i miss them string hoppers.

I am convinced that my venerable housemate knows all things. From cabbages and kings to personal issues to haircare. She is a wise one she is, Phebe Kok.

And to prove my trust of her opinions, I am now oiling my hair (why yes as a matter of fact, you heard it right) with 100% natural VVD gold coconut oil.

"Why spend hundreds of dollars on professional hair treatment?" she says in an advertisement-speaker-type voice. "when you can use the highly acclaimed VVD gold coconut oil? Besides, it smells of putu mayam!=)"

OKayyYy.. I'll take your word for it Pheebs. You have never failed me before and I trust you will not fail me now. And why did you have to bring up Putu Mayam?? It is only like, my favourite indian food of all timeEE=( (btw, did you know that the english name for putu mayam is string hoppers?)

Well, as the saying goes;

A minute on the lips,
Forever on the hips,

I have enough faith to say;

For lustrious hair to be,
Thou shalt opt for VVD!

Cheerio!

i hear the bells.

Life is beautiful=) Christmas is beautiful. Weddings are beautiful. Seeing the courage of two people making the decision to commit to one another until death does them part is beautiful.

And so to express my joy of the aforementioned joys of life, I present:

Wedding Bells
*To be sung to the tune of Jingle Bells.

Altogether now!!

Wedding Bells, Wedding Bells,
A wedding's on the way!
Oh what fun it was to see
the joys of Saturday,

HEY!

Wedding Bells, Wedding Bells,
A wedding's on the way!
Showers of blessings fall on thee
Just like sunshiny ray!

The newly engaged couple, Steve and Ivy=))

i am a wart.

A worry wart, that is. And as a professional worrier, I have analised that my worrying comes in three distinct forms.

1. The "Whys" / Worrying for Now

"Why isn't the sun rising fast enough today?"

"Why haven't I seen the neighbourhood cat for more than 1 and a half days? I wonder if it has dropped dead?"

"Why does no one laugh at my jokes sometimes? Surely there must be some mistake. CHICKEN NUT BREAD I SAID!!!!!!"

*for those of you who don't know this joke, please ask me because I am always looking for opportunities to tell it

2. The, "What ifs" / Worrying for Later

"What if I only get 99% for my exams? (just an example. fyi I have never said that sentence in my life before. It is reserved for Chuenie and Phebe-type people=p)

"What if I don't pass my exams?" (now thats more like it)

"What if I fall down in the bus tomorrow by tripping on a banana peel?" (always a possibility as my trusty bus-passenger mate eats a banana for breakfast every morning)


and last but not least,

3. The big "How?" / Oh Lord please help me

This is always uttered as a sigh of absolute defeat. The indication that all hope is lost and you realize that there's absolutely No Way you can do this on your own.

If I absolutely HAD to choose, my favourite form of worrying would be the big "How" because the "how" can only be directed to One and He has all the answers!

For me, worrying is inevitable. Dear family and friends, I am sorry for driving you guys insane with my worrying. But it's because I lurveee youuuuu.=( (eeee goosebumps, but tis true)

Happy Australia Day!!!

nads over and out and off to Highpoint

there is no other.

I had such a pensieve night two days ago. The kind where you look at the stars and wonder...

"Why in the world has nobody invented a teleport-machine-thingie yet??" I mean there are at least a thousand super geniuses in the world. You would think it'll be invented by now. C'mon geniuses, STEP UP! YOU CAN DO IT!

My brother turned 17 two days ago and if there was a teleport-machine-thingie, I wouldn't be having spasmodic homesickness everytime I looked at family pictures. On the contrary, I will be having a blast with my family eating, talking and laughing until my sides split because of the following images:



Don't get me wrong, I still laugh until my sides split. But it's not all that fun laughing by yourself. Hmmmm...In fact, it looks a wee bit mad.


Brothers are amazing. I am so blessed to have one! Who would've thought that when God gave me a brother, He also gave me a shopping bag holder, a joke teller, a water bottle filler and an appreciater of my jokes because seriously, jokes aside; not many people can see the humour in naming a PSP, 'Pang Seng Pek.'

Example: "Eh boy, where is Pang Seng Pek? Why you never bring him along? You 2 not playing games meh?"

............................................................................

C'mon guys Laugh Already! =(

............................................................................

