Jun Xue's blog

Blast from the past

2011-10-30T22:25:00.002Z

Went back to Sheffield with Yvonne over the weekend.

Met a few new friends, and had a great time at the peaks and clubbing for 5 hours straight! Can't remember when's the last time I did that... my left ear's hearing is still affected but heck it was a really fantastic time!!!

Sheffield is gradually changing bit by bit, but not much. The new Student Union is nicer than before!

Anyways, I don't know what's going to happen in the future, so definitely not sure what's going to happen to this blog. Should I post photos and keep it alive? Blogging seems like a past nowadays.. no more regular readers, just the random one or two once in a blue moon.

Oh well, we shall find out in the future =)

Rain, Thunder, Early morning!

2011-06-22T22:36:00.002+01:00

Fell asleep during a nap and didn't woke up as planne.d

Woke up at 4 a..m. instead to the sound of thunder and heavy rain. Nice!

Lightning and Thunder went on for half an hour, once every 5 seconds!

Took shower, and now trying to concentrate and prepare for Friday!

Botanical gardens

2011-06-18T15:57:00.003+01:00

Had a good trip to Botanical Gardens, nice performance of Chopin and Listz's works .

What was really amazing was the sky's "performance" as well, I saw the sky suddenly bloomed red as the sun set and the dying rays of the sun were reflected off the clouds. It appeared and disappaerared as quickly, in a manner of minutes.

Singapore's Botanical gardens is really a nice place for performances.. nice little "valley" with many people with picnic baskets, lots of birds flying around and chirping, feels like man and nature are at peace.

Final Fantasy VII.

2011-05-08T15:16:00.004+01:00

I finally did it.

I finally finished Final Fantasy 7.

After all these years of playing, stalled, starting and restarting, procrastination, I've finally finished the game. All the cajoling from friends to finish it.... and I still remember all the excitement about it long ago.. heck this goes back beyond my secondary school days.

At long last, I can put this down =)

*the satisfaction has definitely reduced, I finally completed it but I don't feel or no longer feel the sense of achievement as I would have back then. Nevertheless, it gives it a sense of completion, and I've finally finished what I set out to do. Lesson learnt: Never wait, do what you want to do now in that small window of opportunity and you'll live life to the fullest.

Fin.

Investment!

2011-03-22T15:56:00.001Z

There! Done! FInally opened my Investment ISA account! My first step to invesetment! Finally, there's something that makes me excited.. something new! Getting tired of the same old stuff at work.

Actually, really considering venturing into the finance/banking field now.

We'll see.

p/s, Finally fulfilled one of my things to do in life, look at the stars and sky with telescope.. was in Jurong 's Observatory to look at the moon (closest in 20 years!) and stars.. not that impressive, just bright lights, but Saturn is so cool! So cute actually.. you can see the ring around it so clearly!!!! Must do it again!

General update

2011-02-13T14:18:00.002Z

I should really note things down. Like running to Shin Xiong mart at 10.45 p.m. from Esplanade. and dining at the cool steak place. And just shopping for the whole afternoon.

I think my heartbeat rate is higher than ever during rest state..... I'm gonna have to do cardio everyday now to try to reduce it. Hm..

Good thing is, now that I have some fat, (ahahha), I feel I'm bulking up faster!

Energy

2011-01-18T14:08:00.001Z

****ing hell I get energy and decisiveness from my anger.

Double edged sword though, sometimes I'd regret my approach and way of doing things after that. But then again, often the same thing happens when I am too indecisive.

Butter Factory!

2011-01-07T16:53:00.000Z

I;ve finally been to Butter Factory!!
Songs are R&B but unfamiliar.... but the view from the dance floor is fantastic! Overseeing the Marina Bay!

Happy New Year!

2010-12-31T17:58:00.001Z

Happy New Year everyone!

2011 is here already.. this year.. i didn't put up my new year resolution. I took the last week off and was just relaxing, started a certain Final Fantasy game ahahah... and was visited by Yein Shiang here in Singapore.

Just came back from Clarke Quay after enjoying the fantastic fireworks display in Marina Bay Sands. (there was some lady gaga, who is a lady boy performing in Clarke Quay ahahha)

Very tired now after organising bbq for 20 plus persons, too busy cooking. Should have started earlier and limite the number of invitees. Too tiring and frantic.

Ok lah... too tired to type more... see you guys next time!

Take a deep breathe and dive in.

2010-10-28T13:38:00.002+01:00

Ara suddenyl I see Hao Shen post something on the chatbox!?

Back from Sibu/Kuching trip for Mark's wedding. Nice meet up, but spend too much time discussing "sam si" lol... not a very adventurous/active trip but it was nice to meet up with everyone again. One of the highlights must be seeing Fung jumping up and down in excitment meeting us in the airport... and the beautiful sky that evening.

Wedding was nice... suddenly felt like everyone's grown up... but, I've definitely become much less sentimental loh..Just thinking of the present, and a bit of the future.

And I will always remember the first time I felt cold in Malaysia in my life (not in the mountains/hills.. it was next to the river in Kuching!).. it was raining that night, and after 1.30 a.m. me and Mark walk down to get some instant noodles (the night before we leave). When the wind blew, I actualyl shivered and felt cold! So unusual, but nice!

Lots to type and too lazy to post pics as usual. Work lately has been quite stressful, partly my own undoing also lah, but boss hasn't been too kind... everyone's always too busy at site.

Shame I got too much to do and have to leave in December... sometimes the work makes me feel like I'm glad I'll be leaving in December but there's so much I'll be leaving behind here......

There, an update!

Monday Blues

2010-08-15T13:41:00.000+01:00

I'm feelin the blues.

Singapore

2010-08-01T12:59:00.001+01:00

I think i better start a private diary to keep track of the stuff I do here in Singapore.. time flies and memories are lost so quickly it's hard to keep up sometimes.. Live each day at a time.. Life in Singapore is Good!

2010-05-31T15:22:00.001+01:00

Happiness = having maggie mee at 3 pm just because I felt like it =)

May post

2010-05-02T17:51:00.002+01:00

Hello all,

I'm back again after such a long absence. So here I am again, typing away in my little room in Reading while snacking on smoked salmon trimmings garnished with lemon juice.

Anyways, it does appear that many events will take place on May 6th... just one more week... decision on project, election, one of my friend getting his interview....

Tomorrow is bank holiday so I can afford to just chill and relax a bit.. not particularly feeling well. Too much wine? Which reminds me I have utterly failed in my efforts to finish taht bloody bottle of wine. Aiya, i should start slower I guess.

In any case, I'm enjoying my prawn noodles ^^, finally got time to cook them (well it doesn't take that long considering the sauce is ready made) with prawns and meat and taugeh!

I need to get back to my bodybuilding regime... my hard gained weight.... I must get to 60 before year end! Sometimes I'm amazed by my ability not to be fazed by the bigger problem (potentially)... I think it's just my natural instinct to ignore lol

One last thing I'll like to add is, life sometimes throw suprises at you when least expected... and when it rains, it pours.

Oh ya, all the best to Wai Loon hahaha.

Spring

2010-04-12T20:50:00.002+01:00

So it seems I survived the first round... what is to come remains to be seen. How many more rounds to go?

Spring is here finally! FLowers are blooming, birds are chirping, normal sunlight hours..... It seems like April is the actualy month spring begins!

good bye laptop!

2010-03-19T18:54:00.002Z

Tonight, I shall bid my good ol' trusty Toshiba laptop goodbye. This is the last post from my laptop!

I'm going to return it to my dad. After using for 4 1/2 years.. it's time to say good bye lol!

Did my final year project on it...

Cursed it for being so slow for the past 2-3 years.

Played so much Dota on it.. completed FF8 on it... Almost finished FF7 (LOL) on it...

It's time to move on.

=)

Friends.

2010-03-05T22:34:00.002Z

Hmm today, I organised a dinner for my work friends I'm closer with. The usual a dinner. Again, I feel indebted/ bad for like... not "taking care" of everyone.. but what can I do right, so many people and they all don't really know each other.. fortunately they have their own little groups so it's not so bad. Then after dinner, I wanted to go have some drinks with Jessie, Logan and Rachel but... FORGOT MY ID. As a result we all just went home early without.. getting any drinks at all.

Aih.. I should have just gone home earlier with the rest, then I wouldn't have spoilt their night. Anyways, nuff of moaning, I've not blogged for ages. Still waiting for my bloody kettle plug, i'm gonna buy it somehow tomorrow, somewhere SOMEHOW! Gotta go town early to get it.

