~Cruising on SuperStar Libra... Part I~

Day 1 - Checking in the ship.

The trip began on the 21st of Dec, 2008 when we checked in the ship at about 11.30am. By then, many had already boarded the ship, including my parents friends who were on another tour in the ship as well.

Our first meal was in the Ocean's Palace with a whole set meal and it was filling indeed. Service was no doubt up to par. And the food did, to a certain extent, live up to its expectation. After that, we explored the ship in and out and turned it upside down.

The pool deck.

Us posing at the back of the ship.

And another one.

The dancers performing at the pool deck. There's this really cute guy among them, like really a hunk! And I love to see him dancing.

Our cabin was small, or should I say that all cabins were meant to be small to fit in the number of people on board. Libra could easily take on almost 1,500 guests and about 700++ crew members. So, that's how big the ship was. But... despite the size, it was also that small that we could easily stumble upon the same people on board, including those we know and those that we dislike. Somehow, we just continuously bumped into one another; it could be the restaurant, the pool, the casino or even the performance lounge.

This is the girls' room. The boys' room was next door. I slept on the top bunk. One heck of a messy room. Keep in mind that this was the last night on the ship.

We planned to have dinner in Four Seasons (Western) on the first night but much to our dismay, the queue was ever so long and we had to wait for the second session at 8.30pm. My sis and bro started arguing about how we were late and how we were gonna miss the Bingo game. Rather pathetic, I would say! Well, for those of you who know me, you will understand that I have a certain degree of biasness towards my bro and at that time, it seemed like he was devastated that we might not be able to play bingo and that we would miss out the big jackpot - $7,000 (Sing Dollar). Anyways, we changed the venue to another restaurant near the pool deck - Mariner's Buffet. And not only did we manage to catch Bingo on time, we also had the opportunity to watch "Twice as Nice" in action. The group consists of a man and a woman who are performers in Las Vegas. Whatmore, the guy is actually Diana Ross's brother! Ain't that cool! Their singing was of course, unquestionable. Not to mention their size as well... Oops!

Casino was the next destination but my younger bro was not allowed to enter because it catered only to 18 yrs old and above. In order to not ditch my younger bro, we all decided to leave the casino. The other bro of mine actually changed 100 Sing tokens already and was on the verge of "playing" but thanks to my mom, he was dragged out of the casino. He was trying to convince my mom that he had the touch that day. What touch? The Midas Touch?! Haha...

So, we ended the night playing pictionary... which made me realize what a bad artist my younger bro was. His drawn humans looked just like bloated balloons! Haha...

Day 2 - Disembarking in Phuket.

On our way to Phuket. Yay!

The Black Pearl lookalike.

Phuket was suppose to be fun. Again, I emphasize - Phuket was suppose to be fun! But it turned out negligable. Families tagged along and we had to wait for one another. We deliberately woke up earlier for breakfast but some were later than us. By the time we left, it was already 1pm and we had to come back by 5.30pm! We were stuck with the elderlies and were in the van almost half the time when we only had less than 6 hours off shore. The drivers who had a pack with the locals took us to places where they can earn their commission such as the Monkey School, shooting range, honey farm, cashew nuts shop and the famous Wang Tualang for its jewellery. My younger bro was complaining and mumbling and questioning about how we were wasting our time, which annoyed us even more. Low EQ! Our mission to go for a massage, hairbread (if that's how it's spelled), shopping were all gone! Except for the last hour when we were back at the beach. We should have just stayed at the beach cos there were lots of stalls and shops and massage parlours around. What a waste of the trip! Then again, the uncles and aunts wouldn't be able to take such a tiring walk around and they wouldn't be enjoying... I wanted to get a pair of surf pants but they just wouldn't reduce the price. They started calling at 550Baht and I wanted to buy it only at 200Baht. They only gave me till 250Baht. Not that I'm kiam siap or anything. My sis managed to buy a long surf pants in Langkawi for RM25 and they were selling me a short surf pants at the same price. Of course I wouldn't heed! And I wasn't desperate for one either.

