RACONTEUR-ESQUE SCRIBBLINGS

I've noticed that weddings in general have provided great blog fodder throughout the years, from the time a friend and I misread the date of a friend's wedding , and consequently missed it, to the time where friends and I have observed favourite uncles (probably after a drink too many) who are known to have sung karaoke style at weddings, and even where unsuspecting friends (that's us) who wanted to have a nice Chinese dinner have accidentally crashed a stranger's wedding dinner (although they paid for their own food, the unexpected entertainment was free!)  A few years ago, a friend casually remarked (coincidentally this was at another friend's wedding) that Malaysians had the tendency to even invite someone they had only met the day before to their weddings. That, and the fact that certain communities choose to have their weddings at home instead of a hall was probably the reason why the very first wedding thief thought that this would be a pretty good modus...

In an otherwise almost normal and mundane existence, there is a certain person who calls herself TS who has the occasional need to  throw her hands in the air in frustration, and utter the words - "Just My Luck" Allow her to explain: 1. She has been skeptical about buying things online (except for the occasional plane ticket) for a very long time, until one day, her sister forwarded a Groupon offer to her that was the perfect complement to a certain brand new 'toy' she just got herself. She had finally crossed an unseen threshold and purchased something online, something she's never done before. The item which she purchased at the end of last year was supposed to arrive at her doorstep in mid January. Now, it's nearing the end of February and apparently, the item is still waiting for clearance from China. At least Groupon has been contacting her (and others who took up the offer) and giving updates on the delay, but still... 2. The dentist told her that...

Talking about hotels has never been a fun idea of a post, but I seriously thought that this one hotel and our experience with it deserves a special mention as it is the epitome of how everything that can go wrong will go wrong if the circumstances are just right. I suppose the biggest problem of all was that it was raining heavily. The second biggest problem was that the rain was unexpected. In fact, by the time we had arrived, it had been raining continuously for almost two whole days. This website shows how bad it was. The data provided here was from Feb 1 to 7, 2011 . Based on yearly reports from other websites, February is the month that has the lowest rainfall in the year. Our holiday there was from Feb 2 to 6, 2011. Murphy's Law, or a holiday curse? (Please note that the post below talks about the rain and more rain and all rain related disasters and this doesn't even include the burnt socks incident yet) Back to the hotel. Interestingly, the hotel is far ...

January is crazy, and it's not even half way through. I haven't had time to blog and all my blog ideas (which always make their special appearance when I'm driving, unfortunately) have evaporated into a place where it's never to be seen again, the graveyard of dead blog ideas. Anyway, just to fill up the space, I thought I'd post something I wrote back in April 2011 but never published.  I suppose it's easier when you have good lighting and a professional camera person, but try taking a photograph of your hairstyle by yourself, and all you'll get is a big black blob (if the hair is black, that is) So after several failed attempts with and without the help of a mirror, I have officially given up on capturing a photo of the most amazingly awesome haircut I have ever had. What's even weirder is that even my mom was less than pleased with her 'chopped up' hairstyle as well (we got it cut on the same day), and a few days later another c...

Around two years ago, a rather spiffy gadget walked into my life and ever since then, things seem so much clearer. My life suddenly had direction . And the gadget? (Drumrolls please! The GPS unit. Ha ha)  Now, I've had a friend of a friend say that GPS usage makes you stop thinking as you try to make your way to a certain destination, and although I am the kind of person who is all for thinking, I just cannot toss the GPS unit away. You see, in the old days (before google maps and all), if I had to go somewhere new, I'd pick up the street directory and study it like I was going to sit for an exam using it's contents, copy important directions down neatly and store the copy as well as the original map in the car. One day before having to make the journey, I'd take the car, and the map and the copy, as well as the whole family and we'd all ply the route together to get it right before I attempted it on my own the next day or so. This method worked fine most of the...

Just the other day, I had candidly remarked on Ricardo's blog that the notion of being poisoned has this aura of romanticism about it. Perhaps it's how poison is always the chosen weapon for women serial murderers. It's something that I find hard to explain. Besides, with explanation, I may run the risk of revealing too much. Little did I know that day that I was about to be on the receiving end of some poison, and it was the furthest from being romantic, instead, if you know me well enough, you may already suspect that it borders on something comedic. On the practical side of things, geckos or 'house' lizards are under the impression that they rule this side of the planet. Wherever you go at night, they'll be there, challenging you to a fight. The other day, a baby lizard fell on my sister, she freaked out. That did it. That was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand or as some people might say, the Casus belli . The war on geckos had begun. Tucked...

A little bit of spring cleaning was required on the blog, what with the categories list expanding uncontrollably, and there were some dead blogs as well, killed none other than by their respective owners. Now, while I've managed to clip the list to a sensible length and rearrange it by number of posts instead of the usual alphabetical order, I couldn't help noticing that the most number of posts I have happen to fall into a category I named 'travel' which stands at a mind boggling 34 posts! Funny, really... because I have only been to 3 other countries outside of Malaysia, and even then only one of it was for a proper vacation. Of course local trips were also categorised as 'travel', but the very thought of travel leading my activities tickles my funny bone so. People might begin to think of me as some airspace happy globetrotter!