Oh well, at least I know one person who thought it hilarious. SO THERE

all time favourites.

You know those photos that you can look at over and over again and just smile? These are some of mine in no particular order=))

it's all very good in Melbourne=).

They rock!!!

These are the only photos I have of the Melbournians who made my life so beautiful. As for the rest, you know who you are!!!!

Ann & We-Ki

Ivy & Pheebs

Steve, Ivy, Sue-Lee & Val

truly truly truly.

I have this song stuck in my head. It's a beautiful beautiful song. My favourite is the Kathryn Scott version=) It holds such wonderful promise, encouragement and affirmation. Enjoy!

What a friend we have in Jesus,
all our sins and griefs to bear.
What a privilege to carry
everything to God in prayer!
O what peace we often forfeit,
O what needless pain we bear,
all because we do not carry
everything to God in prayer.

Have we trials and temptations?
Is there trouble anywhere?
We should never be discouraged;
take it to the Lord in prayer.
Can we find a friend so faithful
who will all our sorrows share?
Jesus knows our every weakness;
take it to the Lord in prayer.

Are we weak and heavy laden,
cumbered with a load of care?
Precious Savior, still our refuge;
take it to the Lord in prayer.
Do thy friends despise, forsake thee?
Take it to the Lord in prayer!
In his arms he'll take and shield thee;
thou wilt find a solace there.

bus-ted.

I made an amazing discovery today.
Behold….

If you want to know a person’s true character, make them wait for a bus. (this can mean waiting inside the bus for the bus to stop, or waiting for a bus at the stop)
Oh you can laugh, people… but let me tell you, in the time-span of 4 days and 2 bus rides, I have encountered 2 perfectly amiable ladies who turned into ferocious human-eating lionesses.

Encounter 1:

It was a glorious sunny Friday morning when I hopped on a bus to go to work. I was greeted heartily with a smile and a ‘Good morning!’ by an elderly lady. I proceeded to sit behind her to see if she needed any help getting off the bus. 2 stops later, she rang the bell for the bus to stop. She stood up and walked to the gap between the driver and the door. I heard the driver telling her to sit down while the bus is still moving and Bless my Cotton Socks, she started screaming at him!! (the word “s*it” will now be replaced by “bunny” because it is a very vulgar word to some people) “Don’t give me that bullbunny! It’s the crack of dawn and I don’t need this bunny from you. Stewpid man. Shut up SHUT UPPPP!” ….Then she left.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………
At this point I got my heartbeat back.

Encounter 2:

This evening I took a bus back because it was just too windy to walk. (usually I walk, serious!!). While waiting for the bus, I saw this lady wearing a thunder cloud as a face. 2 minutes later, the thunder cloud slowly morphed into a rainstorm…4 minutes and the rainstorm turned into a typhoon… and at the point when it hit the tsunami-type-of-weather, she let out a big roar of “the four letter word (that rhymes with duck)” in CAPS and stomped off to the tram stop across the road. Right at that moment, the bus pulled up. As I sat down in the bus, a wave of apprehension and curiosity took over me and I couldn’t resist stealing a glace at the lady across the street. I was just in time to see her wave The Finger towards the bus before it turned a corner.

Not sure of some people’s true character? Well you now know what to do!=)

a tale about a sale.

Don't you just love the weekends? I most certainly do! It was a beautiful morning with a light drizzle. Had a wonderful morning prayer with the Louse and Ann and then twas time to go out. The lovely weather beckons=)

After 2 hours of window shopping at Myer Basement with Ann, we proceeded to the hosiery section and saw that it had the SIGN. Yup you got it right! The “50% off the already reduced marked price” sign. With a leap of joy and before you can say, “I hopetheyhavemysize”, my venerable friend was by the racks. After mere seconds of searching, she triumphantly held up a pair of tights priced at $6.50 for a whopping 50% off. Dude! that’s $3.25!!!

So off she skipped to the counter. When we were walking off, I noticed Ann wearing a very disgruntled face. You know the kind when all your facial features point to the mid point of your face?

She held up the receipt to my face and said, “Eh Nads… why did they charge me $4.55? I thought it said 50% off?” We then went back for an explanation.

The Receipt

……………They put the wrong sale sign on=S. It was only 30%.

