Bye 2009 !

2009 is almost over, and soon we'll have a brand new clean slate on which to write a new year. Gee, this year simply flew by . I must admit reluctantly and most unfortunately. I don't have any 'achievements' to shout about nor did I do anything I am particularly proud of. However, I did discover some home truths about myself - throughout this year, I have gotten rather eccentric ( at times), reclusive ( sometimes - some people who have been trying to get me out for dinner will testify to this!) , short tempered ( most times!!) and illogical ( all of the time!). Blame it on the hormones that ran amok during these pre-menopausal times!!! I look at this as a privilege of getting old!!! So, to those in constant contact with me ( especially my family), sorry and thank you for your tolerance in putting up with me.

2009, despite no high points in my personal agenda, was indeed a milestone of sorts in my family. Ian turned 21. We had a little surprise birthday party for him - some very close friends and some of his Bestari school chums - many thanks to Evonne for helping to organise this part and on such short notice too. Julian turned 12 - old enough to get his IC !! My babies are growing up !!! Sometimes I look at the old photos and reminisce about when they were small. Bitter sweet really ....

My cousin Lina from Sydney was here for a visit. Gosh, it was last year since Ian and I visited her and Uncle Eric in Sydney!! Still remember the lovely time we had. Uncle Eric has since passed on and I am so glad we took the time to visit him.

I live my life through my kids. Ian is currently home for his internship and will be here until after CNY 2010. He graduates next year and will ( hopefully) remain in Australia after that. So, I aim to savour this time he is at home. He may not have so much time to be at home next year on!!

Ryan is loving school and all its activities. Was Sportsman of the Year for lower sec in school and has excelled surprisingly in middle distance running!! He has had a great year, was the Nationals Novice champion for figure skating and was voted Most Promising Skater. He passed his Freestyle 9 test, which makes him one of the highest level skater in the country. We are now aiming for Freestyle 10 next year and hopefully he can be the first Malaysian to achieve that. Fingers...and toes crossed!!! But all these are not without its price - he suffered injuries to his knee and for a while had to do physio every other day. Now we are very careful about not over training. Ryan is also selected to attend the Korean Dream Program next month in Korea.

Julian graduated from Primary school and will enter Year 7 next year. He, too had a good year. Was Head Prefect in school and graduated with a special award for achievements in skating. He, too won his category in the Malaysian Nationals. He attended the Korean Dream Program in Korea this year. Did ok in his UPSR , no flying colours unfortunately but nothing to be ashamed of either. He is very excited about entering secondary school next year. He is really growing up and so fast too.

Blue's year was so-so. Affected by the economic turndown and still trying to get back up. He has lost a bit of weight and this troubles me . Firstly for his health and secondly, I am jealous cos I am not losing any!!! He has 'rediscovered' his old school chums, attended a big school reunion recently and is now in constant touch with his mates. Bugs the hell out of us with his repeated requests for help in his emails and facebook journeys. This does not happen everyday - it happens every other hour in a day!!!! Help!

As for myself, I started a blog !!! A total of 49 entries , including this and I have passed the 1000 hits mark. Yay.....my only lapse was during this recent school holidays which threw a spanner in my works!!! Haha...hopefully I will persevere on. I have also added on in the weight category , and am now about 7 kg more than what I should be, or rather what I want to be. People who are kind say I look better but I look in the mirror and am not too happy with what I see! Took a trip to Melbourne earlier in the year for a mini school reunion of sorts!! Mini, cos it was only 4 of us - Cheng Kim, Jow Mee , Hock Poh ( Joni) and me!!! Still, it was fun. Now planning for the big one in 2011 - St Marians reading this please contact me so I can keep you gals updated!

Celebrated my 25th wedding anniversary this year - no do. Just a very quiet dinner for 2. Infact it wasn't even on the actual date cos that day I was flying off to Hong Kong with the boys for a competition!!! This reminds me of my 1st anniversary which I celebrated all by myself in Northampton ( work) while Blue was home in KL !!!

Discovered a new 'friend' who turned out to be really a friend in the true sense. Met up with old school friends whom I have not seen in a very very long time. Made some new 'friends' whom I don't really care for ( Nor they for me, I'm sure - haha) .

Cheers people - here's to a sparkling New Year and many more happy experiences !