Yes.... gotta do that.. then tmrw night, gotta go out with Jess and the lot and make up for tonight.
Sunday is another..... working day... ahhaha not litereally working but... well stuff i'll need to do.

New PC

2010-02-22T22:36:00.006Z

I just bought a new Desktop PC!

Cost me a fortune but i've been wanting to do this for a long time now.. more than a year! Probably 2 years! Laptop was dying.. anyways, here's the specs:

"Titan Krypt" build (whoa even the name sends shivers of excitment down my spine)

Case	Coolermaster Elite 335 Case - Black
Graphics Card	ATI Radeon HD 4870 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
Hard Drive	Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500 GB
Memory	Corsair XMS2 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 PC2-8500C5 TwinX Dual Channel
Motherboard	Gigabyte GA-MA770-UD3 AMD 770 Motherboard
Optical Drive	LG GH22NS40 22x DVDÂ±RW SATA Dual Layer ReWriter
Sound Card	7.1 High Definition OnBoard Sound Card
Warranty	1 Year Onsite Collect & Return Warranty
Processor	AMD Athlon II X4 Quad Core 630 2.80GHz
Processor Cooler	AMD Approved CPU Cooler
Power Supply	Corsair CX 400W ATX Power Supply

Gengz? Cost me a bomb, especially now that I've stopped receiving overtime pay.

But I think it's worth it. Also, all these researching has some how made a little bit of a computer geek... well computer hardware geek.

hello

2010-02-07T09:41:00.002Z

Hello, another short update.

Had a terribly busy and somewhat stressful long week, travelled so much in the SE England region thanks to some train cancellation (gotta remind myself to get reimbursement), slept for 8 hours-ish for two consecutive nights and still wake up feeling tired, very happy with my new rice cooker, still experimenting with my phone, still no time to buy computer.

Weather is still hovering near zero, average about 3-4 degree celcius everyday, more sunshine now, but still not getting/seeing enough of it.

Need to decide what to cook and do my grocery shopping later and then..........

Money Matters Pt. 2

2010-01-26T20:07:00.003Z

I would have probably blogged this before but traveling in the UK is very costly. Sometimes, when I think about it I shouldn't agonise so much when deciding what to buy or when shopping and just travel less.

Oh I just realised I got paid overtime for December. That is a pleasant suprise, and I'm not complaining. Not that it's a big amount but hey, it's still money.

Oh I was recently told to start on a new project. Starting this Thursday and next few days will be very busy.

Up till now I have managed to get up at 6 everyday (well this week, get off the bed at 6.30) and I'm proud of that. Tmrw will be another long day, no time for gym again. Funny now that my gym payment finally got sorted I don't have time to go to gym.

Another thing, I really need a rice cooker. Burnt my rice again today lol

Money matters

2010-01-19T22:46:00.003Z

Hmm, I feel like I've been /will be spending a lot. Got a new phone contract, and wasted 5 quid on a wrong cable which I hope to have it returned on Thursday (chances are pretty slim, the receipt seems pretty dodgy and it's not a modern Western shop).

And then, there'll be my new desktop. Yes, I've decided to buy a new desktop because my laptop is soon dying on me. (Funny enough it's working fine today.... hmm which again makes me rethink my need for a new computer) I need to find time to start checking the prices online etc whislt the "sales" are still on.

Oh, lastly, I think I'm not gonna get any overtime pay for the next three months at least. The joy! (there's also this pay freeze... T__T)

Time to tighten my belt and eat only white rice.

Life and Death

2010-01-18T19:20:00.003Z

Just read a friend's blog where he mentioned he just found out one of his friends took her own life. Shocking isn't it?

Which reminded me of a similar case, I just found out recently another one of my primary school friend died a few years ago in a car accident.

Life is so unpredictable sometimes.

Hm.

New Discovery

2010-01-17T19:59:00.003Z

I just discovered a asian food store in Town centre today! I was just wandering around, trying to get to argos to get my new rice cooker when I found it! I'ts in Broad Street mall, and although it's small it's got instant noodles and quite a good stock of chinese cooking ingredients! Woohoo! Now I don't have to go that far to get instant noodles! Hopefully they will expand and have a fresh vegetable section... I didn't see any kang kung there =(

Homesick?

2010-01-13T05:48:00.002Z

Woke up at 4 this morning and feel down ever since. Is this homesick or is it just slightly depressed over the bloody grey weather outside ever since I've arrived in the UK?

Even the snow is not cheering me up.

Hm.

Taster pics

2009-12-13T11:47:00.005Z

These pictures are just a taste of what's been posted on facebook....

okok they are probably the best but heck, it's all about advertisement :P

Pictures!

2009-11-29T21:50:00.002Z

Ok more pictures posted in my facebook!

Finally! Got about doing it!

Past month or two felt like I lost my purpose and just.. existing... but that must stop now.

Yeosh! Life!

Last Scotland Picture post?

2009-10-21T21:53:00.002+01:00

Hello All!

This is probably the last batch of Scotland Pictures: There are more, but I have decided to mainly update them on Facebook.. too much trouble updating them here! Perhaps you'll see more writing describing the highlights of my trip... but definitely much less picture.

Reason? I got my dad to start a facebook account. LOL! So.. my family can view the pictures easily.. and it's so much easier to upload them on facebook! Mass upload! If I can do it here as well I won't mind it! But this is too time consuming.. and .. I'm too lazy to upload pictures twice.

Anyways, these are my friend's pics:

Breakfast!

Deng deng deng!

Drowning prawn.. ugh.. they had a fancy name for it but I can't remember (it's definitely not prawn)

Cow taking a piss!

Loch Tarf

More of those... creatures!

Jump!

Last picture of me posing =)

Scotland Trip Part 3

2009-10-10T22:28:00.005+01:00

Wah.. I just realised the ordering of my photos are so messed up! I should have obtained all the pictures from my friends before beginning to post.. anyways.. here goes:

Eilean Donan Castle! I think they filmed some parts of the Highlander here!

Breakfast! Scones!

I like my Scottish scarf flying in the wind! Oh, I found out the "clan" of that particular tartan pattern.. it's Steward Royal! Finally! I found out!

Posing with rainbow hahaha

Isle of Sky! That's... Old man Stol I think it's called. Anyway, lots of mountains and hills here! Very beautiful place indeed.. all shapes of hills you can imagine!

I like this picture!

Scotland Trip Part 2

2009-10-04T14:45:00.004+01:00

Part 2. Enjoy the pictures

Urquhuat castle next to Loch Ness

Trebuchet!

Pedestrian.. bridge in Inverness

Wild rabbit!

Scotland Trip Part 1

2009-09-29T20:53:00.006+01:00

Hello People!

I'm back! As promised, the pictures from my Scotland Highland trip! When I was sorting out my photos I realised that there's waaayyy too many to put up in one go so I'm gonna have to split it to at least three posts. I will feel bad if I do not post the nice pictures otherwise... it's so beautiful! I just have to post the pictures! Also, I need to get photos from my Facebook account, posted by Yvonne and the rest. Hmm.. lazy man. This upload function is not exactly the best in the world.

Our first day started... no wait... in the beginnint there were supposed to be more people joining us in the trip but due to some unforeseen circumstances, only 4 stout hearted ones remained. May Yen and I flew to Glasgow to meet up with Yvonne and Eric. FIrst day was spent in Loch Lamond, then we drove to Stirling, then to Inverness.

Swan in Loch Lamond! Beautiful isnt' it!

Lone tree on a hill.. ugh.. doesn't looks so nice after uploading.

Picturesque view!

Artistic...... konon. lol

Falkirk wheel! It's a super cool lock.. which May Yen seems very unenthusiastic about and very keen to complain to her colleagues she went all the way to Scotland and I bought her to see this ... wheel. (She's the only non engineer. LOL)

IT"S COOL RIGHT!!!

Wallace monument in Stirling. That's right, WIlliam Wallace. FREEDDOOOMMMM

Drive to Inverness. ALl the way, the journey is amazing! A shame it's hard to capture it in the car.. Tried taking a few videos but not sure how well they turn out to be.
Second day, we toured Loch Ness! We went to Falls of Foyers, took some pictures, then decided to drive around the Loch... which is very... big! (Long is more accurate i think). So lots of driving again! But nice scenery! Above is a picture taken near Falls of Foyers... my initial plan was to walk around to the other side of the valley.. but.. due to rain and lack of enthusiasm.... we didn't get around doing it.
The falls! of Foyers!

Yvone's hairy cow!

The sight of us humans posing must have been quite confusing for them.....