When Ann first told me about the wrong price, I am ashamed to say that the first thought that went through my mind was “Hey it’s only a $1.20 difference!! What’s the big deal??” But dear friends, it suddenly struck me that $1.20 is actually quite a substantial amount of money. I mean think about it, you can buy;

1 bottle of 2 litre Coke on sale from Coles
1 loaf of bread from Coles
1 LARGE packet of Smith chips on discount from Coles
1 jar of spaghetti sauce
1 litre of Devondale milk on sale
1 packet of Arnott’s Savoys on sale
1 beef burger from McDonalds (and if you have the McDonald car sticker, you will get a free drink with that)
4 soft serve ice-creams from Burger King
5 packets of Indo Mee (Dude, that’s 5 meals!)

And last but not least…

500 grams of potatoes on sale

Have a great weekend guys!

twas a glorious holiday.

the chronicles of the gap bag. p/s: i hate gatorade.

The gap bag entered my life when Ann presented it to me shortly after the incident of "4 girls, 1 red bike and 2 bad men" (refer previous previous post). I know it's not an admirable trait to brag but, I have to just this once so please bear with me.

I have the most wonderful friends (and their parents) in the whole ginormous world oh my goodness to the maxxxx=)) So we were hanging out one day for lunch at One Utama when Ann suddenly dropped this big box onto my lap and said, "Hey Nads, this is for you. It's from my parents, me, We-Ki, Lis and Chuen. We hope you're feeling better." I mean it's not like I was the only one who had that horrific experience. They were all there too! And Krystle, AiLi and Grace took care of the food for the dinner and asked us not to worry about a thing and just feel better. And Karmy called from the UK just to listen to us rant and sob about our experience.

The Beautiful Brown Bag

You guys mean the world to me and I couldn't dream for better childhood friends, Mafia gangstermates, boardgames pro teammates, shopping buddies, play-doh making companions, problem-solving solutionists, cheering people uppists, super suportionists,(oh my goodness I better stop now before my england totally disintegrates)

And a few days after that, Ann's mom baked me a carrot cake. A WHOLE CARROT CAKE ALL TO MYSELF MUAHAHA. If the bag wasn't enough to make me ecstatically happy then the cake seriously rocketed me to Mars.

Thank you dear readers. Your tolerance is much appreciated.=) Now back to the chronicles.

As I was clutching my beautiful brown leather bag, I vowed to take impeccably good care of it and see that it comes to no dirt.

Well, the vow was broken today.

I can explain

When I was walking to Melbourne Central after drinking Gatorade, through no fault of my own, the Gatorade inside my bag spilled itself. I know neither how the bottle cover untightened itself nor how it was roughly shaken around in my bag.

I am very sad. Ann helped me wash it and I hope it will look better tomorrow=(

working life.

As most of you know, I'm currently working at Harmer Architecture ( http://www.harmer.com.au/ ) as a university obligation for one year. Harmer Architecture specializes in really diverse stuff like churches and cemeteries. So when i got the job I thought, "YAY this is perfect! Churches are so totally my kind of thing!!=))"

But yup you've guessed it! It has been 5 months down the line and by some weird twist of fate, I'm still working on cemeteries. Melbourne General Cemetery to be exact. Basically, I retrace really old parchments of the cemetary maps with AutoCad. 42 blinking pieces of A1 size maps.

Quick maths:
2 X A4 = 1 A3
2 X A3 = 1 A2
2 X A2 = 1 A1
42 X A1 = Nads becomes a gilababi

But honestly, I love working at Harmer Architecture! My colleagues are the most helpful colleagues I could ever hope for and my directors are so nice, patient and kind. Hallelujah!

And besides, how else would I find out that the most deceased family in Melbourne are the McNamaras' and O'Briens'?

Ooh! I think today might just be the day I get my Big Break! Ken just gave me a church project!!

Oh no wait.... It's cadding the toilet plans of a church foyer at North Essendon..=S

Oh well, perhaps someday........

4 girls, 1 red bike and 2 bad men.

The morning of December 29 2007 promised a day of good fun, good games and good company. The long awaited celebration of our 10 Year Friendship Anniversary Dinner! But it took a really bad turn at around 1500 hours.