Merry Christmas!!!

What???? My last post was Nov 5?? Gosh, I didn't realize it has been thaaaaat long ago! Oh well, the school holidays have thrown my usual schedule off and I am kinda in limbo since. Anyway, MERRY CHRISTMAS everyone....expect more posts from next week on...after school reopens ! Hehe...this is not a New Year resolution, so .......:) I stopped making New Year resolutions long ago...but then that's another story.

The rink's Christmas show was last weekend. It was enjoyable while it lasted, as usual but this year I felt it lacked some 'oomp'. Can't put a finger on it but something was missing. Last year's show ( Jack in the box) was more interesting and Christmassy although we dind't have a Santa Claus. This year, we had Ian as Santa ( Thanks dear, appreciate it ) but somehow the Christmas feel was not there. Anyone who saw the show care to share your thoughts on this?

One more week to go before we have a brand new year to start afresh. Time really flies...hope to make the most of next week to have a memorable 'old' year. Am planning to do a summary of what I have been up to in 2009, so watch this space. Again, fingers crossed...soon, I hope!!!

Was told by hubby yesterday that we had an invitation to attend someone's 70th birthday party next week. 70 !!! Was going to say no, cos I don't even know who the old geezer is, but on 2nd thoughts - hey, I'll be one of the youngest people there!!! Haha....cheap thrill :) And the do is at Jarrod and Rawlins - I like that place, so why not? Maybe I will have more tales to tell after that...hopefully...that is if I don't fall asleep in the middle of it. What to talk to old people ar? (So mean, hor - I forget I will be 70 one of these days, and you young chicos will say the same about me ...sigh..:(

Merry Christmas folks, and have a great day !!! Ho Ho Ho .....

Boring dinner

Attended a very very very very....boring dinner last night. It's that kind of dinner where you don't really want to go but have to. I'm sure you know what I mean. Anyway, the hubby called up in the afternoon and said that his friend had invited the whole family for dinner with some Korean friends. Venue - some Korean place in Taipan. I was debating whether to say yes or not, especially when Ryan was having exams. Hmm...lucky him, he got off!! My sweet Ju offered to accompany me! I was wondering whether the 'family' meant that everyone was bringing their brood or was it just us?

Anyway, it does not really matter cos it turned out exactly what I envisioned it would be - BORING!! Koreans are notorious for being male chauvinists ( and I have not come across any exception yet) , and their women pretty much have to stay behind the limelight. This was from personal experience when I was working in GEC - our Korean counterpart thought I was the secretary and my assistant ( a guy) the Engineer. Even when he discovered I was the one he was supposed to deal with, he kept asking me if I was really an engineer!! What the.....

Anyway, coming back to the present, when we got to the restaurant, there were 3 tables reserved. One was for the Korean guy's family, in the middle, a big table were for the men, and another table on the other side for us!!! We were a bit late - that's another long story why - will save it for another time!! So everyone has started eating. Guess, it was a blessing in disguise cos that means I don't have to make small talk with other people. Just a big 'hi hi' and hello to everyone present and I can settle at our own table and eat!!! Thank God for small blessings!

Luckily Julian was with me cos the hubby 'abandoned' us right after eating and sat with the guys! Aiya, if they want to talk guy talk, why bring the family leh? Furthermore it was a week night and is usually not family day. Sometimes I wonder...does this make them feel better and convince themselves that they are not 'neglecting' the family??? Or they think we are so dumb that we can't see through their badly executed attempt to justify to themselves that they are giving us time? Hmm, I'd much prefer quality time over senseless quantity time.

So overall summary - food was ok, liked the Bulgogi and the BBQ beef. Sang gei tang was a bit weird, not like the ones I am used to. ( This one had a very thick soup ) Dessert was completely yukky - I have never seen or tasted it before , some kind of noodle in a cold sour spicy soup. Tasted a bit like sour plum but then again not quite. Don't know what it was. Will not eat it again. Ju very gamely finished half a bowl although he didn't like it . He said he wanted to be polite - he is sooooo GOOD!! So happy for his presence, otherwise, I would be bored stiff!!

Not a great evening and one that I would not care to repeat.

