born,
the doctor forgot to give me my BCG shot, because till now i don’t have the mark on my left arm. or maybe i recovered so fast that there wasn’t any scar left. =p

one,
duno.

two,
duno either. mum said i first started walking when i was 20 months old.

three,
remember bits and pieces only. i remember my favourite book, can’t remember the title, but the cover had a picture of a bold rainbow.

four,
still bits and pieces. i cried when my mum woke me up from my afternoon nap by calling me “kache kache!! (big sis, big sis!)” she never did call me that before, and that was her last time.

five,
first year in kindergarten. never liked red bean soup during recess time. always got first or second in class. when i got sixth place once, mum was like, “aiyo, why so char (bad) wan?”

six,
second year of kindergarten. still didn’t like red bean soup. dad took sis and i to port dickson.

seven,
standard one. was horrible at arts. i found every artwork too challenging. i begged my mum in tears to help me with my first homework: a collage. after that, i never bothered asking her anymore because it just took too much effort and tears getting her to help. so from then i never completed them, tuesday after tuesday. eventually, after many weeks, when my art teacher had enough of me handing up incomplete work, gave me a caning on my palm and sent me to the staff room to face the wall until the subject ended.

during the first few days of school, i struggled with the english language because english was never my first language at home. cantonese was. i even had trouble communicating with my classmates. eventually, i became quite fluent in it.

eight,
i was kicked out of class event for the school’s sports day because i was so confused; i just couldn’t grasp the whole idea of the whole process.

got second place in class. =)

nine,
that’s when they start reshuffling classes and i had new classmates. and finally, mum let me keep my hair long. every weekday afternoon while waiting for the schoolbus, my babysitter would tie my hair into whatever style i liked.. ponytails, single braid, two braids, etc. every day i’d have different ribbons, blue, white or black.

ten,
standard four – morning session. i had the coolest class teacher, Miss Yap. nothing much happened too.. just that the memory of the dentists and nurses are more vivid. i feared them so much.

eleven,
another cool class teacher – Cikgu Fuad. once, he didn’t appear in class at all, and then we heard that he had an accident but was still in school. i was more afraid of him suddenly showing up in class because i was imagining that he’s all covered in blood, and my seat was directly in front of his table.

my very first birthday party in my house. my crush was invited as well. *grin*

was being hunted down by the library teacher for not returning a book i did not borrow. talk about being framed and betrayed by a good friend.

pierced my ears on the last day of 1995.

twelve,
my mum couldn’t believe that i scored straight As for UPSR. i was so happy! on the last day of school, we were so saddened that that was the last day of our reign in primary school. we presented a song during a special assembly – Because You Loved Me by Celine Dion. Up till now, that song holds a special meaning in my life. it was presented to our teachers, and before we could finish the song, all of us broke down on stage. even the teachers cried. the younger students just looked at us in confusion. i spotted my sis in the sea of juniors too.

thirteen,
kept thinking that this whole year i’d get bad luck, being thirteen years old. life in Sri Aman Secondary Girls’ School was okay, i was an obedient girl who always followed the school rules. i wanted to be a school prefect but mum wouldn’t let. i joined girl guides and photography club.

owned my first computer in my life.. it was a hand-me-down. but we were satisfied enough to own a computer. =)

fourteen,
president of photography club who never did anything. this was the year i first discovered pasta. my favourite subject was kemahiran hidup. won second prize in the school’s sewing competition. my mum and aunt helped me make a pocket tissue cover which some of you have seen before. accepted Jesus as my Saviour in a youth rally, 4th april 1998.

fifteen,
started to become nocturnal. i’d stay up all night doing homework till it was time to go to school, and when i come back, it was bedtime till dinnertime. one day my grandma decided to play a prank on me. i came home and straight away knocked out on my bed in my school uniform. i was sleeping until my grandma frantically came in and said to me, “wake up! it’s time to go to school ady!” i bolted up from my bed to look at the clock: 7.20. first thought was: “shucks, i’m LATE! and i didn’t even bathe??” and then suddenly, for a long moment, i started to get suspicious and confused at the same time. 7.20AM or PM? the tv was on, and was showing the usual evening TVB series. then only i knew it was PM. =p

was also secretary of girl guides, secretary of my class and secretary of badminton club.