Random picture... Ok, more to come.. maybe tmrw, maybe day after... busy with work and other sutff!

Back to Work

2009-09-09T01:24:00.002+01:00

Hello all,

I'm back from my Scotland trip! I'll write all about it later, at the moment I'm trying to catch up with my work. I have overstretched myself this time, but it's keeping me efficient and quite satisfied!

Wil update more when I have time.

Pictures from Cornwall trip!

2009-08-30T13:26:00.006+01:00

Hello hello!

As promised, the pictures from my Cornwall Trip! Unfortunately most of the pictures are at my friends camera. He has a DSLR so... I let him do the picture taking. That's the reason the absolutely stunning beach next to Minack theatre is not here.. but if you do go to Cornwall, I highly recommend that place!

This is where we stayed! We rented a house which is waayy cool.. it even has a small pond with fishes!! It's right in the middle of no where... because the roads are usally lined with tall hedges we couldn't really see where we were going.. we just trusted the GPS!
Anyways, the inside of the house is absolutely beautiful as well! Feels so homely!

Played some board games!

The beach near Lyme Regis! We went there to look for.. fossils.. but... found none!? It was a long walk ... and we took a hike to another beach where there's supposed to be more fossil but ... din't really find many.... although the ones the sell in the shop are impressive! I bought one.. might take a picture and post it someday... to think of those fossils that were preserved for MILLIONS of years!? GENGZ.

Sukh posing!

This pigeon build it's nest INTO GODDAM STONE AND MORTAR!! How cool is that.

Oh after that, we stopped by St. Michael's Mount!! Which is one of the coolest thing ever! It's basically...a fort? Complete with it's garden and shit... on an island that is accesible by foot when the tide is low! So at high tide it's a island... Gengz!

We where there at high tide

Keat and I took a boat to the island... we where there at the wrong time! I wanted to walk to the island!

Finally! Land's End! The Westernmost point on the UK (except Ireland lol)

It's absolutely beautiful!

That's the Atlantic Ocean!!!!

Oh yeah.

And then I saw this warning sign. lol

Anyways, the other stuff we did are, we tried to go to a farm and... pick fruits and have them for lunch but we were out of luck because the fruits haven't..er...ripen yet. So, instead, we had very posh tea with Scones and clotted cream and absolutely fantastic jam! Damn it was good!!! I can't describe how good it was and how nice it felt.. you just have to be there!

Erm.. i guess that's it.. I can't be bothered to write more description lol. Until next time!

I'm back!

2009-08-24T20:32:00.002+01:00

Hello everyone!

Yes I'm alive!

Now, a summary of what's happened in my life lately:
1)It's almost a year since i've started working!
2) I went on my first business trip!
3) I visited Italy for the first time!
4) I visited Cornwall for the first time!
5) I will be visiting Scotland for the first time in September!
6) I'm still building muscle very slowly!
7) This year's summer really felt like summer!!!

Ok, more description/photos to follow soon!

self reflection

2009-07-19T20:21:00.002+01:00

More trips coming up. These days have been quite carelessly spent. Something reminded me that time flies when you don't notice, my my life is slipping by quietly. Funny how I realised that whilst watching a drama.

Anyways, I feel that at this rate, before i know it I will be old and filled with regrets. So from today onwards, no more movies or ficiton books!

I gotta take control of my life!

Update!

2009-06-15T21:35:00.002+01:00

After so long! I finally updated!

Although I have a number of pictures to post, I can't be bothered now. This is just to keep the blog alive!

Last week or so was quite hectic.. but nowadays, I'm just taking things easy. Anyways, I seem to have quite a number of plans for the next couple of weeks, gotta make full use of the good weather! Make hay while the sun shines... something like that...

So hopefully, there'll be more pictures coming up!

I'm supposed to be wriitng up my bloody ImechE report now.. so I can't really be bothered to write much here... but stay tuned for more updates!

I'm alive!!!

Random camera pictures

2009-05-28T19:02:00.004+01:00

Helllo people! more random old pictures from my phone!

Sukh Posing

Frozen lake

Rachela nd Sukh

Errr....

Big foot. LOL

Huh? Have i Post this before?

Random phone pictures

2009-05-23T23:15:00.003+01:00

More random pictures from the past

Sun rise

Dawn breaking

Heavy snow

Little frozen pond in front of my room

Random pictures #9

2009-05-18T22:01:00.002+01:00

Hello People!

Pictures from my phone as promised!

My desk!

Sunset.. I belive you find beautiful sunset/sunrise/afternoon sun (wtf) here during winter times because of the angle of the sun to the atmosphere.. feels like.. hmm... the sunlight in the battle of Peleanor fields in LOTR.

I took many pictures from my desk of beautiful sky/cloud.. but it all turned out like crap. I realised I pose a lot when I take pictures, for example here lol

Desk!

Yein Shiang er... praying!? lol taken during trip to Wales

Beautiful clouds! One thing rare here!

Tried to capture the innumerable dandelion spores drifting but I failed... I only had my handphone then... I was walking back from my grocery shopping trip. That was when I really felt the summer-time er... feel... er.. .atmosphere... ugh.

More pictures next time!

Hello!!!

2009-05-17T14:32:00.004+01:00

Hello all! I'm back again!

I know it's been a very long time, again, as usualy... well, my excuse was I had a very busy couple of weeks.. with work. Nevertheless, here are some random pictures from my camera.. oh oh! I finally got my computer to detect my handphone! So I got more new pictures to come!

Ice cream with waffle and fruits! YUMMY!

Flowers with thorns... these trees grow flowers first then only leaves. Strange O.o

Lonely dog.. did I ... post this before!?

Oh I went to Edwin's place for bbq!

Whoa so much smoke

Edwin with Yvonne's lalat eye shades

A mashmallow accidently fell into the coals.. look how it burns! It's like blody flowing lava!!

Ewwww

I like this! Flowers and light in the living room!

Lastly, a picture of a mail accidently sent to Malaysia! The reason is because I wrote my UK address but put country of origin Malaysia.. and they were kind enough to send it half way around the world!

Gengz....

They could have easily binned it.... my thanks to whatever mail company that handled this!

Welsh Trip

2009-04-19T20:19:00.010+01:00

Hello all! I'm sure some of you have waited for my pictures from the trip to Wales. Anyway, here they are!

I've selected some of the best pictures, leaving out all the random and crazy posing we did (which was in a way most of the fun we had in the trip lol) because it's such a pain to upload them here. Even uploading in facebook is a pain so you probably won't see them there for a long time.
This is like... 30 pics out of my 600 plus pictures LOL
First of all, a picture of me with Stonehenge behind me. This will probably be the only picture of me hahaha! Anyways, if you're into those mystic/celtic/ancient archeology stuff, stonehenge will be pretty interesting to you.... other wise it's just a pile of rocks. T_T. THe cold and wet weather we experienced really didn't help make it feel special.

Next stop, Bath! We stopped there for lunch.. and it is quite a beautiful place. All the buildings are constructed of the same rock, and thus they all look the same, colourwise. Well, many of the buildings looked the same too.
Nice err... don't know what to call it. If you zoom into the picture you can see birds bathing there. Which reminds me, 3 of my postcards are with Yvonne. And I owe her 60 pence.

Random shot

Bath.. central?

The girls in one of their many random poses

This is a cool one.. but i couldn't really capture it. It's because the buildings all form a circle around the trees. It's really nice to be there in person.
After tarrying a while, we rushed to this beach called Roshilli to watch the sun set. Man, we drove quite fast in those small road and it's so nice! I would like to do it someday. I should have taken a video of it.

More picture taking

Nice? It is really picturesqe.. a shame i didn't have enough time to take nice shots before the sun went down.. there's a nice house right next to the beach... with sheeps gazing.. wahhh damn beautiful man!

Next day.. we went to.... a few places. Manobier, Tenby, Pembroke, and a another beach.
This is Tenby. There are very nice hotel/flats overlooking the bay.. and it's so nice! Right next to the sea.. you can watch the sea and listen to the sound of waves.. kind of like what you find in Penang but this is the Atlantic sea!

