More pics...

Some interesting pics of us on our visit to KL and Malacca.

From left: My younger sis Christina, ME, my younger bro Alex, my cousin Alicia, my cousin Benjamin

The super cute rabbit we saw at Pets Wonderland. I did not use a flash when taking this pic, of course.

A Famosa Fortress

Disaster-in-making

Having my grandmother living with us is like having a time bomb planted next to the gas tank under the stove in our kitchen.

I am serious. This is of course my maternal grandmother I'm talking about (My paternal grandmother passed away few years back. Mama was the kindest old woman I've ever known). You won't know when, where, how, why and what you'll be scolded for. The last time I counted, I got lectured twice because I forgot to ask Jessica to give the K-drama VCDs back. I definitely saw that coming and tried to avoid it so badly, but...no such luck! She even told me that I shouldn't lend VCDs to people who wouldn't return them like in one week. Hello? I certainly told you that I borrowed the "Goong" VCDs from my friend (although the truth is I bought them), but YOU kept them for more than one month, watching them over and over. Whereas my grandfather got blasted for more than half a day merely because he said one sentence, "Why did you buy so many stuff?" when she came back from the wet market carrying bags of...well, stuff. I totally side Grandpa. She does not know how to save money, that's for sure. Then she went on yelling things like, "I never used a cent of your money! I've worked so hard until I nearly died to bring the children up and this is how you are treating me...I've NEVER done or said anything wrong in my whole life...Blah blah blah..."

She never used a single cent of my grandpa's money?! That's completely untrue. You've never worked a single job, where do you think your money came from? Oh please, don't pretend you didn't marry Grandpa for his money. And don't get me started on the way you supposingly brought up your children. You were never a good mother. According to my mom and my aunts and my uncle, all you did when they were little was playing mahjung with friends until midnight. Your children never saw you. They were brought up by your mother. Unless you're trying to say cooking one meal each day for your family was such a painstaking hard work, you've done nothing whatsoever to take care of your family. You've never done anything wrong in your life??? Just who do you think you are??? GOD???

My maternal grandparents have never gotten along as long as I can remember. Back when they were living under one roof, it was fighting and shouting 24/7. I can remember very clearly that when I was six, they were having such a huge fight that my grandma threw a slipper at my grandpa and he picked up a chair and threw it towards her. They were shouting so loud that I cried and my parents quickly brought me upstairs so that I won't see them fighting.

That could have permanantly damaged my mental health as a six-year-old kid. If I end up acting like my grandma when I'm her age, it's all down to their fault.

We've had a MUCH more peaceful life since Grandma moved to Kampar. But recently, her mood swings are as dramatic as ever. She's complaining that we don't give her all the money she wants. Gawd, we're just trying to help her. Knowing her, she won't be happy until she has spent every single cent that's in her pocket. If we were to give her all the money in one shot instead of monthly allowance, she'd be bankrupt by next year. So she's acting like we are mistreating her. But when we offer to give her more money, she accused us of treating her like a begger.

I can't believe this woman. My uncle finally couldn't take the shouting anymore that he told her to go home to Kampar so that everyone gets a nice peaceful Christmas. "Why is it always about money?", asked Joey. I can't give you an answer, Uncle. As you've said, I'm too young to understand.

I know for a fact that Grandpa said sometimes he hopes that she's dead. Serious. And I don't blame him a single bit. Coz who doesn't? Hope that she's in heaven, I mean.

Grandma is so lucky coz everyone in the family is Christian. Or else we'll be praying that she goes to you-know-where instead of hoping that she returns to God's kingdom.

Wait, did I say it's a disaster-in-making? My mistake. It is already a disaster.

I'm broke!

Yeah, I am pretty sure that I'd be penniless after tomorrow. We had a crazy shopping spree at Midvalley Megamall earlier. But we're not done yet! The shopping shall be continued before we hop into the car and head to Malacca later today.

So now I'm staying at Boulevard Hotel's clubhouse junior suite. The room's quite nice, but the best thing is I got free internet access. Luckily I brought my notebook.

Everyone's asleep now except for me. Should have taken pics of the room once we checked in.

Anyway, here's a pic of me at Midvalley:


I love the ginger bread and candy houses:

A girl can never have too many clothes?

