Pieces of me

Saturday, February 02, 2008

Looking forward

To the 14th of February... It's not just an ordinary day. Yes, I know it's Valentine's day but still, it will not be an ordinary Valentine's day. I've imagined being all alone on that day, but no, I wouldn't be! Part of my plan that day includes taking the bus to Glasgow International Airport to welcome my dear to Glasgow!!!

I've received many presents previously from you but nothing beats getting to see you IN PERSON! It'll be the biggest ever gift I've ever got. I'm so happy that I'm speechless. If I'm speechless now, I don't know how would I react when I see you at the arrival hall. Tears, maybe??

I'm looking forward to spend half a month with you. Looking forward to share part of my life here with you. Looking forward to cook for you, perhaps?? Looking forward to travel with you, yeap we'll be off to London and Paris as well. Looking forward to show you what Scotland is like. Looking forward to have somebody to hold on to when I'm freezing out there during winter. I'm wondering if gloves would still come necessary during that 2 week period... hmm... The list continues on and on...

My 1st taste of snow

I've been complaining that I haven't seen snow for a million times already. Never thought it would actually snow. Sleet and hail was getting pretty common these days, with so much rainfall day after day. But there was no sign of snow. And winter's ending soon. Half my mind thought that I would never get a chance to catch the sight of real, decent snow.

But, today, I'll remember this date... the 2nd of February 2008, IT DID!!

It was rather strange as we were just mentioning about snow the night before while walking to Joachim's party and Patrick was like "You'll never know. One day you might just wake up and see snow around you". His words were sooo sooo true. There was actually a little snow while walking there (about 9.45pm I think)... but it was so little that we're like "Ah, don't bother laa".

Fortunately those screamings and laughters of our friends out there woke Esther up. I was sleeping like a log until I heard a banging on my door...

Somehow, when I heard her banging and those fade laughter sounds (I thought I was dreaming of voices), the 1st thing that strike my mind was S-N-O-W! Subconsciously, I looked outside the window before unlocking the door. It was completely white, nothing else but white (my eyesight is damn lousy as I wasn't wearing my glasses).

Gosh, I was really really excited! Brushed our teeth and changed in 5 minutes and down we went.

My 1st touch of snow.
*I know I look really terrible in these photos. What to do... I just woke up*

White bushes

Flatmates shot... Rinoa's not here, she went to Aberdeen... Doesn't really matter for her anyway. It's us 3 who haven't seen snow, not her. =P

Jessie was here on 2/2/08. A day to remember.

That's the trails after all of us took a slide down the hill. That's the best thing I did.

I'm starting to like white now.

Ron sliding down in a wrong direction.

View of the building I live from the bottom of the hill.

I love you, darling. I can't wait to see you. Countdown: 12 more days. I know you wanna see snow badly too. I hope God's kind to you.

Baby snowman... hahaha... No eyes, nose, mouth, etc...

At the last moment of typing this, it's snowingggg again!!!!! And it's from the sky this timeeee

Friday, November 30, 2007

List of Events

I'll just summarise the few events that happened this month.

First, it was the Guy Fawkes Night on the 5th of November. There was a display of fireworks which lasted for probably 20 minutes. Guy Fawkes is the guy who attempted to blow up the House of Parliament in London centuries ago, but his attempt failed. It is this failed attempt that we're celebrating now. I was wondering why there isn't any lighting of bonfire here in Glasgow. Somehow, that night ended up more like an event in conjunction with the bidding of Glasgow as the host of the 2014 Commonwealth Games. Yes, they won the bid! Congrats Glasgow!!! But I won't be here to witness that. Bah, that's 7 years from now.

I can't upload the video of the fireworks onto Youtube because the file is too large. Ah!

I do enjoy watching fireworks and the number of fireworks this month was like... Uncountable. There was fireworks after the Scotland/Italy football match, although Italy won the game. And of course, there was this switching on of the X'mas lights in Glasgow. Unfortunately, entry was by tickets only, although they were free, I did not have any. I missed the fireworks display but did finally I did walk there that night to catch a glimpse of the lights. Nothing particularly great compared to what I've seen before but the company was good and as long as there's lights, I get fascinated. Haha it's little things like this that makes me happy! Like a small kid.

I'll continue with the trip to Isle of Skye first...