Taken in Manobier. I quite like this picture somehow

There are these rocks that seemd to have been carven by the sea. Nice shape don't you think? it's.. irregular yet,..... the same shapes.... scars.. ugh.. I don't know how to put it in words and I'm too lazy to think now. Anyways, quite a nice beach and again lots of crazy posing/picture taking here.
And then, we had late tea for lunch... Yvonne was pretty intent on becoming English... Lol!
Yeah posing! Oh, one thing I found was that the people here are very very hospitable (err is it the right usage of word?) Their service is superb I have to say. On our first night, we had some Seafood (and ostrich meat! My first time trying ostrich meat! and also Welsh Lamb!) and their service was very good. Very helpful waiters. And in this Tea house (I guess you can call it so) the owner was kind enough to provide us an extra pot of tea when he found out that he forgot my order.. and told us some of the good places to visit. In these cases, I will want to give them tip.. not out of obligation, but as a note of thanks.

Anyways, moving on, Can't remmeber this beach's name.. but damn it's beautiful!

May Yen amongst flowers

We did some hiking... I think a few hours maybe?

Right.. posing wtf

And we did a lot of picture taking at this place. Ahh damn just remembered I have a few nice pictures.. but aih so troublesome to post them up so stuff that. Anyways, why the posing and photoshooting here?

!!!!!

GENGZ LEH! See the small dots on top of the cliff. That's us. Taking pictures!!!!

Nice different coloured rocks. I'd like to imagine that it's layers of sendiment from bygone age. FROM BEFORE THE DINOSOURS!!!! But perhaps not. Maybe it's just normal erosion.. but still so beautiful right!?
We went back to Tenby to have dinner.. and couldn't get a place in a damn cool restaurant lol. So we had an.. average meal.
Last day, we went to... gah don't remember name. I gotta ask Eric again. Anyways, I like this small crossing.

We climbed this sandy and steep hill to get up there.

But I couldnt' get any nice shots T____T

Wooo window to another world

Took some rest...

And it's already time to go home =)

Anyways, to sum up the trip it was a very enjoyable trip. After a few weekends of not socialising it was such a big change for me (especially with May Yen chatting about gaily most of the time). And I want to do it again!!! It's so nice to mix with Malaysians ahahhahaahah!!!!

Ok.. that's about it other bits about my life, I had a bbq lunch/dinner at my friend's place today, which was again, great! Honestly, after living here for a few years, you understand why the Ang Moh's like to sunbath so much.. clear blue skies and sunny days are so hard to come by! Anyways, it was nice to chat with people from different countries and not just the good ol boring stuff.

Next weekend's gonna be another friend's birthday party... and that's going to have a totally different theme I am sure.

What else.. oh yea, I just received news today that have freed some 10 days of my holidays which I can use this year! Wuuhuu!!!!That's fantastic news..... I can plan an Europe trip if I want!
I also want to try rock climbing.. and if I can find a few people who are interested, tandem skydiving!!!!! Damn that will be good. Dammit, even paint ballling.. I need to do that. Ahhh Spring and Summer.. it brings me so much joy! It's finally warm enough for outdoor activiites!!!!! Ahhhhh I like these two seasons... hahahah!!

Lastly, to my dear readers, would you be so kind as to leave some comments/shoutouts? Otherwise it gets tad boring and quiet here... and I need some motivation to post nice pictures. I'm sure you guys want that as well right? LOL Sounds like pleading for attention.. but well, otherwise it's gonna turn into a monologue instead of a blog. LOL.

Ok, time to go to sleep. Time to get back to my working semangat. I just remembered something.. ohh fuck... my supervisor's not in this week. Gah. Sigh. Nevermind.

YEOSH!!!!!! Work hard! Play hard!

My Birthday celebration + St Patrick's Day

2009-04-13T18:21:00.007+01:00

Hello all!

Whilst my holiday lasts, I shall post more pictures while I can ^^

These are pictures from my.. belated joint birthday celebration with Yvonne hahaha! Anyways, a number of us gathered in London to have a meal in a posh restaurant (because there was a very good deal on... and we all had cheapest stuff.. hahahah!) and then went to Karaoke after that! The next day was St Patrick's day so I was there snapping a few pictures before heading back to Reading.

Anyways, this is a very late post so enjoy moar pics!

Nice restaurant decor?

Yvonne and Edwin

Hong Wid aka Kaven

Yvonne and and Michelle

A light bulb

I quite like the decor in the restaurant... gives it a very modern feel. And quite artistic too!

WEI ping, Hong Wid, Chloe, and Su Khok

James

All busy fiddling with handphones

FOOD! I think it's quite good lar...not to say like super fantastic but it's delicious!

May Yen, Yein Shiang, Yvonne, Michelle.. okkok I think I have introduced everyone!

FOOD

FUUUDDDDD

Karaoke session!!! We were joined by more guys... guys from Chem Eng... Let me try to remember.. ahh well screw that nvm just enjoy the picturs!

Choosing songs

It wasn't that bad.. although some songs came with a blank background and just words T___T. They even had english songs suprisingly!

And so, we croacked all night long hahaha and the gals even did some dancing T___T. What Yvonne said is quite true.. we ought to let go of ourselves and enjoy! What's the use of being so uptight and trying to jaga the good image... IT"S LIFE!!!!

More group singing. No one actually got to sing properly I think, cus everyone just joined in and sang along loudly hahahah!

The next day, James and I tried to check out the St Patrick's day parade.. but just missed it.. we only managed to run/walk along these two... err.... ugh.. what do you call them.

Girls doing the riverdance... and what is Obama's face doing there!?

There were some celtic music performance too....celtic/irish?

So many ppl are there

I like this pic!

Giant leprechauns who ate Mario's mushrooms

Asam laksa!

Michelle, Yong Kah, James and I had a long chat in the restaurant.. talking crap as usual.. but it's still good fun nevertheless. Yeap, one must go out and enjoy life! Everyday work so hard... so boring man. I feels so good to spend my *hard earned* money. HAHAHAH

I see people who work so much harder than me... not really enjoying life much.. just work work, so diligently.. and i also see people who enjoy life whenever they can.. just work to get by life..

And I think to myself. I shouldnt' allow others to dictate my life's pace right? Now, I just want to goddam enjoy man. Otherwise life is so not worth it. Don't you agree?

ANYWAYS. I already feel a bit old at 22. Serious. OMG... past 21 d.. Past my youth! I'm an adult! OMG... I no longer feel like I can live forever. I think everyone will feel like this at a certain point of their lives. But oh.. 22 d still have no great achievement. Nevermind. Time to re-think my life's plan.

At the same time, I wanna round around screaming and trying everything I can try while I can. =)

Malaysian trip part 10

2009-04-13T09:48:00.002+01:00

Harlow everyone! I'm back again.. with the last few pictures from my Malaysian trip. Right the last day of my trip... was quite a relaxing one. I met up with a few friends from my primary school! Hmm... that was like ages ago.. primary school. More than a decade ago.

Bernard and Michelle

Seri, Sharon, Michelle, Bernard

The whole gang

It's a shame that we've lost contact with all the rest. Oh well, that's life.

That kind of concludes my malaysian trip. I know it has taken such a long time to post it all, and I kinda regret my decision to post so many pictures. It's so time consuming and made me type so little. Anyways, I still have some pictures from the St/ Patricks' day/my birthday celebration. I'll keep it as short as possible... I need to find a way to upload my pictures quickly somewhere.

Hmmm what else. Hmm nevermind.. I need to improve my social life. lOL

Malaysia Trip Part 8

2009-04-04T17:06:00.007+01:00

Hullo everyone,

I'm back with more pictures and slightly more words. Now now, it's nearing the end of my posts about my trip, just a little bit more. I know lately my posts are mainly pictures, it's because I've gotten tired of writing description.

Anyways, moving on, first of all, a picture of a latern:

Isn't it beautiful?

Anyways.. I can't remember clearly what we did on the second last day.. Ohh I went house visiting a bit.. went to Pei Sze's house.. met up with Soo Shan... went to Esther's place... and then... Wai Tuck's home! Damn, I should have snapped some pictures there. After that... Did we had steamboat? Damn.. or was that from another day... gahh anyways, moving on, after a whole day of activity and tiredness, we had...

5S2 Re-Union!!!!!

Yeosh!!! It was such a conincidence..well I think it was Esther who arranged it so thanks Esther! It was so lucky to be able to meet up with so many guys from 5S2 once again!! So tak sangka man.. I have only been to the first reunion... and missed all the rest because I was in the UK.

But this time, quite a number of us turned up!!

Some pictures:

People starting to turn up

Some pictures first! We weren't sure how many were going to come..well.. I wasn't

Moar people!

Group picture! That's a good turn out!

Some late arrivals

Yeah!

And when we are all about to leave, some one suggested (I think Angel) we go visit our old school. And that was at 10 pm!!!

