani, anyone? dont mind me, i'm just messing around with A-lliteration. *grin*

i am HOME!

oh yes... and a warm welcome i received from the heavens indeed in the form of heavy rain... never mind that... was stuck an extra half an hour in the plane due to the unstable weather. guess the pilot deemed it unsafe to land then.

overall today (minus the morning and early noon) was a complete waste of my time. first off, my dad insisted i head to the airport at one-freaking-o-clock when my flight's due at, whoa, 5pm?? even the taxi driver was taken aback at how early i was heading there... second off, arriving there toooo early became a nuisance cuz:A) the counter wasnt open yet so i had to wait half an hour,
B) the placed was so packed there was nowhere for me to sit for that half an hour so i had to stand carrying my heavy stuff,
C) my suitcase handle (the retractable one you use to pull it along) broke so i had to lug it around in addition carrying my bagpack and toting a laptop case that constantly slipped off my shoulder.

sounds like a veritable string of mishaps. well, to add frustration to irritation, the flight was delayed by a whole hour. that did tick me off since i really wanted to get outta the place and on the plane home; been there since 2:30pm and by 5:45 when they finally annoucing boarding... relief's the only word i can use to describe the whoosh that flew through my head.

if i were to continue bemoaning my bad luck for the day, instead of being able to sit on my own on the plane as i usually do, this time a (to borrow M's terminology) pengkiaw mum and daughter and baby chose to sit next to me... not that i dislike babies but this one was seriously nosy, noisy (he wailed all the time, in a voice that shook the plane) and his mum sure wasnt doing anything about it. neither could i sleep well, nor concentrate on my reading. oh, there was another wailing baby right in front of us too. what luck. not to mention the extra half an hour in the plane made me (and my friends who were waiting to fetch me) darned hungry; passing immigration and collecting my luggage took almost another half an hour and one of the girls was in quite a mood by the time i came out. sorry LY... guess my demanding to sit in front made your mood a little worse but i'm still grateful you guys waited so long for me...

aaaanyway... my mood turned a lot better when i got home and found my darling doggy at the doorstep welcoming me, his fluffy tail wagging for all he's worth... plus my dad showed me a tiny box of leonidas chocolates he'd bought... awesome stuff and definitely worth a once-in-a-lifetime taste... lol... oh, well. i' m home at last. worth all the trouble. XD

P.S wan, ben, edwin... was great seeing you guys at the terminal... pure amazing coincidence man... it was the last thing i'd have expected to happen.

it sounds cliche since i've said it so many times... but i'm going... (fill in the blank) XD

ohhh home... i'm going home...

was finally done with finals on friday, after which the gang headed straight up to genting to kick off all the stress from the few (four) days of cracking for finals... while i wouldnt say i'd flunk, i rather think i havent done very well... i wouldnt be surprised if i didnt get a single A this time around. gah.

still... up there halfway up the highlands, the air's so crisp, so fresh, i easily forgot all about the stress (aint there another word for it?)... stayed at an apartment owned by the family of one of the gang, so it saved us quite a good bit of cash, besides getting a lot more space than we'd have in hotel rooms. the journey up was rather fun, what with all the anticipation (especially since i've never been to genting before), albeit a little tiring having to heave all our foodstuffs up. we were traveling by bus, you see.

it was worth it. slugging through finals while clinging to the thought of all the fun we'd have at the end of it all, i thought them damn papers'd never end... we had fun, we got all that fresh air, we got to enjoy ourselves laughing at each others' snoring, we got to mess the kitchen up together (and clean up). best of all, we got to spend quality time together. and oh, we pretty much conquered the swimming pool too. XD

heaving all that heavy food up was worth the trouble.. food in gohtong jaya's quite quite good, but quite quite a hole in the pocket too. plus, we made the food stretch to fill us for a day and a half; three very satisfying meals: fettucine in creamed sauce + bacon mashed potatoes, then a whopping steamboat dinner. for the next day we used up leftovers from dinner and made noodle soup besides adding scrambled eggs and sausages to the mix... it was fun cooking with everyone else (though we exploded the fishballs a few times)... i miss cooking, i really do... hahaha... next time round we'll do that again yeah?

to the others, i'm sorry i didnt help out more with the cleaning on the final day... especially to JM who was all alone washing the kitchen and crockery up... i should've offered to help... and mopping the floor too... i'll help out more next time, i promise...