Bought this dress in Malacca. Cost me RM 199.

I really liked it once I set my eyes on it. The only question from my mom was, "Are you ever gonna wear it??"

You know, that's a good question, Mom.

Once again, it's proven that I'm quite an irrational person who always has her head in the clouds, despite what they say about the Capricorns being the most realistic people. Honestly, I'm always buying clothes that I don't wear. Always. I'm one of those psychotic shopaholics who buy clothes merely because they look nice, but not necessarily on me. So when I finally realised that I have no shoes or earrings to match with the new clothes, they'll go straight to the bottom of my closet. Most of them are brand new. A few still with price tags on.

Gawd, I'm so sinful. Should've donated the clothes instead......Yeah, I think I shall do it as soon as possible. Coz I'm so sure it's impossible to fit a third closet in my bedroom.

But this is a different case. The dress did look good on me. And I definately have something else to go with it (since I'm not too comfortable in exposing my arms).

The vest matched so well with the dress that I bet no one will notice the two pieces were actually bought separately if I didn't tell.

The thing is, I'm not sure whether I'm attending any events that will be appropriate for me to wear that.

Anyone getting married lately??

The excuse I gave Mom was that we might have some events coming up next semester. Which was such a bad excuse. Coz hello? The two other new dresses stuffed in my closet have only been worn once. I bought the maroon one for my cousin's wedding and another pink one just to wear to the chruch on the morning of my grandpa's birthday. Both cost around RM 150.

This is another dress I bought just before I went to Nilai.

Fortunately, Mom didn't seem to remember. So I stuck to my excuse.

Someday, the Salvation Army might track me down for having one whole closet full of clothes that I don't wear (the other closet is for clothes that I actually wear) when the kids in some third world countries don't have more than banana leaves to wear.

One dress should be enough for a girl like me who don't really have the body to go with it. I don't think I deserve having so many clothes since I won't look good in any of them anyway.

I bet if I said the statement up there on TV I'll be getting an invitation to go on Oprah Winfrey Show so that Dr. Robin can analyse the self-denying mental problem I've got.

All I need is self-actualization? I don't know how a person could be self-actualized when she's less than perfect.

I'm such a perfectionist that I'm doomed.

Hurt

"I'm sorry for...blaming you...for everything...I just couldn't do. And I've hurt myself, by hurting you..."

Yup, that's the new single called "Hurt" by Christina Aguilera, one of my all time fave singers. Come on, Xtina is SO MUCH better than Britney. Britney sucks! ,,l,, ^_^ ,,l,, Xtina rules!

Which is why I had an idea of imitating Xtina and sing the song "Hurt". I realised once again my singing is pathetic. Even more pathetic when I recorded it with my lousy cellphone and the sound kinda cracks whenever it reaches a high and loud note. Maybe I've held the phone too close to myself. So it's lousy singer plus even more lousy cellphone. I recommend that you turn down the volume a little when you're listening. The audio quality might sound better this way.

Hurt (garbage truck version) - by SapphireGurl

*Again, you'll have to open it with Real Player. If you're asked to download a codec, please do so as the player will need the codec to open the file.

Happy family

Am gonna post some pics of me and my family during the trip to Melaka.

At the Equatorial Hotel:

At my dad's apartment in the police station (he's moving to a house soon):

Yup, that's my family. Mom and dad, my younger brother and sister. My younger brother just finished his SPM. My sister's 15 this year. She's a slow-learner (caused by brain damage) and is diagnosed with allergy to all food containing wheat. When she eats food like bread and noodles, it all turns into fat bcoz her digestive system is not working.

I reckon my parents should have sued the hospital where she delivered my sister while they still could. It was all the hospital's fault. Or it really was Tenaga National's fault. There was a blackout in the hospital when my mom was half-way delivering my sis. It was a mere 5 mins but when the lights came back, she had already turned blue due to lack of oxygen and according to the doc, that lack of oxygen was what caused the brain damage......

Pfuit! Who am I kidding? It's like impossible to sue a hospital staff for negligence in our country (the government likes burying stuff too much), much less a privatised, government-sponsored company.

I don't know how many times I have said and would be saying this, but life is SO unfair.