Back on the ship, we rushed for dinner. We were adamant. We wanted to have our dinner in Four Seasons by hook or by crook. And so, we did.

My lamb leg. Tender and juicy!

I think this was chicken with cheese plus other stuff.

Fish with cream sauce.

This was, I think, some vegetarian pasta.

Desert - Chocolate Moist Cake.

We were late for the crew's performance due to our choice of second session dinner. I think we missed a whole lot. By the time we reached, it was already the second last performance of the night which was the "Macho man" song with the male crews wearing firemen uniforms and striping half naked to show how macho they were. The last performance was an interesting one. The ever favorite lady-men. They were hot and darn, they can dance! Shaking their ass and all and they were all wearing tongs! Salute them for their professionalism!

There was Who Wants To Be A Millionaire after the performance but the game show lacked suspense and it looked a little fake, as in staged.

And we ended the night playing Family Twister.

To be continued...

~Back from cruise~

Had just returned from a family trip on the cruise. Indeed, an amazing and fulfilling experience.

Too tired to blog about it now. Will soon, once the pictures are uploaded.

Till then...

~Certified~

My 4 1/2-year-old brick has finally been certified... broken!

The needle reading the hard disk is unable to provide its service anymore.

And there goes all my documents stored in my hard disk...

We have gone through various ups and downs and you have served me well, my Dell 1600m...

Thank you...

~Chan Ka Hing's married~

Congratulations to Mr. & Mrs. Chan on their wedding held last Saturday. May you be blessed with plenty of love and a smooth sailing ahead.

That was my first experience in a full Christian wedding. Everything was in English and there were speeches from the bridesmaid, best man, both parents and of course, the couple of the night. The atmosphere was filled with love, with the dim lights and words of thankfulness and blessings being spread around the whole night.

The food was actually not bad, for a hotel served dinner. I actually ate from the first till the last dish. Probably the only flaw was the not so fresh prawn which took us forever to peel the skin! The desert was an interesting one - a marshmallow coconut-coated jelly like thing. Haha... Not easy to describe and none on my table could figure out what that desert was.

Huey and her guy were amazing. They performed on stage - she on the keyboard and him with a saxophone-clarinet look alike. It was such a mesmerizing moment when he blew the first song, "When I fall in love". That was like the super romantic moment on the night... At that time, my table was buzzing with the idea of pursuing guys with musical talents, be it saxophone, violin, piano or even trumpet! Mr. Chan didn't lose out either. He was romantic indeed when he went up stage to sing his marriage proposal song (with Huey and her guy as music accompaniment). During his second song (You are my sunshine), he brought his bride to the stage and one person holding a sunflower from each table lined up to present her with the long, bright-coloured sunflower. She was surprised all right! Of course, it was planned before hand and his friends had passed the flowers around without her knowing. Credits to Mr. Chan for being a romantic...

Lastly, it was more of our reunion than a wedding that we were attending. We finally got to meet most of our Bemidji friends after a whole two years. It was fun to see everyone, how they have changed, appearance wise; attitude and behaviour, not so much - still as 38 as ever! Haha... We had fun sitting on the same table, making probably the most noise when the hall was quiet. Well, that's the normal us. I'd rather we be noisy than quietly awkward. Looking forward to seeing them again.

that's us!

For details about their wedding, click on this link: kahing & juli's wedding.

~Super Crazy J-Card Day~

Went to my second J-Card day on last Wednesday. Have joined the crowd once in BBK Jusco and this time, I decided to blend in with the crowd again despite my experience of being suffocated before. I reached AEON Bukit Tinggi about 9.30am with Hw and his girl. We even saw an ambulance parked outside - precaution for black-out incidents. That was the anticipation of how crowded the place was going to be.