sixteen,
i didn’t opt for pure science class. went to sub science instead, where i dropped biology and took up IT. i was elected the class monitor. IT was fun. my closest buddy then was Cindy Lim, and we’re always together for projects. i was a member of kelab pencinta alam and orkid, the only form four member amongst form five seniors.

my moral teacher was a new teacher who just joined the school. i realised she was my english teacher back in standard one!

stayed back after school with a senior, Azrin Syarina. i always went to her class and we’d do our homework and play hangman on the blackboard, and go home in the evening.

danced traditional chinese dance for prize-giving ceremony.

seventeen,
still the class monitor. knew i wouldn’t do well for SPM. i diligently typed and printed my sejarah (history) notes, and my teacher made me stand up cuz she didn’t believe i actually typed it! she kept accusing me of photocopying the reference book and pasting in my notebook instead! a lesson learnt: never use the printing setting ‘draft’ for my further notes.

kelab pencinta alam was demolished, sadly. because no members wanted to join. =( vice president of badminton club.

danced traditional chinese dance (again) to the song Matsuri by Kitaro for prize-giving ceremony.

eighteen,
made more new friends in form six.. a whole new and different environment. i couldn’t get used to being in a co-ed school at first. met this guy who was a piggy in class. his name was raymond, and he became my first love. we went through ups and downs together. he was really sweet, gentle and extremely patient. i was a really nasty competitor – i’d sulk the whole day if raymond got one mark higher than me in english. we spent a lot of time studying in the MPPJ library. he would be practising answering physics questions and i’d ransack the whole art and crafts section. another fave hangout place for us was PJ old town and amcorp mall. =) passed my driving test.

nineteen,
upper six was crazy. but still fun. loved the chemistry experiments. my neighbour, Valerie, gave me a dog. that’s Chelsea for you.

twenty,
long-distance relationship with yeemeng. when i was back in malaysia, among the things i loved doing with him were going to gigs and open mics with him, night drives to kl just to see the lights and indomee mamak almost every single night. when he was in australia, it was msn and smses that kept us in touch. oh yeah, and phonecalls every night. i was very diligent with my journal writing where i’d record every single event and thought, and also smses from yeemeng. i still can’t believe i finished four books already!

the year of my life when i was surrounded by children almost every day. i was a kindergarten helper. this was the year i overcome my fear of communicating with kids. i love them all to bits. it was a joy seeing them grow and improve, as well as their little antics. for instance, while the kids were lining up to use the basin in the toilet to wash their hands after a messy artwork session, i was chatting with a bright girl with huge expressive eyes, Ren-Yi. i noticed she smudged her face with paint.

me: Ren-Yi, you’ve got paint on your face.
Ren-Yi: where? (tries to rub it off by rubbing her face)
me: don’t worry, you can use the mirror in the bathroom.
Ren-Yi: but how to use the mirror to wipe??
me: ….

twenty one,
entered college and started studying again, after a year of hiatus. i’m the oldest in the class. met a bunch of wacky and zany friends who are supportive in every way. =) started teaching in sunday school in church, the first day being on my birthday. celebrated my 21st with the youth in burger king ss2. =)

got baptised on the 27th november 2005. my mum attended my baptism, and that’s when she (and probably the congregation) found out about me being a Christian without telling her.

twenty two,
joined the canticle singers and got involved in a musical! =) it was a nice experience. five months of not able to go to my area’s pasar malam! and my friends threw me a surprise birthday party at nando’s klcc! =) my CGPA’s deteriorating. =s quarter of my life gone. no more P licence but still unable to drive. still trying to improve my life to be pleasing in God’s eyes.

*phew*

it was my cousin’s housewarming party. erm.. two years ago. as i was
holding a camera hostage, i was trigger happy. *grin* so,
clickety-click i went. this sweet-looking girl is my niece.

what is more interesting is the two people at the background. that’s my mum trying to be a dentist. it’s quite adorable and surprising how obedient her little patient can be, obediently opening her mouth for my mum to yank out her stubborn tooth.

the dentist didn’t quite succeed though. it wasn’t time for the tooth to let go.

sigh.. back to studying. sem finals start tomorrow afternoon.