I'm home!

Yeah, after spending 3 days in Melaka, I'm home. Not for long though. I'll be going to KL on Thursday and will be spending the weekends, again, in Melaka.

Not that I'm complaining. I like traveling to places, especially nice places like Melaka. Although it's not a big happening city like KL, I won't dread spending my holidays there, which is not a sentiment too difficult to understand, if you - like me - have been spending most of your life in the ultimate boring city of Ipoh. I mean, why is Ipoh even a city in the first place? We certainly didn't live up to the standard, coz let's see...what do we have? I don't know. I only know what we DON'T have. We don't have megamalls, just tiny little shopping complexes; or five-star hotels; or any nice tourists attraction, unless you're counting those smelly caves and the Lost World of Tambun in Sunway City Ipoh, which is totally a LOST case. Seriously, people here actually get excited that a drive-through McD is opening soon near my house. Does this tell you how boring it is to be living in Ipoh?

Wait...what was I saying before I get distracted by the boringness of my hometown? Oh yeah, the fact that I like traveling. I do. But the only problem remains: HOW THE HELL AM I EVER GONNA START MY COURSEWORK???

I really have no idea. This is just perfect.

P/S: I think I'll only post the pics of the trip when I come back from Melaka next week. I'm sure the coming trip will be more fun with my uncle being with us. Much more shopping too, for sure. Coz the greatest shopaholics in our family, my aunt and my uncle, are gonna be there.

　

There's nothing merry about this Christmas

Count on peer pressure to chase the holiday spirit out of me.

Ai Wee, my friend, why did you tell me? Now that I've found out that some of my classmates had already FINISHED attachment and some of them (probably half of my class) had gotten their coursework DONE, how do you expect me to be able to sleep at night? It's just so much better to live under the false impression that everyone's enjoying their holiday and forgetting their homework. This is TMI!!! Which will cause me to throw myself out of a building, if I can find a building tall enough in Ipoh to crush all my bones when I jump, that is.

Now I realised, if I were to start doing something about my coursework during this holiday, I HAVE TO start tomorrow! Coz on Friday, I'll be going to Malacca. Next Friday, I'll be in KL. A fortnight later, I'll be in Cameron Highlands.

To sum things up: I'M SO DEAD.

Seriously, I've never felt so threatened by this peer pressure thingy......

Oh, who am I kidding? Of course I have. Come on, I was a freak when I was in secondary, and I think I still am one. I was in a nerdy class with 40 over straight-A students but I was not even smart. I was the math idiot in the class. Completely clueless about anything math-related. I was forced to drop Additional Maths and Physics in F.5 just so that I wouldn't be flunking 2 subjects in my SPM. The only human being in Pure Science who dropped 2 important subjects and took up Chinese Literature instead: who else but me, the ultimate loser?

Let's face it, I'm not the smartest; I'm not the prettiest. I might've been the best singer in my grade, but now I'm sure many singers in our college are better than me.

But that's not the worst. The worst thing is I was constantly beaten out by people who are not that smart themselves; and even ugly, both inside and outside. Here's one good example:
There was a very smart girl in my class who thought she was all that and enjoyed going around commenting on other people's appearance. Although she was one of the smartest students in my class, the fact is, she's not even pretty herself. The dress she wore to our graduation dinner that she was so proud of actually made her look like a poutlet (French word. Not gonna tell you what it means. Go figure it out yourself). I didn't say that, of course. My college friends did, after looking at her pics. To cut the story short, she was hypocritical and I'm so sure if you cut open her torso and snatch her heart out, you'll see it's pitch-black! But yet she was popular! And she was capable of making everyone turn their backs to people whom she disliked (according to my classmate/best friend in F.5, she hated people whom she felt threatened by. People who were more attractive or smarter than she was. I don't think she was right though. Bcoz if that's true, why in the world did she pick on me? Hello? I'm just an unattractive, talentless, defeated freak), until one point where everyone started to realise how mean she was and started boycotting her. Even then, the guys believed that she was only an innocent, kind-hearted and friendly girl. They believed every single thing she said about other girls.

Which totally proved that there is no justice in the world. None at all.