What the hell man.. but we all did.. well most of us... try to get into the school or bribe the guards there. hahahha

And you know what, we actually managed to get in. The guard was kind enough to let us in. He followed us in a distance to make sure that we were not making any trouble but still.. it was such a suprise man! hahah!

Looking at the notice board at the old perhimpunan place... What is Andrew doing !?

We had a short tour of the school.. to see how it has changed, if at all.. and all the while it brings up all the old memories of all the stupid stuff we did hahahahha
Ahh it has been such a long while since I went back to school

They made a new pentas! I wonder what is it for

And expanded the canteen! It's bigger now

We went to the padang

But we couldn't get into our form five class. Unfortunately the buidling was closed and locked. So, we just posed there and took pictures hahah! oh, we even checked out the "hounted" house... old direlect building.. but I didn't dare to take any pictures in case some uninvited guest turned up. hahahha

Poswerssss

Ohh yeaaa

Laughing away as usual

We went into one of the available classes and re-enacted our shcool days hahaha

We were all in our old seats

And this is probably what we did all the time

Group pictures!

Alas.. it was so much fun.. aih.. secondary school days rocks! All the things we did... the skits... the laughter.. the games.. skipping class.. poking fun at teachers... running around.. Tae Kwon do... ahhh.. those were the days.

Why is it that everytime we look back, the memories are much sweeter?

Malaysia trip part 8

2009-03-31T20:59:00.006+01:00

Hello people!

I'm back. With more pictures from visiting relatives.

Hmmm I know this little boy is my relative but i don't know.. exactly... what.. hahahah Distant cousin? Hmmm anyways, he's very cute.. smiles everytime my cousin took a picture of him with flash.

See so excited about the flash hahaha

Han Xue and Mee Leng

My..great aunt, aunt, mum, dad

Uncle and Rushen

LOL

Yeahhh... hahaha

Look at that! It's like the clouds are flowing out of the sky like water.

Hmmm after what I have experienced.. I have to say.. although it sounds rather cliche, the feeling and atmosphere of CNY comes mainly from being with my family and all my relatives. Especially the sound of many people chatting away in one room happily. It was louder than most pubs on a Friday night. HAHAH

Anyways, I have a bit of sore throat and I can't sleep... I need more rest! I think i screwed up my sleeping habits last weekend. Damn.

Malaysia Trip part 7

2009-03-29T22:32:00.009+01:00

Hello everyone!

Yet more pictures of the temple. Enjoy ^^

Lanterns! and the colour is not right.. it should be bright red! not pink! I gotta learn how to use those photo editing programmes.

Repairing lanterns

The pious praying

KL tower! And petronas twin towers!

I like the name plate.

Next post is the final post about CNY visiting.... No more pictures of temples. Till next time!

Malaysia Trip part 6

2009-03-22T18:27:00.005Z

Harlow harlow. Back with more pictures while I still have the mood to post.

THe performance.. by a group of people from China. LOL. Poor them gotta work on CNY to earn money.

Anyways, the curtain rises...
JEng Jeng Jeng! A bunch of lovely ladies start their performance....thousand hand buddha

Whoa see the concentration on her face

I got many many hands!

Ugh.. same picture. Actually you have to be seated right infront of them otherwise it wouldn't look nice

Solo singing

Some.... dance performance

And then there was some juggling acts.. juggling forks

MOAR dancing

Some magic tricks.. wasn't that fantastic but not too bad either.. this is where he keeps throwing "cigarrettes" from his sleeve... quite ordinary

Doves from a box. Not too bad actually

Ugh.. cutting one of the girls into pieces... lol.. the fake hand looks so fake man lol
Last of all.... conjuring an "aeroplane" out of thin air.... and all the ladies you saw just now were inside the plane! Hmmm still.. mediacore.

I should probably revisit my posts and add more description to it.... too short d. Don't you think so?

Malaysian trip part.....5

2009-03-21T22:20:00.006Z

Ugh I can no longer remember part no. what this is. Nevermind. The first day of Chinese New Year.
Okok back to updating. WHat did i do.. ohhh yes, visit my grandparents first thing in the morning. And, I saw some lion dance in the neighbourhood so I took some pics:

Can't remember what we had for lunch... I think.. leftovers from the day before? Oh and there were a lottt of my relatives who gathered at my grandpa's place.. wahhh so meriah man.. non stop chatting. haha! Anyway, can't really remember the rest now, suddenly it's noon and we went to my uncle's place:

LOOK AT THAT! more than 40 types of cookies.. walaoeh!!!
My aunt's place.. many of my relatives gathered here

My cousins! Ruying taking a pciture of me at the same time hahah

Whoaaa yummylicious

Damn nice and spacious right?

In the evening, my family and I went to a temple in KL just to soak in the atmosphere and take some pictures:

WHoa nice right

My mum

Funky giant lantern

My mum having some vegetarian noodles.. she was too hungry. My dad was writing some.. Cheng yu for me lol. Err... chinese proverbs?

My mum praying. O.o lol

We were in the hall to watch some performance... I'll post about it next time. Uh.. come to think about it this is quite a short post

Hello

2009-03-21T21:00:00.002Z

Hello people. Yes I'm still alive (actually I might be Jun Xue's imposter). LOL

The reason for my lack of update is my laziness. I can always make an excuse for that hahah. That aside, I was also quite busy in the past two weeks. A lot of work and it was time to submit my IMechE report.

Okok I shall update y'all on my life. I was very busy with work but still manage to get addicted to Fantasy novels I downloaded online which I read during/after dinner. Thinking back, I can't remmeber much of my life lately.. i think I should write a private diary after all.. one entry each day. They all seem to be a blur when I look back. Although I have done stuff at work and this a and that.. but still. My feeling of dizziness lately did not help at all. It's not like my memory totally failed me but I need stuff to trigger it and I'm awfully confused about the days the events took place. I just remembered that I've been to London last week to celebrate me and Yvonne's birtday.

This cannot do! I mustn't let my life fly by me without me realising. I'm not immortal ( damn I feel old just being 22) and I really should go out and act wild and young while I still can wtf lol.

That said, I wasted my day just relaxing at home, reading novel, chatting with my dad (O.o), falling asleep when I want to, and basically did nothing productive. Hmm... it's time to go wash my clothes. Then read some stuff. Tmrw is another day. And I need to get new shoes... I just realised my old leather shoes koyak already.

2009-03-09T21:17:00.001Z

Malaysia Trip Part 5

2009-03-01T10:13:00.012Z

Hello people!

Well, back again with more pictures. The CNY eve. Unfortunately, i forgot to take any pictures of the cooking process so, I'm gonna jump straight to the reunion dinner. Oh, before that, er I cooked some wuxi pork ribs with my mum, and she cooked er pork intestine soup for the dinner. Unfortunately, my dish didn't turn out well because well.. we bought the wrong kind of meat. LOL it's supposed to be pork ribs with very little meat but the ones we used have.. well loads of meat. As a result, the smell of the meat was too strong and we well, screw up the recipe and it didn't turn out nice at all =(
My first attempt to cook for many ppl = fail. lol

Anyways, picture pictures. We had the dinner at my uncle's place this year, at his new house in Bukit Tinggi. So, here are the pictures, too lazy to type more at the moment haha:

Flowers!

People!

My cousin!

FOOOD! Yeap, we had "Lou Sang" hahahha

Sooo much food! There's about 12 dishes at least, that night. More than the number of ppl present. HAHAHAHA

Whoaa tak sabar sabar

Moar ppl

Abalone! Whoa... so yummy

Group picture! Except for my uncle (actualyl his main purpose was to take a picture of the curtains lol)

And the dinner was fantastic. Especially the deep fried prawns! Roxxor! After that we had a little chat with my uncle, drinking green tea and enjoying the cool breeze outside. hahah it was quite an experience. And oh, we had a little karaoke session after that lol. My uncle bought a small karaoke machine. Which reminds me, I forgot to blog about the day before that.. when I went out with my friends lol. Nothing very interesting, except karaoke-ing at Wai Loon's place (he also got a karaoke machine wth) for more than 6 hours LOL

Anyways, moving on. At night, i went to my grandpa's place, which is what we do every CNY. Wahhh so many relatives there! hahah it was so fun just listening to everyone talking.. so meriah! hahah and I couldnt' recognise Darel! Natalie (my cousins) changed quite a lot as well.. hahah! Strangely, many of my relatives said i've changed too O.o

Anyways, gotta post this quickly and get on with my work. So, more pictures: my grandparents praying to the Gods (well actually they say "pai thi kong" which means pray to the sky, which sounds weird but damn cool at the same time):

I felt that this year the celebrations are very much subdued. Less fireworks, much less compared to 3 years ago. I managed to take a few pictures of it, but they aren't that impressive at all. Also, there's no more err... "pian pao" Those long red... well fire crackers (well my brother and I lit 2 wahhaha) anymore. Sadness man. WHAT HAPPEND PEOPLE!? aihh sadness.