Hanging Monastery of Mt Heng

Another place to add to my 'to visit' list is the Hanging Monastery of Hengshan, or Mount Heng in Shanxi, China. It's an engineering marvel, just imagine building on a sheer cliff face, 50 m above the ground. That translates to roughly 15 stories up above the ground.!!

As usual, I saw in on TV - what a marvelous invention that idiot box is!! And so wonderful for armchair travellers like me. What I saw really intrigued me - the whole building is made of wood, save for the roof tiles and is very cleverly cantilevered out from the cliff face. The long poles you see in the photo only 'appeared' to be supporting the structure but in fact, they are there only to give the illusion of security. In reality, the poles are merely wedged between the platform and the cliff face. They are not even buried inside the rock!!!

The whole monastery is actually very spacious as the monks apparently burrowed into the cliff face to make cave rooms. This is so ingenious, and to think that the building was built 1400 years ago!! That means practically no machines and super tools. Just imagine the amount of manpower and time it required. And it is still standing..or rather hanging today! ( Of course it has been repaired, restored etc but still...) I am really impressed and I want to go and see it for myself.

The whole idea of building it against a cliff is for protection from floods and strong gusts. As it is a Taoist monastery, the idea of calm and serenity is also very important - who is going to come and kacau such a precarious location!!

If you are thinking of going there, it's roughly 300 km west of Beijing, near a town called Datong, in the Shanxi province. My idea is to go before my legs give way and cannot make the climb up....but that's only a plan. Hope it materializes!!! See you there! :)

PS: Meanwhile, I'll still be slogging in the gym to make sure my legs are still working!

(Extremely) Noisy St Marians

9 ladies and a ton of noise!! That's what we do best!

Had a lovely afternoon today. Met up with 8 of my classmates from my secondary school days for tea at House & Co in Bangsar Shopping Center and had a great time catching up and generally behaving the age we once were!!

FYI, classmates mean my Form 1 to 5 buddies from St Mary's. Some of us meet up once in a while and we are pretty much up to date with each others' lives. But it was a real treat to catch up with Liz, whom I have not seen since Form 5 and YS, whom I met briefly many years back!! For those of you who know my age, you can pretty well do the math and guess that's it's been almost ?? decades !! It was wonderful to be able to sit down and yak yak yak away!!

The noise we made was horrendous, not unlike what we used to do many many years ago and got reprimanded by the teachers in school. Ryan and Julian dropped by and refused to sit with us. They preferred to go home than be embarassed!! It was certainly most 'unladylike' and definitely not what was expected of 'ladies' like us!! (To digress, this reminded me of a girls trip we took to Myanmar some years back and a guest in the hotel room next to ours complained that too much noise was coming out from our room!! Now that is another fantastic trip to reminisce about. ) A trio of customers walked discreetly passed our table and elected to sit outside....to get as far away from the din as possible!! The owners must have not been amused :)

We exchanged stories of kids, families but most of all juicy gossips about other classmates who were not present! Well, what do you expect if you do not come and defend yourself??? SK also related embarrassing stories of her misadventures and we had such a good laugh over it. Most prominent was the fact that she missed her own birthday party we gave her many many years ago cos she lost her way and somehow ended up driving into the motorbike lane along the Federal Highway!! She will never live this story down, and all our kids knew about it!

Then came stories of our kids and what stress they have given us! LK was relieved to hear that little boys do eventually grow up and make their moms proud instead of stressing them out with bad results and undone homework. I am certainly glad that phase for Ian has passed and I am so proud of him now. So there is much hope left for LK!

It's so nice to know that we can like practically picked up from where we left off , way back in Form 5. And looking back, we realized that we were a very Muhibbah lot those days. I think I have written about this before....that we were 1Malaysia way before we were told we have to be 1Malaysia. There are plans afoot for a reunion trip in 2011 to commemorate a milestone, and a spa trip to Thailand won hands down over a 14 day trek to Base Camp!!! Yours truly was elected, erm... more like forced to organise it!! Fingers crossed and hope it materialise...should be tons of fun. Oh yeah, someone suggested we book the entire place cos other guests would definitely not take kindly to our decible levels!! Especially if they are there for some R & R...we might even get kicked out!!! Yikes...would be most malu but what the heck as long as we had fun!! Might make a great story some day for the grandkids.