Guess we are all living in a world with endless peer pressure. You fight to be in the most popular clique in school, bocz of peer pressure. You fight to get into the most prestigeous university, bcoz if you didn't make it and your former classmates did, you'd be hailed a loser. You fight for a job after graduating that will earn you a huge paycheck, bcoz if you don't, your grandmother's friend's sister's daughter's son will show off his paycheck during the next visit to your granny's house. You fight for a tall, dark and handsome plus rich bf who fulfils your 5 Cs requirement (Cash, Credit Card, Condo, Car) so that during the next secondary school reunion, you can show him off as an accessory and also, how can you forget, the new Cartier diamond bracelet he bought you for your birthday. When you get married you want a Vera Wang bridal gown to beat your ex-classmate's wedding gown, no matter how much it costs. When you have kids you want them to get into the best schools so that they don't get looked down by next door's snobby kids. When you have grandchildren you have to force them to perform some sort of lame story-telling on the stool whenever people visit your house, just to remind your relatives that your grandchildren are better than theirs......

But what does it matter in the end, I ask you? We are all just going to die anyway.

Then again, even for funerals we sometimes spend a fortune on them. What is even the point? So that your death causes higher expenses than your rival's?

Come to think of it, I don't remember feeling the pressure that much when I was in primary. It's probably bcoz back then I was getting the top ten best results and winning every school competition (speech in all languages, singing, essay in all languages...The headmaster once joked that he was bored of shaking my hand during the award presentation every year and why can't they have someone else on stage for a change. I even delivered the graduation speech in primary six, representing the student body). Guess I was so used to being the popular girl in the school (no kidding, even my seniors and juniors remembered me to this date. Once I met a girl whom I believed was my classmate (She indicated that she was but I really didn't recognize her), she turned to her mother and said I was very popular in school) that I can't adapt to the "fab to freak" phenomenon since I started secondary.

In my case, seems like it's not injustice nor it is peer pressure. It's plainly my fault. My fault, for being such a pinhead. My fault, for over-estimating myself. Me and my stupid-ass mistakes.

I'm such a goner.

On The Edge

Just finished watching this movie. For people like me who never understood mafia movies (especially HK ones), "On The Edge" is kinda good.

Here's the trailer:


It's not really a mafia movie, actually. The main character is a cop who went undercover for 8 years to catch a gangster "dai lou". What makes this movie different from other undercover stories is that it is actually narrating the life of this cop after he put the bad guy behind the bars. The whole movie consists of countless flashbacks. It tells us how the cop suffered from mental disorder after coming back to police force because he couldn't see his true self anymore. All he had ever wanted since he entered police training was to become a normal cop who catches criminals on the street. But they put him into undercover the moment he graduated. No matter how hard he tried to talk his way out of it during the 8 years, he was forced to convince everyone that he was a gangster, including the woman he loved.

And what did he get after completing his mission, for sacrificing so much in his life? A damned piece of certificate announcing his contribution to the police force. That was about all. Other than that, the gangsters who now knew he was a cop were looking for him because they wanted revenge; his colleagues didn't trust him enough to even inform him about their operations because who would trust a cop who hung around with gangsters for 8 years? He felt that he had betrayed his friends but at the same time he really wanted to move on and be a good cop. When he finally started to realise he could get out of this dilemma as long as he chooses to, a gangster who came for revenge shot him dead. They never mentioned this in the movie, but I'm sure he was as good as forgotten at that moment. He was just another cop who died in service: A nobody.

It's a very sad story. But one sadder fact is that, this is most probably what's happening to all undercover cops in the world. They are not known heros and they get nothing in return for their sacrifice.

Reality, in its very own nature, is unfair.

Just like it's unfair that Francis Ng and Anthony Wong got more attention during the premiere of this movie, although Nick Cheung is the main character, just because those two are HK Golden Film Awards Best Actor winners and he is not one......yet. Seriously, I will never understand why he can't get nominated with such performance in this movie. Everyone says he's a great actor whenever his movies come out. But no one ever gave him an award for it. Guess he just has to get lucky.

So thumbs up for this movie. The storyline, the actors and director Herman Yau are amazing.

One low point though, I don't like Rain Li's acting and her character. Good thing she only appeared in a few scenes.