Fireworks

Damn tiang lampu

Strangely, except for Shaun (or is it Sean? haha) all my other cousins are no longer keen on playing firecrackers. (well me and my brother are the exceptions haha) Well, perhaps they are now bored of it (admittedly we always use the same few fireworks) but it's quite sad that they are no longer eager to play =(. Even my uncle likes fireworks/firecrackers more than them T__T. Damn sad. Kids these days.. rather play game in the room. Aih.

Anyways, after that I followed my dad to the temple to take some pictures and just well, absorb the atmosphere/feeling (er dunno how to put it in words... too lazy to think) of CNY, since i've not properly celebrated it for 3 years wahahha

There were quite a lot of people there, and then we went to another relatively new temple (well actually it's quite old, but it was renovated recently)
Whoaa more people here.. now that's what i call chinese new year! hahah everyone's out in numbers at midnight to offfer their prayers. Wahh so nice.. i've never experienced this for a loonnngg time liow. Actually, never been to this temple also lol

Whoa damn lots of ppl right! There's also like at least 30 beggars outside the temple begging O.o. Well, I think the reason is because on that night ppl would be kinder and probably give them some money in hopes of doing something good (well actually some might to get something good in return... err obtain favour with the Gods? I guess some do it because well.. new year mar.. do something good lor... hmmm)

Anyways:

Moar ppl!

Lanterns!

Sooo many joystick that the temple;s er... people have to take it away once every 15 minutes

Burning dead people's money (lol it sounds so strange after translation)

LOL technological advancement! gengz chowz

Too many pictures, I'm too lazy to elaborate anymore. Anyways, it was a refreshing experience. Ok, that's it for today. Hope you enjoyed the pictures and leave some comments hahaha

Interesting

2009-02-24T20:43:00.000Z

This is some interesting findings O.o

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/4797025/Fish-has-transparent-head.html

Money matters

2009-02-22T13:30:00.003Z

Well a few things lately prompted me to think about money in a different way. Now, for those who might not know me well enough, I've always been very thrifty with money, largely due to my upbringing. Every cent is accounted for, and I almost never spend needlessly.

Anyways, I see one of my friend spending money on something he is passionate about and I look at how I'm still so thrifty even though I'm now earning money. It's the deep-seated mindset to save, save, save!

I'm not saying that is wrong and we should all go out and splurge our money and empty our accounts. Needless to say, saving is important, but the question I find myself asking is, if I save all the time, do I actually live?

One of the reason i said this is because, looking at the money I recieved from ang pao's it hasn't changed much but to me it's such a small amount now (uncles, aunties, HINT HINT lol). Back in the days when I was still in primary/secondary school, that was a huge amount. And where did it go? Straight into the bank. I did't use any of it (ok maybe just an itsy bitsy amount) to you know, splurge on myself a bit.

Now, looking at the amount I accumulated, it seems insignificant. How much joy would that amount of money could brought to me when I was a kid? Who knows. Well, I'll never know lol
Now it is but a small amount sitting in my Maybank account.

Thus, I see that just saving all the time is not a good thing. Even now, spending a little extra on myself takes so much consideration and deliberation. That's why I hope to be a bit impulsive on spending, to give myself some instant satisfaction of spending money. Money kept in bank all the time.. it's like not having money at all. Worse, it gets eaten away by inflation. Like my poor ang pao savings lol

Save save save... sometimes need to spend also lar. As long as it makes you happy a bit, make your short time on Earth a better, spend a bit lar.

That said, it's not prudent to spend all. I mean, look at the prices of houses and cars. And then, consider your children's education, especially if you live in Malaysia and want to send your children overseas (whihc I think is worth it, for the exposure). And then, think about your retirement. Wah laoeh... such a huge sum of money. If we spend what we earn every month, how can we ever do that?

Another thought. I'm becoming more and more selfish. I used to think, when I was younger, about giving so much and so much to charity. Now, if you read my post, it's all about spending money on myself. Lol. Gah i want to be a child once again.

Note to self: Go donate some money this year.

Malaysian Trip Part 4

2009-02-21T22:14:00.009Z

Hello People!

Right, I shall pick up immediately from where I ended last time. So, I was back in Klang, and we went to far away place (beyond banting)..er can't remember the name. Some place called clam hill (O.o) if translated word for word.

AAAAaanyways, moving on, we were there to try out the famous (heck, all the food we tried are famous wth lol) Beggar's chicken, so called because err.. it's.er.. crap. How do I explain this. Basically, it came from a novel by Jin Yong (well maybe it's the other way round.. who knows) where Huang Rong cooked a chicken for Hong Qi Gong aka the leader of Beggar's clan (right.... I suspect this is no longer making sense to most of you guys) in order to trick him to teach Guo Jing a martial art skill ( I shall not translate the name to English to preserve the very last vestige of dignity remaining). Anyways, the chicken and herbs is wrapped in something, with hot coals around it and buried under the earth to cook it O.o

Okok pictures:

The enterance to the restaurant. Those two lines of words....is that Dui Lian? forgot liow lol

Mud skipper!

With my two aunts. It's supposed to be a candid picture but my aunt managed to flash a smile at the last moment hahah!
More pictures of mudskippers. For those of you who don't know, these fishes have evolved to live on both land and water (well, mud and water). They can hop around with their powerful fins on dry land and thus travel between puddles of water. It's a proof of evolution! Fishes evolving to live on land! (alright alright please don't drag me into a debate about the theory of evolution)

Coconut! This is the sweetest coconut i've ever drank/ate. It's really fantastic! Ahh it is really nice to sip cool sweet coconut water(juice? liquid? Gah I really don't know the correct term) on a hot day. Especially when you're at the beach. wahh.....................................................
Sweet and sour Pork's leg! Not that great. I've tasted waaaaayyyy better pork's leg before... with mantou! Wahh... I'm starting to make myself hungry.
This is how they cook the beggar's chicken (and that pork leg, or so I was told). O.o
Beggar's chicken! Well, not that tasty. Nothing special. It tasted like any other chicken with herbs, and it's not that nice also. Hmm dissapointed.. I was expecting some sort of earth-ly aroma soaked into the chicken, complimenting the chicken's taste (at first I didn't know they cook it with herbs lol)
Chicken soup! Wah.. damn lots of meat man... luckily we could take away the leftovers for my brother. Wahhaha he kinda served as the rubbish bin for the day.

Now this, is a very interesting dish! It looks like any ordinary deep fried fish, but look carefully! Lo behold! It's innards is fish ball material! They took out aall the flesh and bones of the fish and used it (well, not the bones of course) to make that.. fish cake paste (ahh that sounds better than fish ball material T__T) and put it back into the fish.. and the they deep fried it!
Whoa... sounds like something from science fiction/horror story T__T
That's my first time seeing it and it's so damn cool!!!! Don't you think so!? Even the bloody head is still there! When I first saw it I thought it's a real fish.. walaoeh.. Gengz

Unfortunately it tastes ordinary T__________T

More mudskippers

Well, in conclusion, besides the novelty of Beggar's chicken and that fish cake fish thingie, it's nothing that special, taste wise. So I wouldn't really recommend going that far to try it, unless you want to brag about trying beggar's chicken once in your life. Well, at least now I can brag. Wahahhaha! More life experience! Muahahha!

Nah, photos for my dad and Yee Huai who like these olden days settings

Old enough?

Hohoohoh... this picture.... Well, ladies and gentlemen, this roadside stall sells a drink which... unfortunately I have absolutely no idea how to call it here. It's made of mashed pears, salt, water and left to err ferment for a couple of days. It's very nice.... and also, it's hard to find this drink being sold nowadays. It's at someplace near Port Klang, and I still remember how I used to cycle here with my brother and also my father to drink it wahhaha! It's about 6km away from where I live T___T
Oh, I even cycled to the North Port with my brother before... not sure how far that is but it took us more than an hour to get there lol! Probably more than 10 km. Just remember that we have to cycle back T___T (and we did that in pouring rain lol!)
Now that's one memorable experience. Ah, I digressed.

Moving on! After the drink we went to the err..South Port to watch the sun set.