At first glance, it was just like any other day and I was taking my own sweet time looking at the one lingerie that I've been eyeing so long. To my utmost disappointment, the thing that brought me to JJ was NOT ON SALE (ON J-CARD DAY) as it was an agent controlled item. So, I was left with the mission of claiming my mom and sister's lingerie and buying my brother's clothes. Ky was there with me at the lingerie booth, claiming her package as well. My mom and sister had booked theirs two days ago and their number was E11 while Ky's was Z stg. Many had also booked theirs days earlier and the letters went from A-Z! Can u imagine the stack of plastic bags? They even seggregrated the letters to different corners e.g. A-J, J-S, S-Z (something like that) and all along with their list of numbers. The number of people entering Jusco started to increase. By 11am, the whole place was a mess and I was gasping for air. There were slow crawls everywhere with trolleys blocking the way. The line for the changing rooms were long; the cashier lines were even longer! You can hear people shouting to one another from two far corners and mothers trying to get their children to try on as many clothes as possible, without even going into the changing room. Havoc was the only word to describe the situation...

I followed Ky to claim another package of her sister's in one of the booths. It seemed that almost every booth had its own booking station. "Smarter" people had come earlier to test and all they have to do was to pay on that day to obtain the RM10 voucher (every RM100 receipt to exchange for RM10 voucher).

The situation got worse with time. More and more people were joining in the crowd despite the congestion. What made things worse was the presence of inconsiderate shoppers who hogged the whole walking path to themselves with their trolleys, which caused the slow crawl behind. They were "patiently" waiting for their family members/ friends who were paying at the cashier without realizing that they were blocking the path. How "cooperative" of them to add on the joyous moment of shopping with the bunch of the crowd!

I managed to survive the messiness of the situation and bought two tops for my brother. After that, I quit and was waiting outside for Hw and Ky to finish theirs. Btw, Ky's sister looks just like a photostated version of her! Darn alike!

My next stop was downstairs - the room's corner (e.g. curtain, linen, bedsheet). It was much much more packed that it was on the second floor! I only managed to stay in the crowd for no more than 10 minutes!

I spent the whole day hanging out with Hw and Ky and their friends who were all my "juniors". However, it did not make me feel young at all which on the contrary, I felt even older looking at them, all youthful and free and their lives only revolves around going to university and studying. And... it was like their reunion in Jusco. Everywhere they went, there was just someone that they knew, be it ex-classmates, school friends, college friends, uncles, aunts etc. There I was wondering where were my friends? I would say that 90% of people my age group would be working at that hour and I was spending time shopping with people 2-3 years younger than me.

It was indeed a tough day. Even lunch was a problem. Almost all restaurants were fullhouse. My legs were aching. The crowd did not even lessen one bit (maybe a bit, for those who took half day leave).

I reached home about 5pm. It was the longest time that I had ever spent in AEON Bukit Tinggi - a whole 8 hours or so. And what did I buy? Lingerie (for my mom, sis and me), T-shirts for my younger brother and some grooming accesories from SASA. So, what was I thinking, participating in J-Card day and ended up hardly buying anything? No worries. I wasn't the only one. Hw bought lesser than me. Haha... His most lucrative buy would most probably be his jeans and his free umbrella, thanks to his friends who lined up for quite some time (darn long line! Free umbrella, duh!) and had to endure the scolding by aunties behind them for a minor misunderstanding...

Definitely a day to remember...

~Outing with May and Deb~

Tuesday was a rather memorable day as I spent almost the whole day out with May and Deb. Initially May suggested that we (Deb and I) go to her house about 7++ in the morning. Of course, I declined the idea flat. Going to her house at that time would mean that I would need to wake up about 6am and leave my house by 6.50am, according to Deb, to avoid the horrible jam near my house.

So, we fetched May about 9.30am at Std Chartered Bank (she was in KWSP) and left for dim sum breakfast nearby her house. Turned out the dim sum(s) weren't as tasty and both of them had a pack of trying to stuff down every single piece of food on the table down my throat. Service at the place was bad - not that the restaurant was crowded with people. It took them centuries to serve the tea and our chee cheong fun which didn't taste very good either. I had to swallow the prawn dim sum cos May claims that she was trying to control her cholesterol level.While eating halfway, May was suddenly bugged by people from her office and she had to leave the table for quite some time.

