The Magic is Gone

So yes, yet again, we were expected to dump everything in our lives and run to them at their beck and call at the last minute. I absolutely detest being informed about last minute decisions and then expected to have everything all ready and nice and pretty. If I were a rich tai tai who has nothing to do the entire day, then it's a different story altogether. If I were that, you want me to fly to the moon today also can. But unfortunately, I, and a lot of others, have to work to pay the bills and our time is not as flexible as we'd like it to be.

This is beginning to feel like a chore. The constant reprimands and preferential treatment of some is making me feel quite weary and some days, I feel it's just not worth it. It's not like I'm not working as hard as the others nor is it because I'm not making the effort to make it to all of their sessions. I really am trying my best and I have made it to ALL their sessions thus far. This is like, my best record so far. Sorry lar, I'm a working adult, not like the stars there who are still in school and can skip their classes whenever they want. If I were younger (i.e. still in primary or secondary school, or even college), I'd mentally smack myself and tell myself to just stop whining and suck it up coz it builds character. But I'm almost middle-aged now... I've gone past those days when I was a wide-eyed kid absorbing everything that's thrown my way.

I think the magic is dying (or maybe it's already dead). I hardly enjoy it these days. And observing the way things work there, some of it just puts me off. I don't mind being pushed to the limit just to see how far I can go nor do I mind the scoldings when I deserve it, but when I rush there after a hard day's work, try my best to do what's expected of me, and then have to put up with all that crap, I really just feel like chucking it all out the window and quitting once and for all.

So I dunno... maybe I should start looking for another hobby. Something that doesn't give me that much stress when I'm supposed to be doing something that I enjoy.

I'm starting Pilates soon, under my former ballet teacher :-) I was under her tutelage when I was 10 (yes, I was a late starter!), all the way till I was 16. I can't wait to start!

CNY and stufff

Maaaannn... so so lazy to write... that's what not having internet access at work does to you. Makes u lazy to do anything that has something to do with going online... haha..

So let's see... the filmshoot's early next week, then we head up to Genting for a weekend performance. We're having our final rehearsal this Friday and to top it all off, my left knee has decided to show its age at this point in time and has started hurting after each rehearsal since last week. *OWW!* :-(

*****

Traveling to work was a breeze last week. Today was hell. I wish everyone would just stay on perpetual holiday, myself included :-p

*****

What Women Want on 8TV is such a crappy, crappy show!!! Geez! The tasks are boring and useless, the prizes are laughable, and the host is such a bore!!! Gawd, I swear it's more interesting to watch my nails grow! I will not be mean during CNY, I will not be mean during CNY, I will not be mean during CNY...

On the other hand, kudos to 8TV for bringing in Ugly Betty. It's quite an entertaining show...

And Heroes is awesome!!! It's kept me quite intrigued at the moment... planning to get the DVD set... hehe...

*****

This CNY was rather quiet. We didn't do the normal visiting on the first day like we normally did the past years... but that's ok. I like peace and quiet.

Went to watch Music and Lyrics on the 1st day of CNY. It's a funny, feel-good movie. I like Drew Barrymore. She's such a sincere actress.

CNY also saw me junking a lot... and still junking coz we've got lots of cookies and junk food left, as always. At this rate, my tumm will be protruding out when I wear my saree for the show!!! ARGH!!!! o_O Gotta get rid of it by this weekend... *pray pray pray*

CL entertained his colleagues at his place last weekend... I was so tired I fell asleep midway (I did go to the bedroom, I wasn't THAT rude!) and didn't even realize they'd left!

I met up with my SMCK gals. Julia cooked lunch for us!!! And we had "yee sang" (my 4th this year)...

Before : All nice and neat...

After : Looked like a whole bunch of barbarians got hold of the "yee sang"... haha...

And we got the 1st Q gals a birthday cake!

Happy Birthday to Siow Lan (Jan 3), Joann (Feb 26), and Poh Fei (Mar 21)!! You're OLD!! Haha!! *evil grin*

Yaaaaaam Seng to the birthday gals!!

And one for the road!! :-D

*****

This weekend, another CNY lunch and dinner... gawd, so so so much fooooood!!!

Gambuh

For the past 2 nights, I was at a workshop to learn the basics of one of Bali's ancient dance forms, Gambuh.

Wow, I don't think I've ever used my fingers, arms, and shoulders so much before! It's rather hard to explain the dance style in words... it has much more impact when seen live so I won't even try describing it.