P.S i'm going home tomorrow! XD

yaaaaaaaaaah.

aack. if it werent for the fact that i like miss M and wouldnt want her to be disappointed, i probably wouldnt even be up now and still be trying to cram hopelessly useless information (at least it seems that way to me, my apologies to the Bcomm students) into my poor overloaded mind...

hols seem to be so near, and yet so far... for one i'm looking forward to actually getting everything over and done with; on the other hand... i kinda dread the idea of the semester ending... can you believe its almost the end of another semester??? it just seemed not-so-long ago when i was so tempted to forget about coming back to kl, felt so torn at having to leave home again. but then... i guess it wont be that bad this time around... cuz there'll be things to do, people i wanna see again, and more fun to be had, hahah. still, its too bad i only get to spend a few days at home for the coming hols though... not that i mind getting the chance to travel, but well, after having been away for months i'd love to just savour the feeling of being home again. sigh, guess you cant have it both ways. *shrug*

my poor poor box... spent some time putting the poor place in order after having left it in turmoil for a couple of days... most likely cuz a few of us'd just stayed over at the jester's to study and i suppose it made me ashamed since the place was so pristine, compared to my clutter... it was a relief, actually getting out of the box and getting to stay somewhere else (my aunt's place's the nest of chaos so it doesnt count), even if just for a bit... you cant imagine how comforting it was to look out the window and see foliage and green mountains, or wake up to the sound of bird calls... or actually seeing a living area instead of a long empty corridor when i walk out the room... it reminded me so much of my own home... (crap, dont i just feel like i wanna cry or what... ><) buzz, and there goes another car. so much for bird calls. at least the crickets're singing somewhere out there... too bad, they're too soft to actually be a comfort. sigh.

i miss my piano awfully too. didnt appreciate it much when i had it around; when i got to tinkle on the jester's piano... i guess i didnt realise how much i'd missed touching the keys and feeling the notes pour out... and yeah, dad... you got that right. you'll never know how near the truth you hit when you said one day i'd regret not taking my piano seriously. that day, needing so much to be able to play something properly and yet not being able to complete a single song... sigh. i should've listened to you.

creeps the time...

aaand... the presentation's finally done with (got rid of it on thursday)... i didnt do well at all, stumbling and stuttering all the way... i think miss M was rather disappointed with me ('what happened to you adelle?')... gah.

finals come right next week. if anything, at least the past two days were spent trying to study; though we dozed more than we studied (at least i thought so)... it just seemed so easy to slip into lethargy and simply drop off after only covering two chapters of either subject we were studying (especially since this time thingymothu was often just as lethargic as the rest of us, XD). wouldnt call it a complete waste of time though, since we did manage to cover more than i'd have done on my own in my box (as i'm doing now, instead of studying, i'm here whacking away at this again)...

blast... forgot to photostate the notes we made from M... ahhhhh... oh dear, dear... i ought to be getting on with my studying... in fact, i spent the day in kinokuniya browsing through legions of books that have nothing to do with my finals whatever... and subsequently discovered that peltzer's trilogy could be gotten in a single three-in-one edition rather than having to get them separately. double blast.


P.S i ought to have gotten that curveball book... am in desperate need of some light chick lit, what with all the heavy-going stuff i've been reading recently... why hadnt i listened when i was told to just get it?

and the moon smiled down upon us.

was in the common room with the mkt gang + jCe trying to concentrate on the group study. not very well though. got distracted quite a good bit and ended up drifting off thinking about all kinds of unrelated whatz-its... and now i'm back in my box worrying about tomorrow, the day after tomorrow and the other day after that.

mum called me just now from jinjiang, and i simply had no idea what she was talking about when she told me to go have a peep at the moon, it being 'very special' tonight. so i got the girls together and we popped out to check the moon. nice stuff. imagine a slice of the crescent moon curved just like a mouth, and two stars placed right above the mouth. there, hence the smiling moon. the guys joined us later. got scolded though for trying to snap a photo of it standing in the middle of the road, although it turned out rather horrid.

wonder if i'll live to see such a sight again. as the jester said, it's rather a night to remember, something special to cherish. when else would you ever see anything like this ever again? as though the heavens had it arranged just to smile down on you.

forget that for now. i conclude (once again) after today especially, that i am NOT going to take marketing ever-again-come-what-may. it didnt matter that we'd spent an entire afternoon and night crashing waaaay tough on it, till now i still cant seem to grasp the whole gist of ideas properly or use them the right way. neither do i seem to feel any drive to actually pour some blood and sweat in...in fact, this afternoon's study session was converted into an 'art therapy session' with the jester, the rabbit and myself scrawling haphazard drawings on notes, paper, skin. use your imagination, lol. and now of course, i'm still here whacking away at my keys instead of getting my notes out to read.
gah.



P.S to the jester: i dare you to say you cant draw, especially since this afternoon proved that you can... who says you arent able to? =)