An unexpected date

I finished work early on Friday. My date came to pick me up. We had agreed on a late lunch appointment. Seremban is so small, there's hardly any place you can go to "pak tor" (date).

He had some Starbucks coupons and thought maybe I'd like to go there for a drink. I told him to save it for his friends as I was not much of a coffee drinker. Then he mentioned a makan (eating) place called Manhattan Fish Market. He has not been there for a long time. I reminded him that we were there on the 11 of September this year. It seemed like a long time to him and he wanted to take me there for lunch.

So we went to Jusco. At 3.30pm, we thought there were ample parking spaces, but we were proven wrong. We ended up parking at the rooftop area.

As we were going down the escalators, we passed by the cinema. I haven't stepped into the cinema since ... 2 or 3 years back, when they were showing Narnia. I wasn't a movie fan. He said that it was a long time since I watched a movie with him. I said that he didn't want to watch with me. He then said that he would watch one with me, just name a movie. Instantly I told him that I would want to watch Madagascar. His expression was so comical. I quickly changed my mind and said.. Quantum of Solace. He was overjoyed and quickly booked the tickets.

Here's proof that I actually went to see the show. My second time stepping into Jusco's TGV cinema.

The show was scheduled for 5pm and it was only 4pm. We had lunch at The Manhattan Fish Market. We met Phillip and he joined us for a drink.

At 15minutes to 5pm, we went up to the cinema. I felt so weird. I wasn't sure what I was doing there. After a while, I relaxed and started enjoying the show. My expectations were very high. I think it could have been a better movie. The fire shown in the movie reminded me of Universal Studios. I could imagine how they created the fire scene.

Anyway, it's not so much of the movie nor the food. I really enjoyed spending time with this handsome hunk. :)

Dark clouds

Be prepared for rain and thunderstorms.

These few days the skies are covered with dark clouds. Usually it would be sunny in the mornings but in the afternoons, the dark clouds would come and then the rains would fall. I love it when this happens. Not the thunderstorms, but a steady rain to cool down the environment.

Once in a while the sun would appear for the whole day. The weather gets hot and the humidity is high and that's when we will wish for a good pouring of rain from the sky.

For the Last Two Days.....

The last 2 days we were busy with the (apart from making the tree) stage and props work. Rachel took leave and asked some youths to come and help.

Annie and her students were given the task of painting the sea of Galilee.

Aunt Mary painted the stable scene.

Rachel supervised the amendments and deco of the stage.

The youths helped with painting the props. I really thank God for the youths. They willingly gave their time to help us and they were only too happy to help. God bless them. :)

Man-made Tree

Recently A. Chris has been asking us for ideas to decorate her classroom for VBA (Vacation Bible Adventure). The theme this year was safari. I was so bogged down with the VBA crafts and Christmas musical that I just can't think of any fresh ideas. My reply to her on MSN was "No ideas". Then she asked Rachel. As usual Rachel had a lot of ideas but no time. A.Chris said that she had a few soft toy monkeys but didn't know what to do with them. Rachel suggested making a tree with papier-mache and hanging the monkeys on the tree.

We started making the tree trunk yesterday with chicken netting,newspapers and starch.. The sun was shinning brightly and the newspaper dried very quickly. We were pleased with the results but when we tried to make the tree stand, the tree refused to obey. The foundation wasn't firm enough and the tree always had to leaned on something. We added more newspapers and starch at the base and onto the tree trunk and left it to continue the next day.

Today the sky was overcast. With hardly any sun rays my hopes on making a tree were low. Nevertheless, we continued by adding more newspapers to the tree trunk and making the main branches.

While waiting for the tree to dry, we painted the leaves. Everyone grumbled because there were so many leaves to paint.

Then we started dressing the tree with the painted leaves. After sticking more than 40 leaves, we took a hard look at our handiwork. It didn't resembled a tree at all. It looked so ugly and I was sure some of the nearby trees were laughing at this poor ugly tree which couldn't stand on it's own but had to be supported by 2 plastic chairs.

At about 3.30pm, I gave up. A. Chris gave up. The project was a flop.

Suddenly, 10 minutes later, my father came with a wooden base he made himself. He tore off all the branches and turned the tree upside down to insert the wooden base in. And when he turned the tree right side up again... ta da..... the tree stood on it's own.

Everyone cheered and we started adding the branches and leaves again. It was so much easier this time. We did finish the tree within the hour.

Rachel came later to paint the tree trunk. My mom and Su-Ann helped too.

Here's the finished work. This lion was taken from the Kidz Safari event we had in May. A.Chris thought the tree looked a little too bare and she said she would do more branches with leaves at home.