Our instructor was this oldish man (maybe around his late 40s - I could be grossly mistaken since dancers seems to always look younger than their actual age!) whose fingers are so agile and his expressions are like, wow! Especially his eyes. He's a master in the Gambuh Balinese dance.

The workshop was held at Sutra. I like it that they occasionally bring in other dance masters to expose us to other dance forms.

Read more at the Tri Pusaka Sakti website.

Learning and Self-Discovery

... is a life-long process...

It's imperative to be open to learning new things and also to continue to improve oneself, not only knowledge-wise but also as a person.

There're still so many things out there for me to learn... not only to increase my knowledge but also to make myself a better person. A better person to myself, to others around me, to the world (although I am but a speck in the ocean).

The more difficult part would be learning to improve myself. I tend to be rather a perfectionist so when I find that I've contradicted myself or did something that I shouldn't have done, I get really annoyed with myself. One part of learning is to accept our mistakes and learn from them. But the making a mistake part is the one that I have the most difficulty in accepting. It's not that I don't admit my mistakes, I do. But the after-effect would be "Argh! That was stupid! I should've known better! Stupid stupid stupid!" And then I would beat myself up over it.

So, as a new resolution for the CNY, I resolve to NOT get upset over what I've done wrong, accept it, move on and learn from it.

Haha... easier said than done. That's like telling me not to worry about anything at all.

o_O

ok ok... must be positive...

I.can.make.mistakes.
I'm.allowed.to.make.mistakes.
I.must.learn.from.my.mistakes.and.not.beat.myself.up.over.my.mistakes.
I.must.learn.not.to.be.such.a.perfectionist.and.stress.myself.up.

Oooooeeerrrr... better not let my dance instructors find out about that last one!

A Chapter of My Life, Part 2

Living in on-campus housing (they call it residence halls) at UB was an interesting experience. I was fortunate enough to be able to experience this for one semester before I moved off-campus (on-campus housing is pretty costly!).

Just a quick background... UB has 2 campuses, the North and the South campus. The North Campus is where the core academic programs are offered, and it's located in suburban Amherst. My faculty - School of Management - is here. The South Campus is closer to downtown Buffalo and houses the Schools of Architecture and Planning, Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, Dental Medicine, Public Health and Health Professions, and Nursing. The Student Health Center is also in the South. They have buses running regularly to and from each campus so getting from one campus to the other was not a problem. The only problem I had was when I was down with a bug and could hardly move and I had to drag myself out of my room and catch the bus to the Health Center.

Naturally, since my faculty was in the North campus, I applied to housing there. I was assigned to Richmond Hall, which is in the Joseph Ellicott Complex. I was in quad i.e. 4 people sharing a room. This was when I learnt never to trust brochures coz they made the living conditions seem sooooo nice in the brochure but when I got there, I discovered that it was just a squarish room, with a bed and desk in each corner. But that aside, it was an interesting one-semester experience, nonetheless.

My roommates were 2 Americans and a Puerto Rican. The Americans were Julie and Elizabeth (Liz, for short). I can't remember the Puerto Rican's name coz she was hardly in the room (she was usually at the boyfriend's place). I remember watching Jerry Springer and Ricki Lake on her TV though, hehe. Julie was in the rowing team so she was usually up early for practice. There was an incident where during the winter, she slipped on ice and hit her head quite hard. She was relating the story of when she went to the doctor to get it checked, the doctor told her to get some rest and get her roommate to wake her up at regular intervals to "make sure she was easily aroused"... haha... ;-)

Here's how the room looked like... of course, this one has been decorated and furnished quite elaborately...

Pantry, where we cooked our late-nite Maggi mee... ;-)

*Pics above courtesy of the UB website (dunno why I didn't take any pics)

View of the lake and lecture halls (right at the far end) from the residence halls...

Mr. Steven Shaw, Director of International Admissions. This was at one of the M'sian Student Association (MASA) events. He ran the UB program at Stamford College, PJ and went back to UB when it was terminated in end '98. That was just before we all left for UB (Jan '99). Wow, it feels like ages ago! I am ancient! *sob sob*

Another MASA event


We got people to write their names in Chinese characters. There's mine, hehe...

Blurb : Goo Goo Dolls are from Buffalo, NY!

Bye bye, forest reserves

And HOW will they handle the flora and fauna in this area due to THIS? Just flood the area and drown all of them, is it? Are they planning to relocate the animals? Are they planning to relocate the plants? How much more development do they wanna do??