Day 1

It's surprising that it didn't rain that day. It's even more surprising that the weather was far from gloomy and cloudy. The sun shone so brightly that the loch was like a mirror, showing reflection of the mountains. Don't get caught by the impression that sunny day means less cold because the temperature on that day fell to below 0 degrees celcius.

Loch Lomond. This pic (and the one above) was actually taken on the way while I was on the bus. I'm a person who loves sceneries. Unfortunately, I'm not a good photographer, so the actual breathtaking view cannot be shown. :(

Taken at Glen Coe. Glen means valley in Gaelic, the 1st language at the highlands of Scotland. The spot where movies like Braveheart and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was partly filmed. Haha, I know where Hagrid's house was built!!

Eilean Donan Castle by night! Not exactly night, it was only about 5pm. It's dark, cold,
windy... I can't even see because the wind was blowing into my (already) dry eyes.

Day 1 was actually spent travelling up north to the Isle (which means island). After a long long journey of 6 hours, we finally arrived at our hostel in Kyleakin at approx 6pm. We had many stops in between.... It's a regulation here that the bus driver has to get a 45 min break. And there were a number of stops for us to take PICTURES! Jim, the guy who brought us there, also call the stops "Cigarette stops". Shows how common is smoking. He even brought a corkscrew for us to open alcohol bottles! After dinner, it was the pub session and we got back to our rooms at about midnight, maybe???

Sudahlah we have to wake up early in the morning the next day, kena kacau somemore. We changed into our pyjamas as it was bedtime, and this french guy knocked on our door asking us to join them to party. We apologised because we were definitely not going to party in pyjamas, duh!!

Every half an hour or so, they come banging at our doors. Literally banging on it okay and shouting god knows what in french. Wth. The only thing we understood (because that was the only phrase in english) was "Do you understand?" What the heck do we understand? They continued BANGING and SHOUTING till about half past 2. I desperately need the toilet, so I waited till they left.... And when I opened my door, and I saw another door in front of me! Could I be hallucinating, I thought. I pushed it down and looked at the corridor, which was messed up with toilet rolls!

This bunch of guys are wild when they are drunk! I'm speechless.

The corridor outside our rooms. The actually tied the toilet rolls onto our door knobs.

And this is the stolen door which was placed directly outside our room. It has been moved to the side before this picture was taken. Nobody knows where they got the door from, not even the hostel staff.

They even recorded a video of the whole being-crazy night. I guess they had loads of fun creating the scene.

I'll stop here now. Will continue when I have the time! Xoxo

Draft of Introduction handed up!!

Time for another update! A quick update here before I will do a more lengthy one this weekend about what I've been up to recently... Of course, photos too!! Trip to Isle of Skye, Xmas lights in Glasgow, the outdoor ice-skating at George Square...

So, well, I'm surviving here.

1.Surviving the weather...Glasgow's weather is still currently bearable. Bearable, I only meant the temperature. Daylight can be hardly seen (due to my odd sleeping hours as I wake up at 2pm at times and the sun sets about 4pm). I sigh "I miss the sun" on days where I don't see it. I hate the rainy weather as well. I was speaking to a friend on MSN and told him that I'm going for a short walk one day, and he asked if it's raining AGAIN. I guess it has been raining for all the days he was here. If the rain isn't enough, it is accompanied by really strong winds which makes umbrellas totally useless. They just get blown into the shape of "U".

Q: How many girls does it takes to prevent an umbrella from turning into the "U" shape??
A: As far as I know, 2 of us did not manage to do it.

*Talking about weather makes me wonder if I will be seeing snow anytime soon*

2.Surviving my cough and the weekly get-worse occassions where I will cough terribly. God knows why am I not getting any better. Blame the weather, that's the only thing I can think of right now.

3.Surviving the occassional lost of voice (which brings MSN Messenger more important as a communication tool even between my flatmates and me).

4.Surviving the *so many* late clubbing and chit-chatting nights. :) Bedtime doesn't come before 3 or 4am if there isn't classes the following day. Even if there is, I don't seem to be going to bed any much earlier either.

5.Surviving the amount of alcohol I've been consuming recently. Not enough to do any damage to my liver YET.

6.Survive being emo for the past 2 weeks. Being emo is annoying the hell out of me and I'm glad I got over it now. I've been less talkative lately. Being happy = back to talkative self.