Sunset in South Port

While we were there, we saw lots of people "balik Kampung" to Pulau Ketam to celebrate Chinese New Year. I was beginning to feel the "spirit" of Chinese New Year then lol. Watching the people go back with their family for a reunion... and also the huge number of kids walking back home happily I saw on my way to try the Beggar's chicken as it was the last day of school (it was a Friday, and I think the schools are closed for 3 days for Chinese New Year.. ahh.. how nostalgic, I used to count down the days to Chinese New Year since December lol)

Going home!

The Sun

Unfortunately, the sun was hidden behind clouds so it wasn't such a beautiful sight. Nevertheless, quite beautiful. I've never really like sun sets.... it often makes me down because it's the end of the day. Everything's getting dark and everyone's going home. Well, just makes me a bit sad somehow.Nonetheless, I've seen some really spectacular sun sets that are really beautiful.

Yeapz. DURIAN! This particular breed is called the red ant... or something that sounds similar to that in Hokkien hahaha! Very tasty!

Well we kinda had durian for dinner because we had a very heavy lunch. After that, we took a stroll in Pandamaran to soak in the CNY atmostphere. It was all hustle and bustle but there wasn't that much of CNY atmostphere.

Lanterns an decorative stuff

Which kind of reminds me, I didn't take any picture of those decorative stuff my family put up! Darn... that was the first time we put red lanterns up... gahhh.

Anyways, after that I rushed to a mamak stall to meet up with my old buddies from my secondary school days. I was really suprised to see so many of them there! Can't believe I met Hao Shen there lol. I thougth he was suppsod to be in Australia. Who else... Yik Chuan, Wai Loon, Horng Tat, Kenny (were you there? I think so.. wahhaha) Ian... and some few random guys I can't remember. Or was that all? whahahha

So we kinda spent the whole evening bitching about Min Soon who kind of dissappeared to the unknown. LOL! Min Soon if you're reading this reply to me!

Lol. Anyways, that's it for now. I shall write a post on CNY eve soon.

Malaysia trip part 3

2009-02-15T17:23:00.011Z

Hello all!

Today is a very grey day, both the weather and what I feel inside T__T. I have no idea why, but I suspect having too much sugary food could be the culprit T__T.

Nonetheless, life goes on. Tommorow's going to be yet another Monday, and I can finally wear my new shirts now that I bought my cuff links!

I can't wait to go to the gym.. and possibly martial arts training later this week. That's like the highlight of my week T___T. See, no life once you start working. Treasure your student days. These words never sounded so true (well, it doesnt' apply to my final year in Uni though)

Alright, Pictures pictures!

If you noticed, I've blogged about one day of my trip in one post. Now, this is the last day in Penang.

First, we start off with the pictures of the cat. hahah

So manja

*Scratch scratch

*Posersss lol

Kuey Teow soup! Not the best, but its still making me crave for it now

Alright, a bit more description about the pictures. My dad, brother, and I decided to do some jungle trekking (soemwhere at the north west of the island). My aunt told us about it, roughly half and hour's trek to this place called Monkey's Beach and we being such outgoing nature loving guys (well you won't believe it if you only read the previous posts about food lol) decided to give it a try.

Anyways, we decided to stop by at the Hotel Rasa Sayang because the beach there is very beautiful. I still remember long ago when I went there there was quite a lot off ppl there, horse ridding, paragliding, at a very beautiful beach.

So, we masquereaded as hotel customers and casually strolled to the beach (you need to pass through the hotel) and even used their toilet T___T

Anyway,s pics:

They have quite a good landscaping done

aih.. looking at the grey skies outside.....*shakes head

A line of trees.. i still don't know the name of these trees...Pine?

The beach was quite empty because we were there in the morning. Not to say that fantastic after all, compare to this beach i went to on the East Coast.. ugh.. can't remmeber name..starts with C

Anyways, we continued our journey to the..er.. apparently it's a nature reserve... err.. monkey beach. So, we signed in, got some biscuits and water, and started off!

LOL magnify this picture and read the words.

It was a very nice trek, as we had the jungle on our left and the sea on our right. We could hear the sound of waves breaking upon rocks throughout the trek. From time to time, we get a view of the sea like this one here:
And this:

Army of ants marching

Oh yea, the trek was quite challenging as well. At a few points, there were ropes to hold on to because it was too steep or there wasn't any good footing. exciting!

Strange berries that would probably kill you if you try them. Just kiddng.

Spider and it's prey.

The sea!

At one part of the route, we had to walk at the beach. It was near a.. err.. something research centre.

Straight road ahead

We saw some ppl trying to light a fire...

Monkey see, monkey do. Monkey fail. Miserably. AHHA

Dead...clams?

Hmm couldn't really capture the transparent leaf. Gotta photoshop this picture one day.

Big roots.

So, we finally arrived at the Monkey beach! It took us about an hour! The estimated time was one hour and 10 minutes so we weren't that bad after all. lol.

The beach wasn't that.. well spectacular. So. no picutres.

Cool eh?

So, since we took a more time then we expected, we kind of rushed on our way back. That's why there isn't any pictures taken on the way back.

Monkey seeing us off.

For lunch, we had some Indian fried noodles. Not too bad.

Afterthat, it was a drive to somewhere near Ipoh for dinner. We were told to look for some big peanuts (that area is famous for it's peanuts lol.. something...er Menglembu I think haha)... we thought it would be a big picture of peanuts.. it turned out to be a sculpture T__T. Got lost a coupla times before we found the restaurant.

Anyways, we found ourselves in a restaurant where thre was a wedding dinner going on. T____T They still served us nonetheless lol so we ate, surrounded by the wedding dinner guests.

Ohhh we tried the prawns and it was nice! The sauce, is very fragant! I think it's the smell of the salt, fried till it's fragrant.
And we had some dear meat cooked with black pepper! The meat is very tender! One of the most tender meat I've ever tasted.. yet my dad said that he has tasted deer meat that is even more tender than that!
The.. ginger and herbs chicken wasn't that fantastic though. It was supoosed to be the restaurant's best dish but turned out to be so so only. Dissapointment. However, the kangkung belacan was fantastic! Tastes very good!
Anyways, that's the end of the Penang trip. We all arrived home at about 1 am, stuffed and tired.

I too, am quite tired of blogging now.. too many pictures, and not really in the mood too lol.

MOAR adventures of LJX

2009-02-11T21:15:00.002Z

Hello people! Too many pics to upload so let me just share two little experiences from the mundane life of LJX

Firstly, MY CURRY CHICKEN BLOODY EXPLODED IN THE MICROWAVE!
Yes, you read it right.... it exploded! LOL The whole microwave was stained with a layer of curry and the bloody piece of chicken was out of the bowl!!!! Like it kinda jumped out T___T
I mean seriously, even the top of the microwave was coated with curry..T____T
Now that, is one serious piece of chicken I don't want to mess with. God knows what the rest of it is doing inside my stomach now T___T

Anyways, second thing is, today's the first time I see the sun after work ever since winter came!
It's also the first tiem i see blue sky since I came back to the UK (on a weekday....)
WTH MAN

No wonder it's so famous for it's grey overcast sky. lol
But then again, it makes one appreciate the sunlight and blue sky more. ^^

Malaysia journey Part 2

2009-02-09T18:55:00.010Z

Hello people!

My second post! Right, the very next day, we tried out the famous two sister's cha kuey teow... hmm wasn't as good as I thought it would be. To be honeset, I feel like so so only.

Whoaaa got crab meat on top summore

Woops.. more pictures of the cat... sleepy face =_=

I wanna sleep

zzzzzzz...

Actually he does that because he feels very hot with it's thick coat of fur... it's high time for a trim. It also enjoy's peeing on my aunt's sofa T__T

Pasar! There's a famous Kuey Teow soup stall here aparrently.. but we were all too full to try it out
Bargaining.. funny enough, right now, I'm cooking some curry downstairs using the curry packets I bought here T___T

Pamelo!

Cute little fruit... looks like the bottle ppl use to carry wine in the olden days

Queing up for soya milk ^^

After some wandering about, we went to try the... guhh pancake like thingy (no idea what it's called in English)

Cool shop number eh?

See! Cooked using charcoal!

Due to a misunderstanding (mainly my fault lar.. I didn't order properly lol)
we got more of those pancakes than we wanted... a lot more T__T

So we ate...

And ate.....