It was a tiring day for me. I felt weak and weary but happy because we'd managed to save the tree. Hurray for my father. :)

Dinner with the boys

Every Monday, a group of guys would meet for dinner. Usually at 7pm, just before dinner, they would make it a point to visit people who were sick, just to encourage and pray for them. Then at 8pm, the guys would decide where to go for dinner.

Two days ago, they didn't visit anybody. Not sure what the reason was, but they wanted to meet for dinner at Fireworks. Rachel and I were in town and we decided to join the boys. We all had western food.

I thought it was going to be a boring night because usually the guys would talk about football and other non-interesting stuff. But I was wrong.

The restaurant was playing some oldies. We were enjoying ourselves talking while listening to the songs played when suddenly Eddie asked... "what's the title and artist of this song?". We were listening to "American Dream" but nobody knew the title of the song let alone the artist.

Our conversations from then on were about artists, songs and later.. movies. We talked about Beatles, Elton John, Clay Aiken, Freddy Mercury & Queens, Barcelona Song, New Kids on The Block (NKOTB), Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers, Cindy Lauper.. gosh.. what else?... so many artists, some of whom were way before my time. Then we moved on to movies. It's more of a "remember this movie?" kind of talk. These guys knew so much about this kind of entertainment. I was really impressed. I went home knowing so much more than when I left home that morning. :)

Oh No! I've to see the Dentist again!

On Sunday, while I was happily eating mom's home cooked food, my tongue came in contact with something hard. My first thought was.. on no, my fillings came off. A quick check on the teeth with my tongue told me it wasn't so. I spit it out to check what it was. It was a tooth filling. Sigh!

I have to go to the dentist again. This will be my uh.... 3rd or 4th visit this year?.. I lost count. Thank God I've already did the root canal on this tooth, otherwise the pain would be unbearable. I have a feeling that my poor tooth will only get fixed sometime end December. I am a great procrastinator on such things. :)

YSL Eyeshadow

Someone gave me a YSL eyeshadow last year. It's not my colour and it has been lying on my table (among the many vanity stuff that I have) for ..well... since last year. I've used it only once to test and see if the colour suited me but it did not.

So, if any of you wants it, it's yours. :)

What's on Page 56?

What's on Page 56? (Seen and stolen from korpun's blog)

Rules:

* Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
* Turn to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post that sentence along with these instructions in a note to your wall.
* Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

Here's mine :

They ate and slept that night on the mountain.

No, it's nothing to do with romance :). It's actually taken from the Bible (Version - The Message by Eugene H. Peterson). Genesis 31 :54b (NIV)

Steamboat @ Cell

We had steamboat at cell yesterday. It has been ages since I last ate steamboat and it was yummy.

My cell members.

Stage Dressing - Day 2

Yesterday was Stage Dressing - Day 2. My parents, A.Chris, Brian and some of the youths came to help again.

Our goal was to cover the tomb with old "wallpapers" and line the top with "clouds" (of fibre). I thought the youths did a pretty good job. I remembered last year, we took 2 days to complete this task. The youths did it in 5 hours.

Rachel, Caryn and my mom did the touch up for the brick walls and doors.

The sky and cross scene were painted by Aunt Mary. She is really good at painting. Such a blessing to have her. The bricks and door "wallpapers" were painted by Rachel and her team. Most of them were painted last year. We reused the wallpapers and just touched up certain weak areas.

A closer look at the "building". Looked as if we painted some green to make it "mossy", but no, we did not use green paint. It was the combination of lights from various sources.

We did manage to create and paint more papier-mached pots. I now have enough to sell in the market place. :)

We ended early. By 3.45pm we started cleaning the stage area. Rachel and I left the church building at 4.40pm and headed to town to buy baskets to use as props and later rewarded ourselves with a drink and roti canai (Indian bread) at Top Curry House for a good day's work.

Lizard's Egg

While sorting out the props for the upcoming musical, we came across many lizard's eggs and droppings.

It was a yucky job to do, but it had to be done and I volunteered to shake off all the droppings and sanitized the props. I saw the lizard eggs and showed them to the youths; some of them have never seen one before. Some wanted to break open the shells to see the tiny lizards...(gross).

The lizards reminded me of some American friends who stayed in my house 3 years ago.

You can tell that they were so fascinated with the lizards. Each took turns to (torture) play with the lizard. Kyle thought it would be nice to feel the lizard crawling through his hair (Yuck!). Craig pondered on taking one back to the States and keeping it as a pet. (Faint). Should have looked for a lizard's egg and hidden it in his luggage. :)

Stage Dressing - Day 1

On Sunday, we took out all the props and papier -mached wallpaper in preparation for Tuesday's stage dressing. After 1 year of storing it in the cabin, the props and wallpaper were filthy. We called a few guys to help us transfer them to the educational block.