Weird tales

Watched 2 episodes of Weird Travels yesterday on Astro's 'Travel and Living' Channel. No, it is not a normal travel documentary like the ones Ian Wright ( one of my favourites!) or Asha Gill hosts, and definitely not like any mundane ones like Fun Taiwan, but it is one of the travel documentaries that I like very much.

If you have watched it before, you will know why it's called Weird Travels - it deals exclusively with the supernatural! Yup, it features haunted places all over America and sometimes Europe, too. Yesterday, one episode featured haunted hotels in America and the other focused solely on Chicago.

The gwailos are certainly a weird lot - it seems that some people do like to stay in haunted hotels just to have a chance of meeting its resident ghost! Me, I'd never ever stay in one if I knew it had a resident from the other realm! Would you?

So, all these eerie tales brought back some personal experiences. Now's a good time as any to relate them cos Halloween is just around the corner.

I have always thought, then and up till now, that one of the houses I stayed in as a kid was haunted. It was a double story house in Petaling Garden. In those days, some of those houses were actually 2-in-1 as one family would occupy the ground floor while the 1st floor was a separate unit. Anyway, we have just moved to PJ, after the May 13 fiasco, and we stayed in the ground floor unit. I remembered that the day we moved in, I got sick. Now, I do not recall any strange noises or things that go bump in the night but I do remember vividly that in one of the rooms which we used as a dining room, there was a huge drawing of a lady with long hair - just the head view. Well, it was not an actual drawing in the real sense - more like someone used water to sketch on the wall, yunno, like wet marks. Only that this does not dry up and disappear! I don't know why I never mentioned this to anyone then, and even now, I have never asked my family if they have seen it. So, I really don't know if it was only me or not. Guess I was and am now still too scared to find out the truth! I only remembered never walking near that wall and I never stayed in that room alone!

Another experience was in England, some years back...must have been at least 10 years ago. Anyway, the hubby and I were driving through England with some friends on a golfing holiday and we had to pass through a little town called Perth, on our way to St, Andrews. We stayed the night at a little inn ...yunno, the typical English countryside inn..old and a bit eerie. We had a fairly large room, with the bathroom slightly lower - you had to go down a short stairs to get to it. Anyway, the story had nothing to do with the bathroom!!! I digress...sorry! Sometime in the middle of the night, I heard, or I thought I heard a lady open the room door and when I shouted who is it, she said..oops, sorry wrong room and closed it back. I know it does not sound scary...but I have this weird feeling that it's not human.And we have definitely locked the door. Hubby says, at that time, he did not hear anything. Bet he doesn't even remember it now ( all he remembers of Perth was that wonderful duck we had at a Chinese restuarant there - now that's another story another time!!!) Anyways, it left a deep impression on me and I still maintain I was not dreaming!

I love horror movies and stories but I hope I will not encounter any as I truly believe in the existence of these beings. I have seen stuff that cannot be explained and I think it's wiser to keep a respectful distance and not disturb the peace.

Happy Halloween :) Peace to all.

Proud mom

I am so proud of Julian. Of course I am biased, very much so too and I am not shy to admit it!! Why? Well, because he is so sweet and kind and loving...just like his old mom...ahem...haha...all of that but I am extra extra proud of what he is doing in school now.

Let me explain, they have this rather weird program in school where Year 6 students are eligible to be chosen as 'model' student. Actually, 'chosen' is not exactly correct - they actually have to campaign and be voted as one. Sounds simple right? So, as a proud mom, I was rather hoping my little boy would be selected to campaign. But unfortunately, life does not always go the way we wanted. Anyway, he was not selected because his average was 2 points below the mark. Bummer , but then that is life. I was a tad disappointed and so was he but then it's not the end of the world.
So, why am I still so proud of him , one may ask?

The reason is because, despite his disappointment, he went whole heartedly all the way to help his friend in his campaign. In short, he became his friend's campaign manager! He helped print the campaign flyers and distributed them in school. He came up with the campaign strategy and angle. Next week, he will make a speech on his friend's behalf to solicit votes. That's why I am so proud - he kept aside his own disappointment and tried to help his friend to victory. This is pure Julian - he is so un selfish and is always thinking of others. This boy is truly a gem and I thank God for giving him to me!