(In retrospect, the title of this blog posts suggestively seems like something you'd see on the cover of Men's Health magazine, or in large colourful letters across the cover of a porn DVD. But, never mind.)
I feel like I'm being pulled in more directions at once, with many sub-directions pulling away at those main directions. Work, special projects, studies, other commitments, relationships, personal tasks... and even, time for myself, if I'm lucky. The running joke is that at work, the aim is to "stretch" you so far till you're at that point of breaking. I wonder if I'll break or if I'll bounce back all springy like a new rubber band. Or like Elastigirl from The Incredibles. (Maybe I'll have damn a lot of stretch marks like a woman after pregnancy. That sucks.)
I'm being expected to divide myself into so many sections, and sub-sections. So what happens when you do division with a big denominator? (Sorry, I was a bit of a math buff back in school - remember how we used to do 'pecahan' during Maths? The denominator is the bottom number.)
1 / 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 = something friggin small. Zero point zero zero zero.... something.
One me divided by a bajillion commitments and responsibilities = Well... tired.
That's one equation that ain't too fun solving.
When it's two-three weeks away from exams, it's not fun turning down invitations to go shopping, dinners, yum-chas, or constantly clocking up the hours in my head, thinking that if I go, I have that much less time to study or to recharge myself. Or hurriedly packing up to leave at 6 p.m. on the dot, under your bosses' noses because every less minute spent inching in rush hour, is one more minute for me to unwind or... study somemore.
It's selfish, but I think I'm going to have to be selfish for awhile. At least until my denominator gets a little smaller.
Pastor Yu shared something during Sunday service yesterday that I thought was particularly interesting. It's this bit of...poetry, if you may, that some say was written by Mother Teresa. Regardless of author, it's a fascinating perspective and worth a read.
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I think it's a good concoction of words and messages that I want to take a thing or two away from. It's a daily struggle to not return evil for evil, a challenge not to honk a useless driver on the road when he honks you first and it was his fault in the first place. Instead, maybe make it a chance to return good for evil, an opportunity to drive away instead of flipping a finger.
It's difficult, but let me try do it anyway. :)
People are often unreasonable, illogical and self centered;
Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;
Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you've got anyway.
You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and your God;
It was never between you and them anyway.
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I think it's a good concoction of words and messages that I want to take a thing or two away from. It's a daily struggle to not return evil for evil, a challenge not to honk a useless driver on the road when he honks you first and it was his fault in the first place. Instead, maybe make it a chance to return good for evil, an opportunity to drive away instead of flipping a finger.
It's difficult, but let me try do it anyway. :)
I've always said I preferred studying over working. Give me assignment stress, exam cramming headaches, blistered fingers from furious writing any time, because with all that comes flexibility, energy and not a care in the world. Well, not really anyway.
So, if I prefer studying over working, how about studying while working? Guess I'll find out soon enough.
Got all my exemptions and an invitation to enrol, now all I've got to do is get my butt enrolled before the 26th of this month.
Pretty stationery shopping and brand new challenges, here I come! :)
There's just something about polaroids. The white frame, slightly thicker at the bottom so that you may scribble down something about the picture or the moment, that slightly grungy filter-like glaze that makes it a little vintage.
Pretty.
Digital camera photos are too easy. Snap one, don't like it, take another, delete. With polaroids, there's no second shot. Somehow, it just feels like the best way to capture moments, just that very moment, and have them immediately immortalized. Much like life, you only get one shot. :)
If I had a polaroid camera, I'd take polaroids of moments that made me happy, keep them in a shoe box, and look through them once a year with someone I love. And then show them to my grandchildren next time although, they will probably turn down their noses at them and show me their fancy schmancy hyperdigital-superquadruple 358x zoom camera with techno-rotating capability and sound sensitive shutters that takes about 52 shots in a nanosecond.
Sometimes, we yearn for simplicity and the little things that matter, that no technology can do better. Like I said, you only get one shot. Live and let live.
Okay, so I'm a month late, but I figured it was time to finally get off my laurels and talk about my Resorts World Singapore Universal Studios experience.