This is just part of my collection.. teehee. The bootee and curly heart stamps are original ones. You’re welcome to add to my collection!

Ever since Guats and Colin gave me four stamping and papercraft magazines for my birthday, I’ve been hooked! I could take one copy and flip from front to back again and again and the ideas in the magazine will keep inspiring me. Besides that, it has educated me about special inks for stamping and embellishment for scrapbooking, which are quite difficult to find in Malaysia since the mags are imported from Australia..

until I visited Craft Haven at One Utama and Papier Love at The Curve.

I discovered the shop Papier Love in Klue magazine.. it’s the first shop in Malaysia which sells materials for scrapbooking. And oh my.. when I stepped into the shop, I felt like I was in papercraft heaven! I stood marveling at every paper, embellishment, ribbon, fibre, stamp, sticker, vellum (something like tracing paper), EVERYTHING. Almost everything there came from Aussie.. even the papers had brands!

Alas, the items there are not cheap.. no one said that scrapbooking was cheap. It is quite an expensive hobby. But things can be improvised. =) If you’re good at improvising and replacing certain odds and ends with your own collectibles, by all means. Furthermore, it’s more unique than getting standard embellishment found in shops which are easily accessible to everyone.

When I was home, I decided to reorganise my thick-as-a-shoebox folder of A4-sized coloured papers I’ve collected since I was in secondary school. As I was sorting them out  on the floor according to hues, I realised I have almost every shade of every colour! I used to go to Popular bookshop or MPH to buy those paper-by-weight papers. I don’t buy so much now.. since my collection’s so huge already!

I love crafts, just like my dad.. I think he’s the one who cultivated the interest in me. He used to teach me paper cutting when I was little and would spend what seemed like endless hours cutting coloured papers into shapes, letters, animals and flowers. We’d pasted our artwork all over the house. To my surprise, my aunt (my dad’s sister) is still keeping ALL the things I made for her since I was a little girl! She kept the drawers I made using three matchboxes in her kitchen cabinet, a japanese doll bookmark in her display cabinet, and her cabinet is adorned with my paper cuttings of horses and other designs! Even I don’t remember cutting the horses. Maybe my dad was the one who did it. Hehe.

Craft. My passion fovevaaah!

the result of terjatuh terpelanting on the way to the LRT station from college. scraped my knee.

i’ve painted my toenails a nice shade of electric blue.. something like the blue of benlee’s blue kelisa. and they look ghastly hideous.. dunno why. maybe it’s cuz they don’t complement the dull and dry complexion of my feet.. =s now i look like some witch..

i seriously felt like skipping classes on monday.. the blues hit me real hard till i couldn’t stop thinking about the production and the times we shared during rehearsals and practices. the feeling is like, as though a close friend has gone overseas to study, and you miss that friend very much. it felt as though we were in a very very long camp, and now it has ended. everyone was very emotional before the final show on sunday evening.. i myself couldn’t stop my tears from trickling down my made-up face.

i miss..

1. the journey from masjid jamek to panggung bandaraya.
2. the dark, black-walled backstage i’ve grown familiar with.
3. the dressing room and the mirrors with lightbulbs around them.
4. going into the make-up room to have my make-up done.
5. putting on my own microphone.
6. the mike tests where i’d sing a snippet and recite my lines.
7. sitting on the stairs at the side entrance like refugees, gobbling our scrumptous dinner and sharing chips.
8. the nice warm-up session where we’d all hold hands on stage – all nineteen of us – and ‘play’ ring-a-ring-a-roses.
9. the adrenaline rush right before we come out from behind the curtains.
10. our assistant stage manager, vicky’s voice booming backstage, telling us the time (cuz we had no watches) and being a nice mummy to us. =p
11. the night view of KL.
12. everything and everyone..

oh man.. i’m being nostalgic all over again.. tomorrow’s the cast party and i really can’t wait! *jumps around* looking forward to it.. and i have almost one gig of pictures of the performance! =D *yay* still lazy to load them into the computer. i did try, but my USB is not working.. very odd. i’ll try restarting later.