From there we left to May's house for her to send the needed document over to her workplace. Although we only stayed for a little while in her house, it was good enough for us to cause some noise pollution, with Deb and I listening to songs from the phone and us laughing our butts off about some ridiculous nonsense that were mentioned along the conversation. Then, as the driver, the next stop was Hong Leong Bank. We just couldn't get our minds off thinking about the "Manager" in the bank. Our eyes were searching high and low and the person just never came into view. Probably she happens to work in the "higher class" department and we were nowhere near there. At one point, we were actually thinking of sneaking into the other building or to ask the people around in the bank, but coming to think about it, why the trouble? And so we closed the subject.

We managed to catch a movie, "Twilight", and we watched it with May's two cousins. They initially thought that they were watching Madagascar 2 - from a animal cartoon to a vampire movie. Haha... Trying to withhold my biased perception towards the movie, I realized that it wasn't as bad as what I've heard from critics. It's true that the vampires were a little tooooo pale and my so-called "Cedric Diggory" wasn't as cute as he used to be anym0re. Other than that, the movie was all in all a quite good one. I heard that it was suitable for those who loved watching taiwanese lovey dovey tv series but I think it's far from that. I know they all end with "happily ever after" and there's no such thing as perfect love or forbidden love but sometimes, we just need to add some creativity and imagination into our lives; to add some spice into our hell-like lives. One thing though, I think the climax fighting part was a bit too short. He fought the bad guy and the family arrived in time to kill and burn the bad guy. Sounds too easy...

After the movie, we went to Secret Recipe for tea and we had 3 pieces of different chocolaty cake. No wonder, I haven't been able to unload my rectum for the past few days. Haha... Time was running short and May had to return home to pack her stuff as she was leaving for Singapore that night. She looked soooo reluctant to leave both of us when I sent her home. Let's face it, this is the life of working people. No more the hang around and have fun all the time anymore. We miss the old times...

Guess what? I didn't go home after that. I spent my time in Deb's house from 5pm all the way to 7.30pm, until her boyfriend came over to fetch out to dinner. We just chatted non stop for the whole 2 hours, from the good old days to the future of naming our kids. Haha... I was trying to avoid having some hard argument with Wai Khuen but he just had to push the button anyway. Deb had to stop us at one point to end the noise pollution. Well, instead of an argument, I would put it as an intellectual exchange of opinion. Haha...

And that was how the whole day turned out to be. Rather meaningful day, don't you think?

p/s - Our group's pupus-ing!!! How can we let it grow to how it was once upon a time?

~Continuous cash flowing...out~

Ah!!!!!!!!!!!!

Splurging on clothes seems to be the one thing that I've been doing for the past 2-3 days.

I wasn't the only one who splurged. Hc, his brother and his parents were also shopping for CNY in 1U today. Liked the white shorts that he bought in PA. I had no idea what he took in to try but that was the first thing that caught my attention when he came out from the changing room. I felt like I was some fashion consultant today, giving a little bit of my opinion here and there. Haha...

I finally found my jeans today. My quest for jeans didn't come by easy. It's slightly different from my previous jeans. Instead of a dark coloured one, I chose a lighter colour jeans which is not very me. I'm very into dark coloured jeans and today I just took the opposite stance. It wasn't a tough decision though. I looked nice in it, without doubt. It was between the one I own now or the other darker colour jeans which is of a different style. The funny part was I was in the changing room with two jeans in hand. When I was testing the first, the size wasn't right and the guy got me another size. So, there were 3 pairs of jeans in the changing room. I was wearing another pair when I opened the door to show Hc. There was a salesgirl nearby who was keeping an eye on things and giving a comment or two to customers in the changing room. She saw that I had a few jeans hung in my room that she misunderstood I took more jeans to try than allowed when in truth, it looked more like a pile due to the jeans material and their look alike colours. She volunteered to clear unsuitable jeans in my room and was on the verge of taking one of it which was mine (the originally worn). I had to stop her from taking away my pants! Haha! After testing a few, I was left with two - one darker and the other lighter. Hc has been trying to convince me that light coloured jeans can look equally as nice; of course, he left the decision to me. The salesgirl who almost took my pants away just added one comment - "the colour that you tried on looks the same as the one that you own". My choice was apparent by then - the fitting of the jeans, Hc's taste and the girl's comment made it an easy choice.