Yesterday, we started the dressing up the stage. Rachel kept last year's (and year before last too) wallpaper and we decided to use it for this year's musical. First we sorted out the different toned "walls", then we placed them onto the makeshift stage.

We had a lot of help especially from the youths. About 15 of us helped either at the stage section or creating and painting the props.

My parents helped a lot by making papier-mached vases and clay pots. They did this last week and yesterday a few of us painted them.

Tomorrow will be the 2nd Day of Stage Dressing. We hoped to complete covering the stage with wallpapers (1/4 more to go) and then concentrate on creating clouds with fibre.

Gunung Nuang on the 8th of December?

Two mountain-climbing-crazy guys are wanting to climb Gunung Nuang on the 8th of December. This is the 3rd time they are organising a trip to Nuang. The first time was last year... June 07. They were the sweepers and didn't make it up to the summit.
The 2nd time was on May 1st this year. Sirdar had some family obligations and did not register for the climb. At the very last minute, Messner, who organised the Nuang climb, pulled out because he had some very urgent matters to attend to. He passed the responsibility to a fellow climber who had summited Nuang before.

A few days ago, Messner sent an email (and smsed too) saying that he and Sirdar are planning to climb Nuang on the 8th of December and wanted to know if I was interested in this climb. I didn't bother replying because I was so sure they would (dare, taunt) ask me when I see them in church.

True enough, 3 days ago when I saw them in church, they asked if I wanted to join them. I told them that I would be busy that week because of the Christmas Musical. There are other reasons too. I am having a flu and coughing so much now, and based on previous experiences, I foresee that my cough will end sometime early December. I do not want to get sick again especially during the December month. Furthermore, I have this nagging pain in my right knee and it has been bothering me for a few weeks now. It got well last week, but I had a little accident in the cabin (where we keep the props for the musical). Several sheets of plywood fell on me and I was trapped underneath for a few seconds. When I finally straightened myself, I felt the pain on my knee again.

See... all valid reasons. :)

I met Peter and Helen Lai 2 days ago and their advice was "DON'T GO!". I've read Jimbo's blog on Nuang and by the looks of it, it's a tough climb. Rachel Wong also did not have a good experience climbing Nuang last year.

I saw Messner in church again yesterday. He said that if I were to climb with them on the 8th, both he and Sirdar would make sure that I summit. They would be the sweepers. I retorted saying that if I were to go, they would have to organise a 4th trip to Nuang because I may not make it to the top. :)

Painting the Stage

Today a group of us will be painting the stage for our coming Musical. Everyone who signed up for stage and props department have to help out, and as many as 15 will be present today. Let's hope we can finish what we have set out to accomplish today.

No time to write more....

Aiks! It's white...

White Hair. To be precise... my white hair.
I do have a few, but this stood out among my almost black hair. No, I didn't pull it off like most people would do. Usually when I do see one that bugs me, I will just cut it off. I was told that a hair can regrow only up to 25 times; hence my hesitation of pulling it off my scalp for fear of becoming bald sooner than later. :)

No Trimmings this year?

As at 4pm today, the tree is still bare. It seems the guys thought it was best to add more lights to the tree and do without the trimmings. They still have one more week to decide...

Miracles Do Happen

We have four men here trying to put up a 10-foot Christmas tree. Three of them do not even own a Christmas tree at home. The only person who has one at home (and never helped decorate the tree at home) got scolded by his wife when he told her that he has to decorate the church's Christmas tree this year.

They took more than 2 hours fixing and putting the light bulbs all around the tree. This was done last Sunday.

Today they will decorate it with ornaments and baubles. I'm pretty sure they would do a good job. :)

My Parents' Garden

Recently I took a closer look at my parents' garden. They don't have a very big garden. Just big enough for them to maintain.

These are some of the flowers planted by them. They have roses, jasmine, orchids (bloomed for 5 weeks, now on the verge of dying), marigolds (seeds given by Ruth via post) and a few others.

And they also have herbs and fruits planted near the kitchen area. I spotted some lime, watermelon leaves (no watermelon yet), papaya tree, pineapple, aloe vera, pandan leaves, serai (lemon grass), curry leaves, cili padi (small red and green chilly), kunyit leaves and many others. I don't know the names for some of them. I think at one time they planted brinjals (eggplant) too.

Their garden is well-kept by my dad (who waters the plants and catches insects day and night) and Tusi (who plants them and makes sure they grow well).

So unlike my unkempt garden...

I really need to trim the grass again.

While I was doing some weeding a couple of days ago, I spotted a frog hiding in my garden. It gave me a shock when it suddenly jumped up. I must have been pulling the weeds too close to its hiding place.

(Note to self : Don't procrastinate any longer if you don't want a family of frogs living in your garden)

The Rain Came

Malaysia experiences tropical weather and it's basically hot and wet the whole year through. The west coast of Peninsular Malaysia experiences a rainy season from September to December and the east coast, from October to February. As for East Malaysia, it collects heavy rain between November and February.