SIGH.

i am one. after you know the true story.. or rather, the full version of how i sprained my right ankle two weeks ago.

today, i am the champion who left my backpack in panggung bandaraya. i have practically eveything in there. i still can’t believe how i could be so forgetful. i knew i was leaving the panggung after the rehearsal with it, then i realised i left my folder and scores in the hall. so i went in, put down my bag, took the folder and the scores and left without my backpack.

>.<

now, my yellow and black bag is under the custody of the technical engineer. *phew*

like i said, i have practically everything in it! the regular companions which go to college with me:

wallet. with my IC and ATM card in it.
handphone. still in silent mode
camera. argh!!
MP3 player.. =s
umbrella
water bottle.
LRT pass. that’s it.. RM5 for transportation tomorrow.. *sniff*
student card.

and the backpack itself.

all not here..

i’m so exhausted.. dozing off as i’m typing this. hope i can survive for the whole week. some of the cast members are unwell. hopefully they’ll recover soon so that they can perform their best and hope those who are still healthy will remain well.

the backstage of panggung bandaraya is kinda cool. black walls, blue lights. lotsa black curtains and button panels on the walls. looks rather scary but nice!

i’m amazed at all the technical stuff like lightings and curtains. the backstage reminded some of them of horror movies like final destination and silent hill. hehe.. but, they’re rather dusty..

i’m excited when this morning, after sunday service, a few of my church friends were counting the number of people going for the musical! =) i’m outta here.. into dreamland i autopilot.. zZz

As I type this, I have a purple crustacean with his legs clinging on tightly to my right forefinger. Looks as though I’m wearing a huge brown seashell on my finger. So far, the purple hermit crab is the bravest among all three that I own. He’s the biggest too.

A lot has happened since my last post.. I feel like blogging about my birthday, but it has long passed and not really newsworthy already. Besides, Peiling and Jinfong has already covered the story. Oh man, I make a lousy journalist.

But I’ll blog about it anyways! =D

At the stroke of midnight, 24th of July, after I came home from TCS rehearsal, birthday SMSes came through. I was sitting in front of my computer, half-waiting for a midnight birthday phone call. Heheehh.. but none came. So I got quite depressed. Saw Peiling online and she commanded me to go sleep. I protested, “But but.. I’m waiting for birthday phone calls!”

Immediately, my phone rang.

It was Peiling. She said to me on the phone, “Ok, now you can go sleep ady.”

=.=

I stayed online for at least two hours.. Lijian sent me an MP3: a depressing birthday song by Arrogant Worms. Just perfect.. -_- haih.

After classes ended at 2pm, we had a birthday lunch at Nando’s KLCC with some of my classmates. Farah, Amanda, Peiling, Ju, JE, Diane and Geetz were there to celebrate with me. Halfway through barbarically scraping hot peri-peri chicken meat off the bones, suddenly three church friends appeared with a cake.

I was like, Oh. My. Gosh. wHaaAaaa..??

Peiling and Jinfong said in their entries that the expression on my face was priceless. =p

I was.. speechless. And very touched. Peiling was the mastermind of the whole surprise. Teeliang, Teekeat and Jinfong came in with Secret Recipe’s chocolate moist cake, which I am still eating at the moment I’m typing this (the hermit’s back in his crabitat..).

On that particular day too, I bought the abovementioned hermit crab from One Utama. =D And then Teeliang and I got an S.O.S SMS from Amanda – Peiling, Geetz and herself were still stuck in Ampang Park LRT station because the train system broke down. It was already 8pm, and they had been stuck waiting for 2 hours.

So it was Teeliang and Waiyee – to the rescue!! He drove all the way to Ampang Park, scooped them up and headed to Wangsa Maju, where they stay. We got lost looking for the way to college for three hours! Finally, we reached at 11pm. Poor Teeliang was so tired already. I was also exhausted; dozed off all the way back to PJ.