The day started with Ann, Chuen, Lis and I shopping for decorations and having lunch at The Curve. Upon filling our tummies with meatballs (YUMM) and arms loaded with party stuff, we hopped into Chuenie's car and headed back to Ann's house. After Chuenie parked the car outside Ann's house, Lisa and I got out of the car and before I knew what was going on, I felt someone grabbing at my handbag! As a reflex, I held onto my bag tighter only to see that it was a man holding a knife.

Everything happened so fast so it's all quite a blur to me. But as far as we know, there were 2 men on a red bike. One came down and tried to rob us. As soon as I saw the knife I let go of my handbag and crouched behind the car. It was at this point when he saw Lis and ran after her with the knife. Thank God she got into the car and locked it in time. He tried to open her door, and then when he realised that it was locked, he tried chuen's door, but it was locked too. At that point he got really angry and slammed the glass with the butt of the knife and his hand. Thankfully the glass did not break and he ran to his friend and rode off.

It was one of the worst experience in my life. Words cannot express how grateful I am that we are not physically hurt. Think about it... There were so many things that could have happened. And that's why it is so so so evident that our God is so amazing, so wonderful and so ever present.

AMEN

funnies for you.

Introducing part of my wonderful, funny, understanding, amazing, loving, etc. family...
They say a picture paints a thousand words.
Here's 12
Enjoy=)!

10 years and counting.

Here are some pictures of the Girl Mafia Gang (and Clement) headed and hosted by Ann on our 10 Year Anniversary of Friendship at our headquarters: The Mafia Boss's House.

This is the result of months of committee meetings regarding the food (fine-dining), the wine(red), the colour theme for decorations (blue, silver and white) , the dresscode (formal) and the venue (Ann's house).

Grace, Chuen, Peish, Krystle, Nads, Lisa, Ann, Li

And Clement!

TA-DAAA!! Not quite the perfect picture without Karmy, Yimin and We-Ki=( but pretty darn good hey? We did it girls! And if you squint hard enough you can almost picture AiLi wearing a beautiful floating gown of periwinkle blue and Krystle adorning the most glamorous dress in white.

After minutes into our very fancy dinner, an unexpected guest arrives. All the girls gasped and hugged one another with eyes and mouths open wide. Can this be true? Can this really be true? Surely this cannot be...We daren't let ourselves believe it. The silence is finally broken with

"OH MY GOODNESS IT'S A COCKROACH!! WATCH YOUR LEGS! DON'T LET IT GET NEAR THE TABLE!!!!"

Ann: Aiyo just pass me some newspaper la.

The rest: *Ewww grossss* *Yuckk* *Squeal**Ugh*

Ann: *BANG* *BANG* *BANG*

....................................

Nah. Gone already. PEish! Pass me some tissue please

Ann you're the best! You always come through for us in times of trouble and protect us from harm. Love you to bits

a new beginning.

Hie everyone!

I have bravely decided to start a blog and will persevere to update it at least once a week lest circumstances disproves.
I've just got back to beautiful Melbourne for a brand new start on the 12th from beautiful Malaysia. I gotta tell you, like most things in life, a brand new start does not come easy...

So there I was at the airport. After a tearful goodbye to my family, i proceeded to go through the passport-checking gate and on to the shuttle from building 1 to building 2 because for those who do not know, ALL flights to Melbourne departs from building 2. Trust me, I've been to Melbourne a couple times and i know how these airport departure things work.

So there in buiding 2 I was looking for Gate 10 for the 9.35 flight boarding in 20 minutes. After 5 minutes, my flippant browse for the sign to Gate 10 turned to frantic searching. Only to find that woe is me for a Gate 10 does not exist!!!!!!!! Well, not in building 2 at least...

Went to the information counter in desperate search for this elusive Gate 10 while the clock ticks the precious 20 minutes I got left away... Oh wait..it's 12 minutes now... (hyperventilates).. After asking for directions, not so nice counter lady gave me a look which clearly says, "Are you some kind of nut?" (oH I KNOW what you were thiNKing MISS COUnter LAdY) said "Gate 10 dalam building satu lah" The only thoughts running through my mind were "Dear Lord, please help me or mummy and daddy will kill me. Amen"

Thus began my race to the shuttle and back to building 1. Well, am in Melbourne now so this story clearly has a happy ending. It will always be happy endings when we turn to God guys!!!

Btw, is anyone interested in joining Amazing Race dunno-number-what? I think I should be your partner. As you can see, in the airport, I am quite the racer against time=)