Basically, if you are in any part of Malaysia in the months of November and December, you should expect rain. Seremban is on the West Coast of Malaysia and should experience rain from September onwards. But it has been so hot these past few weeks. I longed for rain and prayed very hard for the weather to change. My prayers were answered. It rained for the past 2 afternoons. The rain cooled the town of Seremban (not sure about the other parts of the country) and I'm sure many of us enjoyed the cool weather. PTL!

Baking Soda

Recently, I bought a pack of baking soda.... a big pack. I can't use all, so if anyone wants to have half of it (for free), please let me know.

It's organic, ya..
Expiry date - 30 Oct 2009.

Tempted

Air Asia's latest promotion.. book from 12-16 Nov 2008. Travel period - 22 Jun - 24 Oct 2009. Free seats and no fuel surcharge this time.

As usual, I like to randomly check if I could book free flights both ways. In this promotion, I clicked on Hanoi as my preferred destination departing LCCT-KL on the 13th Sept 2009, leaving Hanoi for KL on the 16th Sept 2009.

Take a look at how much it costs -

Return trip to Hanoi for only RM133. So cheap!!!!! But I didn't go any further from this screen. Sigh... too far ahead to plan. :(

3rd Breadmaker Machine

I'm beginning to feel fed-up (pity you guys too :)) about blogging on the Kenwood BM350 breadmaker machine but I just got to tell you this -

The salesman came yesterday and replaced the 2nd machine with the 3rd one. Mom tried making all kinds of bread - plain, seeded, cinnamon & raisins, potato and wholemeal.

All was good except for the wholemeal which looks like this -

The picture above shows 2 loaves of wholemeal bread. The bread on the left looks completely out of shape and hard as a rock while the one on the right looks weird but is edible. I'm going to have some for breakfast tomorrow morning since nobody wants to eat them. :)

Era walk

So this is Era Walk. It's a new place to hang out... well, not that new because it was open since... 1 or 2 years ago??!! Not sure.

According to my sister, this place comes alive during the weekend but when I was there 3 days ago, it wasn't so crowded. Probably because it was still early.... to some. It was 9.30pm, so that's debatable. :)

2nd Breadmaker Machine

On Friday, the Kenwood salesman came to my mom's house and tested the breadmaker machine (Kenwood BM350). This is the 2nd machine and my mom was hopeful. The salesman checked how she measured the ingredients and taught her how to fill the bread tin. It took 3-4 hours to bake a bread and the salesman said that he would return later.

When the bread was ready, my mother was so happy. The bread's shape was right. But when the salesman saw it, he wasn't happy. He said the bread should have risen higher. And when they tasted it.... it was dry and not so nice to eat.

He then asked my mom to try a few more times over the weekend and he would come back on Monday to replace a new machine for her if she was not satisfied.

Over the weekend, my mom tried 7 times. The wholemeal loaves were not good at all. Inedible. The white bread and multi-seeded ones were good but they didn't rise as high as they should have.

This is the 6th bread she made so far with the 2nd machine. Fresh out of the machine, it looks good and smells heavenly.

The kneader always gets stuck and we have to dig it out.

The bread texture is good and the top is always flaky. But it doesn't look right. The shape is not there. My mom is thinking of sending the 2nd machine back and hopefully the 3rd machine would be perfect.

Busy with crafts for VBA

Vacation Bible Adventure (VBA) is approaching... Dec 1st and 2nd to be exact. This year's theme is "Kingdom of the Son" and it's going to be in a safari setting.

My job is simple... but tedious. I'm in charge of crafts. Having no good ideas whatsoever, I googled and found some interesting crafts under this website.

Two samples here - a hippo and a half-done tiger.

The hippo and a good-natured tiger. This is one of the crafts the children are going to do this VBA. The older kids get the tiger and the younger ones, the hippo. We have about 50 kids 8 years and younger and I don't think they would be able to handle the scissors. So imagine... I have to cut out 4 legs X 50, 50 "tails", 50 "heads" and 50 "bodies". And this is only craft No. 1.

Busy, busy, busy.....

Ant In The Sky

Yesterday, Minch, Rach and I met Sze-En in Pasar Malam. We said hi and started a conversation with her when suddenly she pointed to the sky and exclaimed, "Look at the ant". (As usual her eyes are everywhere except at the person she is talking to). We turned around and looked up in the sky.

We saw this 4-legged "ant" flying. Hmm.... someone must tell her that all insects have 6 legs. Anyway, if it weren't for Sze-En, we wouldn't have spotted this flying creature. Clearly the vendor knew where to display his merchandise for a certain crowd to notice. :)