I reached at 11.30pm. Spent what’s left of my birthday in front of the computer again. =) It’s been a splendid one.

Another sweet thing which Peiling did for me was compiling birthday wishes and “testimonials” of people in our class.. and also from my church friends, and printed them with funky fonts on three A4 papers. I was again, touched by her effort. =)

Thanks, Ling, for everything. =) *huggles*

And also, I wanna thank my dear friends, for all your birthday smses and phonecalls to me, and also the lovely pressies. Thanks for the birthday prayer through MSN voice clip, Oon-Ee. =)

We used to visit each other’s houses when we were little. I especially loved to canter over to hers, just a house away, while dreaming of her latest toys and ideas of games that we would be playing. We would spend our afternoons banging her piano keys and listening to Aaron Carter’s chirpy voice. We loved Uno Madness and doing acrobatic stunts, climbing on each other trying to create a tall formation. There was a time I lost balance and fell, hitting my mouth on the corner of her bed. It swelled right after.

I would say our best-loved game was badminton. Our neighbour would say to us with a big grin whenever we accidentally hit over to her territory, “Wah, who’s the champion who hit this shuttlecock over here?” However, she was nice to us to let us go over to her house to pick up strayed shuttlecocks, “Just come over only.. the gate is not locked.”

Valerie looked lovely when she was a little girl. Just a year younger than I, she is vivacious, always actively running and jumping around. Her straight long black hair portrayed her as demure and quiet, somewhat a contrast to her energetic nature. When I first knew of her existence, I was intimidated by this English-speaking girl. We were at our babysitter’s house, just right opposite my house. I took one look at her and stuck out my tongue, much to my mother’s horror. I bet Val was stunned as well.

She asked me much later, after we got along, “Why did you stick out your tongue at me?” Fumbling for an answer, I murmured, “I don’t know.” My vocabulary was poor back then. I could only speak Cantonese and pure English-speaking creatures scared me.

We became very good friends. I loved her house, not just the toys, but the ambience. She used to have lots of cats; A grey tabby called Edward which suddenly went missing, a Siamese called Wesak, because it was adopted on Wesak Day, and an orange tabby called Tiger. Now she owns a brown Spitz called Lassie, since 1994.

And she’s the one who gave me Chelsea, my dog. =)

Somewhere along our teenage years, she seldom visited each other’s houses. The visits grew less, and there were none at all. It felt as though we were strangers again. But I never forgot her birthday. Just last June, I gave her her 21st birthday present. She wasn’t around, but her father was. He was like, “Wah, you still can remember her birthday?” I replied, “Yeah, I always did.”

After years of not talking to each other, she made the first move to keep in touch. Now she’s working as a hairstylist in Aman Suria. She called me for supper, and we were at SS2 mamak for three hours, just catching up. I laughed while I listened to her stories when she was working in A Cut Above and TGIF. She talked most of the time. I didn’t have the chance to tell her about myself, but that’s okay. There will always be next time, and besides, her stories were interesting! She told me about how her friend who wanted and strongly insisted some funny Ah Beng hairstyle for her exam piece to how she scolded her manager who scolded the workers for nothing.

When we reached home, she parked her mother’s green Proton Wira aeroback right in front of her gate and I walked home right after saying goodnight. It felt kinda fun, because usually people would fetch me home and then drive off. So this is like, something different.. that the person who drove me home staying so near me. Don’t know if you get what I’m trying to express.. I don’t know how else to describe it.

Before we reached home, she was telling me how her father and herself loved the neighbourhood so much that she wouldn’t shift to anywhere else. I wouldn’t shift too. It’s so convenient where I stay; the LRT station is just five minutes walk away, and my neighbours are lovely. My babysitter and my family used to carpool to go Carrefour Subang Jaya together. Whenever we cooked nice dishes, we would distribute them to the others. I remember I learnt to make rendang in Form Two, and was so excited to give some to my babysitter.

Yep, I wouldn’t give anything in the world to exchange them with somewhere else.

Book your tickets now! =D Tickets available from AXCESS Hotline +603-77115000, the AXCESS website and through all AXCESS outlets.