"...the project was necessary to meet the demand for water and for the continued development of the Klang Valley and Selangor. "

We're like a concrete jungle now. Everywhere you look, there's a high-rise building... if not, then it's land being cleared to build yet another high-rise.

Take Mont Kiara, for example...

Development on the opposite right...

Development on the opposite left...

And the area on the left on the same side has just been cleared to, surprise surprise, more development. The area on the left on the same side has almost completed its apartment blocks. The area behind has at least 4-5 new developments, one of which is the Verve Suites, which has SEVEN freaking blocks! There's supposed to be a forest reserve somewhere behind but sooner or later, a money-hungry businessman or politician will decide that s/he wants to "Get rid of the trees and build me my multi-million ringgit condo complex".

WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE??!!!

A forest reserve is "is a protected area of importance for wildlife, flora, fauna or features of geological or other special interest, which is reserved and managed for conservation and to provide special opportunities for study or research." - Wikipedia

It's pretty obvious that these people care jackshit about conservation and only care about the ringgit signs. Wait till all that development causes soil erosion and their homes get buried. Haven't they learned anything at all from the Highland Towers tragedy??!!!

India has such beautiful and massive national parks. They're large enough for animals to roam and also for visitors to take a tour on trucks. What do we have? A miserable animal safari at A'Famosa Resort, which is so small, all the animals are so clustered together and uncomfortable coz the truck that carries visitors get so close to them. And the noise! It was enough to stress ME out! And we THINK we're a developing country. Hah! Developing into a concrete jungle, more like it. We can't even respect our fellow living creatures. Developing, my foot. The way we're going, we're just destroying whatever's left of nature and leaving our future generations with global warming, soil erosion, and everything that comes with the imbalance of the ecosystem.

A Chapter of My Life, Part 1

Our lives go by like chapters in a book. One can usually tell when a chapter closes and another one begins...

While I was driving on my way home after rehearsal on Monday night, I had a sudden flashback of the very first time that I saw snow and my years in the US came rushing back to me...

Thus was the chapter of my life, "The Buffalo Years"...

The very first time I experienced snow was when I was in transit to Buffalo, NY. I think we were at the Chicago O'Hare airport and the bunch of us, quite like jakuns, went out on the sidewalk and went "Ooh"-ing and "Aah"-ing about the snow, hehe...

Bunch of misfits off to conquer Buffalo, NY! :-)

Buffalo, NY is well-known for its heavy snowfall. One winter, there was a blizzard and the university had to close for a day or two, and the last time that happened was more than 10 yrs before!

Mr. Snowman, my very first! :-)

There were fat squirrels with bushy tails and wild duckies as well...

...Part 2, to be continued...

So so many things...

Sometimes, a flurry of things happen and you can't help but feel overwhelmed...

**********
Rehearsals have started for the filming of Spellbound early next month. The item that we're involved in is not a new item i.e. most of them in the group have performed it before. But a few of us were called in to replace a few others who were not able to make it. It's a high learning curve coz most of the others already know the dance so those of us who don't, have to work really hard to catch up and not hold back the others. It's quite stressful, especially when I get called on for my mistakes and the whole group has to repeat the particular sequence a few times just coz of me.

It doesn't help when we're expected to know the steps perfectly immediately after we're taught them. It also doesn't help when a few of the seniors don't give clear instructions and then reprimand us when we don't do as they expected.

Sometimes, I feel that I'm putting myself thru more stress than I can handle. After a long day's work, I head to rehearsals and get so worried about getting my steps right so that I don't get yelled at. Sometimes I feel like I should just quit so that I dun need to take all this unnecessary stress and scoldings like I'm a two-year-old.

BUT I enjoy dancing too much. Next time, I should just stick to classes and not do any performances except for Navarathri.

We have three more official rehearsals before the filming, with however much else practice we can fit in within the week. So, by hook or by crook, we need to be ready by then.

Gawd, I'll be so glad when this whole thing is OVER.

o_O

**********

The HoD approached me and asked if I were interested if they were to convert me to a permanent staff. I said I would consider it, depending on a few factors. One of which is that my salary would remain the same coz she had initially told me my salary would be adjusted to be lower if I were to be converted to a permanent employee. But as I had not asked for an exceptionally high salary at the start of my contract (they are paying for my EPF and I have basic benefits), I'd definitely not take a lower salary just to be a permanent employee.