The boyfriend and his best friend had been talking about taking a trip to the little island down under to check out Universal Studios. Because Pok Xian, his best friend, works on Saturdays, they picked a Saturday which was a public holiday for us and the best choice was 5th June - Agong's birthday! Plus, it was also Dominic's birthday, so it was like a celebration of sorts too. (Btw sigh Agong why must your birthday be on a Saturday? My employers don't give us replacements for public holidays boo :( )
Being the chronic procrastinator I was, I left the packing till late. At about 11 p.m. with a wake-up call at 4:30 a.m. the next morning to get to the LCCT in time for our flight at 8 a.m, I was still packing. Or something along those lines.
Anddddddd during my packing, Adam sits me on my bed, taking both my hands in his and drops a bombshell telling me that "Err dear ah... I have bad news." Like he was pregnant wtf. Or he might have tried to make it a good news/bad news thing, but it was most definitely bad.
See, 5th June was not only a public holiday, but the first weekend of the Malaysian school holidays AND the Singapore school holidays. Read: Bumbling children all over the theme park whose over-zealous parents had bought the tickets for 5th June off the Resorts World website wayyyyyyyy in advance. Leaving us with no theme park tickets. Jeng jeng jeng.
A lot of drama later, we decided we'd just go try our luck with going there anyway. The moment we touched down at Changi, we hailed a cab to go there in person.
The silhouette of an AirAsia plane against the sunrise :)
Cloudy morning.
Nope. No luck. Staff at the counters told us that the tickets for Saturday had been sold out in advance and that there were none left for over-the-counter sales. Blasphemy. We decided to switch our plans around and get tickets for the next day instead -- although that meant we would have to rush through the theme park instead because our bus left Singapore at 4:30 p.m.
After buying the tickets, we wandered around some of the shops there instead. The Hershey's shop is to. die. for. Omg.
They had a Reese's section too. I love Reese's! I bought a packet of white chocolate Reese's (which Pok kindly informed me, white chocolate isn't real chocolate -_-) but they melted after leaving them in the locker all day long sigh.
Hershey's galore!
Next to the Hershey's shop was Garrett's Popcorn who does these really kick ass fragrant caramel popcorn with really big corn kernels. Till today, Adam still laments on and on about why nobody has brought it to Malaysia yet.
Because Dom and his colleagues were clever enough to buy tickets off the site in advance unlike us, they went on Saturday, and Pok went off to visit his sister on Saturday instead of Sunday like he initially planned, that left Adam and I a whole day to go dating around the island :p
We checked into our budget hotel on Joo Chiat Road and began our hunt for Katong laksa. Katong laksa is my absolute favourite-st dish in Singapore and is something I insist on having everytime I'm there. I think we took a twenty minute walk under the hot Singaporean sun, but it's okay! No walk is too long for Katong laksa. :p
As usual my poor sense of directions eluded me and I couldn't find the famous one that my family always goes to, so we settled for this one instead which was pretty damn good too. (Only that people don't usually serve chopsticks with Katong laksa because the noodles are supposed to be so short that you can eat it with a spoon alone.)
IF YOU HAVEN'T TRIED, YOU MUST TRY IT!
Soon before long my bowl became like this. Only with the remnants of my uneaten taugeh bleh. And the plate in the background had what Adam proclaims as the best fried mee suah he has ever eaten.
After an incredibly satisfying lunch, we went back to the hotel to get changed for an evening at the malls :p
That picture was taken right before I dragged Adam to countless shoe shops, three of which were Charles & Keith. Charles & Keith shoes are actually so much cheaper in Singapore when they're on discount. But get this, after all the shoe shops I visited, not a single pair that I liked had my size left! ROAR.
I'm a size 39/8 and in Malaysia, this is the size that's usually leftover during sale period. Singaporean girls have bigger feet than Malaysians. :( So, Great Singapore Sale, you were not very fun this time round. (Also, Adam probably found it the most frightening ordeal ever.)
Dinner at MOS Burger. This is a Chicken Teriyaki sushi rice burger thingymajig. Incredibly small and I wouldn't think worth the SGDs we paid for it, but interesting nonetheless. The boyfriend said he felt like he was "...eating a bento box." The stuff from the bento box, I mean, not the box per se. Never mind.
We met up with Dom and his colleagues, Pok & ZH for after dinner drinks at Clarke Quay and I feel like kicking myself for not taking any photos because we got the birthday boy drunk. And he was a bloody intellectual drunk too might I add. I've seen quite a fair bit of drunken people -- emo drunks, hyper drunks, sleepy drunks, violent drunks, but I've never seen a smart drunk. :p
Dom: "What are the 5 Greek Options!? Tell me, what are the 5 Greek Options!"
o__O
I don't think I could do justice to the whole situation, so I think I'll leave it to one of the guys to blog about. Hehe.