I've been such a bummer lately. Being bummer's a relaxing thing to do if you have nothing in mind. But it's not if your mind is cramped with all the freaking nonsense.

I came across a singer named Leona Lewis. Her album, Spirit, is released this month. A winner of another talent show, The X Factor, last year. For a 22 year old girl, she can be considered to have achieved a success. Think Simon Cowell... The fussy one. That's her manager!

Bleeding Love, the 1st single in Spirit, is playing now on this page.

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Happy Birthday Daddy

Daddy,
you may not be the most sporting dad in the world,
you may not have spend alot of time with us,
you punish me when I do wrong (althought sometimes I feel that I did right =) ).

But I know that,
this family is the centre of your life
You tried to be everthing for us... a father, a role model, a teacher and a friend.
I know I haven't been the child I should,
that I make you worry about me all the time.
Underneath all my irresponsible actions,
there is love, respect and admiration.
How lucky am I to have such a good father like you,
How grateful am I to have such a sacrifice from you,

I'm so far away now that I miss you so much,
and I know you do too.
I am sorry I am not able to celebrate this special day with you,
but my heart wishes you a really happy birthday.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DADDY!!! I LOVE YOU!!!

Flat Party

They (I mean the ang mohs) have it so frequently, specifically every week. As if they have lots of free time. They really know how to enjoy life to the fullest. I envy them because I do want to enjoy too...

Well, day by day, time passes so quickly that I haven't actually done any real studying. All I can think of right now is partying. I know it's affecting my studies quite harshly. So the only way to balance both partying and studying is by spending my non-party time with my books.

It is now that I feel like a university student. Being in IMU did not give me any sense of being in university at all. How pitiful it is that I only get this in my final year, damn it sounds really late. Imagine that, my final year. How I wish I get more university years. People say the best time of your life is you schooling/university life. I so totally agree with that statement. I feel old now.
:(
Seriously old.

Coming back to the flat party, what happens when you mix with people who party too much??

You organise a flat party yourself! =)

I do admit this idea came from both me and Rinoa. Who else can be as crazy as us? Well, it's good in a sense that we make the house livelier. It seems that we are already starting to influence Esther into being one crazy person. H12 ROCKS!!! I love my flatmates, hugs!!

Trying to make it abit Malaysian, we cooked rice, fried mix vegatables and five spice powder chicken and a dessert (white fungus and longan). The ang mohs find the dessert weird because the white fungus seem to be funny to them. When they chew on it... It's like.. err... I don't know! I should have made something else for dessert. In the end, we even forgotten to bring out the crisps *opss*. Thanks to Liran, Carlo, Emilio and Andrea for cooking pasta at OUR flat! Haha I wonder how convenient is that compared to cooking at their place downstairs. I think it's because it's difficult to carry cooked food up. Anyway, it was fun having you guys cooking at our place. Learning that Italians actually sprinkle salt onto their palms before pouring it into the pot/pan. Or is it just ONLY Emilio who does that, I wonder.

There were loads of alcohol. In fact, that was the only drinks around. NO WE HAVEN'T TURN INTO ALCOHOLICS!

Italians unite. They are kind of the 1st bunch of people I know. Kinda weird how we actually met. haha. We randomly went into their flat party one day. It's so funny, I remember how you guys actually FORCED us to go clubbing with you. We're so short and you guys are so tall. Your voices were so loud that I actually felt intimidated. But now, it's ok, you're all nice people.

One Vietnamese stuck with a bunch of Italians. Francesco: Good that you told them about asian culture haha. Don't touch them, don't touch them!!! LOL. I know they make a joke out of it.

Multi-nationality. Vietnamese, Italian, Morroccoan (is that how you say it?) and of course Malaysian

The 3 right behind me are French. Emilio you look like a joker lah. When can I see the serious Emilio??

Of course we did not leave out our best buddy, Desmond.

Nice picture Rinoa. Andreas, Simon, Benoit and Rinoa.

Girl friends

The girls with Desmond, Christian and Carson

*edited: After scrolling, I saw that this is the only picture of Yaniv I posted up here.*

Wah, this picture lagi multinationality. Malaysian, French, German, Vietnamese and Chinese from China. Opss sorry I don't know what to call a person from China. The guy on the right is actually damn leng chai in real life. Haha.