It was one heck of a tiring day. Have been waking up earlier than usual for the past few days. Actually I'm quite glad that I woke up earlier. At least I wouldn't be wasting half my day in bed. I should maintain this healthy biological rhythm of mine!

P/s - Dear Khw, I spend when I think it's necessary/ worth it. I'm not that kiam siap, mind u. Haha...

~Shopping, shopping, shopping~

It's the season for shopping... La la la la la la la la, fa la la la la, la la la la... (Christmas carol)

I spent my Friday shopping with my mom and sis from 2pm till 5pm around the Bayu Perdana boutique area. Managed to get myself another 2 tops from there. It was only after I reached home that I realized I have already bought more than enough tops for CNY. Well, what's done is long gone and over with - just live with it. Haha...

Went with boyfriend to Mid Valley today to - first, meet up with his friend who returned from The States; second, his CNY shopping and mine (bottom ONLY, if any). Really liked the Christmas decoration in MV - so heart-warming and touching and loving and sweet and colourful!
He didn't manage to finish shopping as expected as he spent too much time contemplating with his friends, spending almost an hour in Nike deciding whether to get a birthday present for another friend. And of course, we had an almost 2-hour lunch in Pasta Zanmai with their reunion. As usual their conversation involved medical jargon and there I was, the one left out, trying to blend in with the crowd as much as possible. I know I sound like the victim. I mean I am to a certain extent but they're really nice people and it's good to practice listening once in a while. I don't have to always be the centre of attention. Haha...

Pasta Zanmai is totally recommended. Ordered their "Soft shell crab spaghetti with sesame sauce" and it turned delicious! At first, I was quite apprehensive when I saw the "sesame sauce" in the menu, wondering what it would taste like - sweet, sour, salty, bitter?! Anyways, I was really into soft shell crab and the waitress added that the sesame sauce dishes were their all time favorites and was I glad that I made the right choice! Truthfully I don't really know how to describe the sauce as well (the waitress had trouble answering when I asked her what the sauce taste like) but it's definitely worth a try. A sumptuous meal indeed! *with price ranging from rm20 to rm30 perperson*

I'm currently in the hunt for a pair of jeans and have not found one that I would label as "to die for" yet. It's either the price is too high or the cutting's off, as in a size smaller would be tight around my thighs and a size bigger would be loose around my waist. Is the problem with my body shape or the cutting? After all, we're talking about Levi's here.

It's Ok. I'm not in a rush. What's mine will eventually be mine.

Just to add. I've decided to decline the lecturer offer and instead, focus on my studies first. I know opportunity doesn't knock at my door twice but I'm optimistic about my future. Probably I'm not fated to work in HELP (I've declined their offer the third/ fourth time including this) .Even if I miss this chance, there'll definitely be other chances for me to take next time. It's never too late. Again, what's mine will eventually be mine.

~Eureka~

Weeeeeee........................................................................... I'm done for the semester!

Couldn't help smiling when I handed my paper to the invigilator. End of my endless stream of nothing but studying and resting in between. Hoorah!

But today certainly didn't come by easy.

It took about an hour and a half to reach HELP today evening. Usually it takes only about 45 minutes. I got stuck in jam all the way before Eastin. It was a darn slow crawl even until I managed to cut out at the traffic light going towards my college. From what I heard through the traffic report on radio, there was a landslide somewhere around Jln Maarof and Jln Duta and that was the deadly cause to the horrible jam. I was smart enough to use the way through the housing area to reach the parking area but Chyun Fang was blocked at the traffic light and she had to park somewhere further. Lucky for her and another classmate, I provided transport for them to their vehicles after the paper. The jam was really really bad that police had to control the traffic, blocking drivers from going towards the landslide area. I don't know how well that worked in making the traffic smoother but it was one hell of a havoc...

It's none of my concern anymore. I sleeping already....

Tomorrow will be a bliss!