Went to bed late and woke up early on Sunday to be in line to rush into the park when the gates open.
Welcome to Universal Studios, oh we went through quite a lot to get tickets for you geez.
First stop: Jurassic Park! We sat on that glider coaster thing which isn't one of my favourites because ever since Gold Coast, I figured that coasters where my legs are left dangling in mid-air aren't for me. Maybe it's just that I don't feel secure enough.
The mandatory photo with a dino.
Far Far Away, the kingdom in Shrek. Sigh. It's one thing watching princess all your life in cartoons when you're little, and another seeing castle structures in real life. I swear I practically skipped down the path when I saw this.
Welcome to Far Far Away! Adam having fun pushing his girlfriend far far away. His idea for a photo op, not mine.
More pictures of Far Far Away & the quaint streets. And two knight in shining armours at the top left. :p
Shrek! /waves crazily. I keep on forgetting I'm 22 this year instead of 2.
The Enchanted Airways ride where they make you queue up in this house with stone walls, complete with fun posters for you to read whilst waiting in line. The roller coaster is actually the dragon in Shrek, or in this case, their "airplane", hence, Enchanted Airways.
Trying to keep a straight face vs. trying to be yeng.
The boys!
Clockwise from top left: The view of Far Far Away from...far far away (no pun intended), the famed Battlestar Galatica which is still shut after months, the matinee where we caught the Monster Rock musical, and the streets of Lights Camera Action.
One of the Egyptian men on stilts who walked around the park nearly all afternoon in the scorching heat. He had very nice abs though. Ahem.
One of the vintage cars outside the diner where we had lunch.
Madagascar! With "I like to movit movit" blaring out of the speakers! Super fun.
Cannot not take a picture with the Madagascar animals. :D The rest of the area looked really good. Unfortunately, didn't really take as many pictures here as I would have liked since the rides in this side of the park were mainly for children and we were running out of time anyway. :(
One of the signboards in Old Hollywood. If you can't quite read it, it says "Welcome to Hollywood; Population: Glamourous". Hee.
And last but not least, the two majestic statues outside the Revenge of the Mummy in Ancient Egypt. The best ride of the whole theme park, IMO. It was a super long wait, but it was the one that made my ticket's worth. It's a roller coaster ride with parts in complete darkness so you don't really know which way you're going to tip next -- left right up down, even backwards.
Looking back, we only actually spent about 5 hours in the theme park, including lunch and watching a few shows. We missed this water show which was supposed to be really good, and the guys would probably have liked to go on some of the rides again but despite all that, if you plan your time properly, go in when the gates open and all that, you can probably cover the whole park quite nicely.
The size pales in comparison when you think about Movie World in Gold Coast, but that probably makes it much better for families with children. My brother, Su, and their three kids went a week or two after us and they spent the entire day there.
After all that, we hopped into a cab to go to our last destination in Singapore where we were to take the bus from -- yet another mall. And of course, what with my luck with all the shoe shops earlier on, the guys suggested that I try the very last Charles & Keith in that building which would bring my total tally to four Charles & Keith outlets in two freaking days.
So I did, and again... no size. :'((((((
Whilst wandering around waiting for our bus (after my fourth and final traumatic Charles & Keith no-size drama), we saw this. xoxo.chic for real one day, perhaps? Maybe we should copyright it soon. Lol.
So, with that, ended our two-day weekend getaway to Singapore. Did I enjoy it? Sure I did. Good company and new places to see made the two days great fun. I know I grumbled when the boyfriend planned it because the MYR to SGD exchange rate is never soothing for Malaysian bank accounts, but I'm glad I went. Now, next stop is Bangkok/Krabi in September, and I'm dead excited.
I never knew why holidays were so important before I started work, because my family was never big on travelling, but now, after I've fully immersed my life into a 9 to 7 job, I totally get it. Bonuses, from now on, are going into my once-a-year travelling fund. Koh Samui, Bali, Hong Kong, Japan, Melbourne, Paris, Rome, US of A, England, Egypt, here I come! /broke and dreaming.
<3