Before she left, he gave her what she thought was an awkward peace sign which turned out to be him holding a small neatly folded note with his phone number on it. It took a few phone calls for us to decide to check out an intellectually stimulating exhibition in the National Science Centre that Sunday (which I will elaborate on another post - if and only if my blogging mojo remains long enough for that), but for now, the key event is what happened after that. We had foolishly not eaten before heading to the exhibition - circa 11:30 am and as a result were a bunch of famished souls by the time we headed out looking for something to eat. This was already nearing 4 pm (I could be mistaken since I used my watch on my left wrist, and did not look much at it - it's usually on the right wrist... that is when I choose to wear a watch) and we decided to brave the cruel weekend crowds for an extremely late lunch in a restaurant in one of the major shopping malls. So there we were, se...

At first there was a dream, and in the dream there were flowers... I've never been one of those people who were really big on flowers... mainly because I always thought they belonged on their respective stalks, swaying in the wind, while butterflies and bees dropped by for a spot of tea. In fact, in my 29 and 3/4 years of being alive, I've been given flowers exactly five times and all five of those happened to be crammed into about a span of five years from the time I was a first year student right up till graduation day. My final two flowers (2 red roses) were in fact the ones I received during graduation from the few friends whom I consider to be the closest to me... and as shallow and whiny as this may sound, that was the very first time I had felt somewhat downcast at the fact that I was the only person without a bouquet of flowers to take pictures with and couldn't help wondering why my parents didn't think of getting me one. I kind of remember my first flower...

It hits you in waves. Sort of. I hardly realised how much the knowledge that the long anticipated adventure laden vacation in Cambodia being unceremoniously cancelled due to a series of unfortunate events would effect me until somewhere last week when a reply to the group e-mail reached me and confirmed my greatest fears. Of course I saw this coming earlier, but when things are not in print you kind of have the tendency to ignore the inevitable and hope for the best, because deep down inside you feel that there is a still an iota of hope. The thing is, this Cambodia plan had been in the works since 2007 until we decided to take the proverbial bull by it's horns to make it happen this year. The planning was long, involved tonnes of e-mails and lots of research but we managed to squeeze in everything every one of us wanted to see in the 6 day itinerary including a brief visit to Tonle Sap lake, a place we learned about in geography in school! And somehow as planning went underwa...

If life were a sitcom, then yesterday would have been the season's special episode for physical comedy. Falling down or hurting myself in a comedic way has been a part of my life since I can remember, the worst of the lot being the time when my left heel gave way on a stationary escalator and I literally tumbled down it, scaring all the people who were there, destroying my sister's pants and scraping the skin off my shins which took forever to heal. This happened way back in 2004, but the scars are still visible, albeit slightly. I must also hold the record for being the one and only person to have sprained my ankle before entering a jungle for some training, or to have dropped a box set of books on someone's head (she shouldn't have been sneaking a read under the shelf of the bookstore, though - so maybe I was just the channel karma used to hit the person), and I'm also capable of making any ballerina turn green with envy at my ability to do a pirouette in a ...

The machine stands in it's own corner, ever so often visited by people whose intentions are to burn as many calories as they possibly can. Normal people call it the wave machine, people like my sister and myself call it the 'ass' machine (Mainly because we didn't know better) The other day, I was using this particular machine at the furthest corner possible because I have observed that people like to observe your speed settings while pretending to work out (not that they don't work out, but you will know when someone's eye is on your machine's display), and figured that I might as well only have one person look at my incredibly pathetic settings instead of two. Corners rule! Anyway, I have come to realise one thing. The machine apparently doesn't like me as much. So, I was doing my thing on the machine at moderate settings, with my water bottle perched in the water bottle holder the manufacturers put there... at one point in the middle, I wanted to i...

Otherwise known as "I have no Life" So, after 2 hits on Facebook and a few hours of cumulative procrastination, this is it, the 25 most random things about yours truly which I had put up on Facebook and decided to put up here as well... 1. There are a few street lights that go off or on each time I pass under them. Even more recently, I discovered a light that went out at work when I walked under it. This will be fun until it gets repaired 2. I started using glasses since the age of 7. Since then I've broken a few, lost one in a bus and even temporarily misplaced another for two weeks 3. I got my drivers license at 18, but never really drove actively until I had to at the age of 24 when I desperately needed to and got my own car because I was a bit scared of driving. Soon after that my sister gives me the nick name Evil Knievel! 4. A group of Singaporeans once asked me if I was really a Malaysian when I said that I don't eat durians ! 5. Most people who ...

Just when I thought to myself to slow down a bit on the blogging front in February for the sake of quality over quantity, something happens to me that leaves me barefooted and feeling very vulnerable, which in turn forces this post to pop out uninvited. I must admit that it does leave me a little bit happy because it used to be things like these that drove me to blog in the first place! What started to be a very normal Sunday afternoon, ceased being normal when I could not find my sneakers in the gym locker room while I was in the changing room for two minutes! I mean, it was there when I left it and when I wanted to put on the sneakers after changing, they were not there. I looked under the benches, in the locker, everywhere I could think of and they were nowhere to be found! So there I was in the locker room, barefooted and a tad bit miserable listening to sad songs on my ipod. Thank goodness my sister was heading to the gym and I called her and she said she'd grab me somethi...