My one other concern would be that I would be reporting directly to the HoD. I'm not fond of her coz I feel that she doesn't really respect her staff. She would reprimand her staff during a meeting with other depts and I've observed that she doesn't really stand up for her staff. So, I'm not sure how comfortable I would be reporting to her. Having a good boss is crucial, coz s/he could make my working hours a great experience or a working hell. PLUS there's too much politics at this place. Even in a discussion on the project organization structure, the word "politics" came up more than a few times. This makes getting things done much harder than it already is.

But anyway, I'm not required to give any answer yet. So we'll see...

**********

My parents were there when THIS happened. Thank God they're ok.

**********

Saturday nite, on the way home for LH, we got stuck in a traffic jam along Jln Pudu (I think it's Jln Pudu, the road that leads from Lake Gardens, pass the DBKL building, Lebuh Ampang to the Pudu bus station). We'd initially thought that it was a roadblock due to the cops conduting sobriety tests but it turned out to be a major operation to nab those Mat Rempits. Man, it was like a scene out of a local movie! While we were waiting for the traffic to move, this Rempit decided that he didn't want to stop for the check. So he just ignored the cops and rode his bike past. Out comes this cop, he ran after the guy, shouting at him to stop and when the fella finally stopped, the cop was so mad he aimed a karate kick at the guy! Then, as we finally got to move, another Rempit on our side of the road decided to ignore the cops and just drove his bike thru and another cop, brandishing a wooden stick, whacked the bugger's bike and even that didn't stop him. He just shot off!!!.

I'm glad to see that FINALLY something is being done to crackdown on those stupid Mat Rempits coz they're not only a menace but a danger to other motorists. But it's sad to see that cops have to resort to such harsh tactics. But I don't see any other way for them to control this bunch of misfits coz they're so brash and brazen that they even attack the cops!! The powers-that-be should send in more law enforcement to carry out this operation coz they need strength in numbers. The number of cops we saw on Saturday nite vs the numbers of Rempits is just not sufficient coz these Rempits just come out in swarms. Hopefully, this operation will not be just a one-off thing coz it'll take more than one night's raid to keep them in check.

Sometimes, I don't blame the cops for not having the urgency to enforce the law coz it's common knowledge that they're lowly paid and for them to risk their lives is just not worth it. That's why you see them having a lackadaisical attitude at times. While the ministers are enjoying themselves in their air-conditioned rooms and chauffeur-driven cars with leather seats and getting paid huge amounts of salary, these cops are having to chase armed criminals for pittance of a pay. Millions are spent the biggest this, the longest that, the highest this, etc. etc. but they can't afford to raise our cops' pay??? How do they justify that??? See, you pay peanuts and you get monkeys. It's like the project that I'm currently working on at work. To cut a long story short, they've finally decided that the current vendor and system is THAT bad that they might need to re-do the entire project.

I understand that in a certain country down south, civil servants are among the highest paid. Is it any wonder that they are able to enforce their laws so efficiently and effectively? You certainly don't hear of snatch thefts there as often as you see/read/hear of them here in KL.

But really, this Mat Rempit menace is getting out of hand. On late nights when I'm driving home, I'd come across a whole swarm of them at certain parts of the highway and I always try to stay far away from them coz I've heard stories that if you accidently hit one of them, the entire swarm will attack you. But it's so infuriating to see them perform their stupid and dangerous stunts on public roads with blatant disregard for other motorists. If they want to kill themselves, fine, go ahead. But when it may potentially endanger other motorists, then it's intolerable. Whenever I see them doing their stupid and dangerous stunts and racing around the roads, I would hope that they would just crash and run over themselves. Too bad if that sounds really cruel but they are just too much!

**********

JN has decided to move down south coz he cannot see his future in this country. And frankly, I don't blame him. I normally don't like to diss the country but we seem to be going from bad to worse. The people seem to be going backwards rather than forwards, mentality-wise. I think people during my parents' time were even more open-minded than people in my generation. Just watch those old P. Ramlee films.

And then we have things like THIS. Hallo, what's is so secret about water and toll concession agreements?? We, the citizens, are paying tolls day in and day out, just getting to and from work every single day and still GETTING STUCK IN MASSIVE TRAFFIC JAMS and we DON'T have the RIGHT to know the content of those agreements?? What do water and toll concession agreements have to do with national security??!!

And don't get me started on that stupid Eye on Malaysia ferris wheel at Titiwangsa!! It's a waste of taxpayers' money, the fireworks and music are disruptive, and it causes a bloody traffic jam around the area! What's worse is that it's right in my face everytime I go to Sutra!

Bleh...

**********

Good luck, JN!! Hope life's better for you down under. Dun forget to call before you leave k?