AND ATE T____T

LOL already awfully stuffed, we went to try the special rojak (the special-ness lies in the sauce.. it's very special!) but we couldnt find the guy selling it (Long ago, my dad asked him how to recognise his stall and he replied "Just find the guy who don't wear sandals lar!" (he really didn't wear sandals the last time i ate at his stall T__T) Thus his stall is known as the guy-who-don't-wear-sandals rojak to us now T__T)
Sigh I think the joke is kinda lost after so much explanation and translation.

Anyways, since we were already there, we tried yet another supposedly famous stall there.. for it's Prawn Noodles! The last time I tried it it was great! From my experience, there are 3-4 stalls selling very delicious Prawn Noodles in penang... but it's kinda hard to explain where. Anyways, this time it turned out to be dissapointing. Sigh. Even the person selling it is different... sadness.

Prawn noodles

Next, we walked around a bit to buy some stuff (wah damn hot man that day) and of course, to get my father's all time favorite, cendol lol

My dad still remembered when he came to Penang and watched a movie here O.o

Tree and house in one

Cendol! I didn't try any though.. wasn't in the mood for it.. and i already had some in Klang on my first day ^^
We then went to the beach for a short stroll to help digest the food o.O I bet you can now see the reccurent theme... eat, walk a bit to digest food, eat, walk a bit to digest food, eat...... LOL! Very unthealty T__T but what the hell I so long didn't go back d....

Posing

Nice background right?

Getting lectures even on holiday.. HAHAhHAHA

In the end we didn't walk that much.. too full and then came the next bit.. oh yea.. you guessed it.

MORE FOOD

we bought some.. snakcs..err what you call it. the Deep fried Yam with meat inside.. lol Wu Kok!
And the.. round thingie with sweet red bean in it... forgot name lol

I got off the car and snapped this photo on the way to moar food

This is the best chi chiung fan I've ever tasted.. damn smooth! And, it's not limp! Gengz.
My mum ordered Oh Chien.. but wasn't nice T__T The green drink is... something weird name.. sourish sweet and damn nice man! hahah Oh, it's called Ampalah...something like that lar hahaha

The aftermath. Notice the hands holding the head. My aunt suffered alot also on this trip. Too much food hahahahahha!

Ok, next update whenever I'm free ^^

My adventures in Malaysia Pt 1

2009-02-08T13:40:00.011Z

Hello people!

I'm back again! Now, for the first part of my journey in Malaysia!

Right right, on the first day.. well what did I do on the first day...
Oh yea! I arrived at night, and my first meal was at a famous (or so I was told) Wan Tan Mee stall! Somewhere in KL... fantastic! After that we tried looking for some tong sui as dessert but since it was already 12 plus.. we could't find any.

The next day was a busy one for me. I exchanged some sterling pounds to RM (it was 5.19! yay!) and did some bank stuff... re-activiate my bank accounts etc etc, cut hair, eat BAH KUT TEH, and some stuff.. lol Basically a boring-ish day doing all those stuff I have to do..

THe dinner wasn't too bad though.. my turn to spend some MONEY wahhaha (so happy.. first time spending my own money mar... well, at least, a significant amount of my own money lol)

Anyways, for some of my less well informed friends (i.e. those who eat it everytime but don't know the name haha *cough cough), this, is La La!
Scrumptilicious. But it wasn't as tasty as the one you can get in Boston..a restaurant in Klang haha. The soup/sauce/liquid thing is sweet but the flavour isn't as good.
Next! My favorite! Crabs! I should have asked for the sweet and sour sauce crabs.. but nevertheless, not too bad. The only thing is that the restaurant shortchanged us..... babi give us less than 2 crabs... tipu orang punya. Oh, their bihun fried lala is very tasty! It didn't look great so I didn't take any pictures of it..wah.. already i have a craving for it just thinking about it.

Anyways, the next day, I set off with my family and my aunt to Penang. We left at about.. 7 (as usual, later then we we wanted to) to get the oh-so-famous Dim Sum in Ipoh.
Look at the mountains!

We tried a new well..er.. restaurant? called Ming Court.. but wasn't that fantastic except for a few dishes. As usual, once I started eating I stop taking pictures hahah so there's only a few pics here.

EGG TART

WEIRD PEAR SHAPED THINGIE MADE OF YAM AND SOME MEAT!

We also had... hmm what else. Oh, we had tau fu fa there! And we bought some err... Pao... damn, what do you call it in english.. PAMELO! lol mah favorite. I ate almost half at one go.. at the airport one the night I was flying back hahah

Alright, what else, oh yea, in order to try out the again, very famous fresh water prawns aka big head prawns (yes it all sounds so weird once you translate it into english lol) we wandered around the town a bit..to help digestion lol

Some old gentleman checking the stock... my dad and brother likes this kind of..well.. err ancient, ok not ancient, scenes from the olden days.. according to him you can no longer find these kind of stores o.O so he wanted to take some pictures. Untill now I still don't get how is it attractive haha

We went to a Burmese temple.. and I took this pic of water lily!

The.. temple... lol Looks quite cool eh?

This is some old little.. hamlet in the middle of nowher... about 40 KM from Ipoh.. and yea we drove all the way there to try out the prawns hahaha.
We found out that there are more than 5 restaurant famous for prawns there. . lol luckily my dad had the name of the restaurant stored away in his laptop. So, here's the more famous wan
PRAWNS! Well, I found that the flesh is SUPERB! Nothing I've tasted before! It's.. tough yet.. smooth.. yeah very.. chewy! Unfortunately, because it's a fresh water prawn, the meat is not that sweet nor does it smell as good. THe sauce is so so. So in conclusion, I won't drive all the way there to try it out again.... well unless someone really wants to try it. Not worth the effort cuz it's only the texture of the prawn that is fantastic.

After that, we initially wanted to use the.. coastal roads instead of the highway to continue the rest of our journey to Penang but unfortunately, we figured that it'll be a bit risky without a map.. and we couldn't get one at a nearby petrol station and no one seems to know how to get there.

So, we drove all the way back to Ipoh (and we saw an obsolete Tin mining ship)... and our next stop was in Tai Ping. i've not been there for ages.... couldnt' remember a thing at all lol.

We had a stroll in the park.. and had some egg tart after that (wasn't that tasty =( )

Pics pics! (can't think of title for picture haha)

Err.. this picture.. dunno why is it here ahha! This is the traditional lab chiong making process.. you dry them in the sun

I like how you can see the mountains from the park ^^

Nice scenery?

A monitor lizard going for a bird. See! My talent as a photographer for National Geographic society!
Monkey foraging for food lol. I wanted to take a picture of it's bum as it went into the dust bin but I was too late lol
Notice how the tree bends towards the pond and the edges of it's branches just touches the water ^^

Building in Tai Ping
On the frery to Penang! Couldnt' get a good night shot.. ferry was vibrating too much

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My parents and me!

Our first meal in penang.. Loh Mee! The prawn noodles there is also quite good! By the end of the day, we had so much we were sturggling to walk hahahah!My aunt's persian cat! Looks adorable right! Damn naughty i tell you.. when we went into the house.. it shitted..shat.. lol ... everywhere! Right in front of the door! Damn smelly man.

But with it's cudly wudly face.. we quickly forgave it.. well, me and my brother lar..hahaha..see look so kesian here

Anyways, I will post the rest of the trip's pictures soon.. Now, i'm savouring the Muruku I brought from malaysia..wahh damnn nice I tell you lol.

Kk, till next time!

Homebound

2009-02-04T20:57:00.002Z

Hello people! it's been a while.

This is gonna be part of the long series of entries about my trip to Malaysia, so bear with me lol

Again, the pictures update thing screwed up and all my pictures are posisitoned the other way round that it' supposed to, and I'm too lazy to rectify it so I would advise you to read from the bottom. Seriously. lol.

Last picture. The wonderful colour of the sky. Ok. That's all for tonight! Tmrw night hopefully, I will blog more about my first few days in Malaysia!

Picture taken on the plane. I like how the mountains appear behind the clouds/mist/dust lol. Oh, I also noticed that Boeing Planes are better than Airbus planes (better in-flight entertainment). And, during the take off in london, the plane experienced such a shaky take-off that for the first time i felt a bit of fear as the plane descended quite suddenly at one time.

Oh, I also met this South African gentleman on the flight. A very nice person. It's always nice to make new friends from ppl around the world. It opens your eyes and widens your view about the world.
Dubai's ariport. This is the new extended area. There's a nice garden and flowing water there!
Saw this in the airport. This system definitely won'y work in Malaysia lol
So! In the beginning! kinda... It was a long wait in the airport lol. Gatwick is so small! Smaller than KLIA! Next time I'm gonna fly from Heathrow. So few shops! And oh! It's the first time i returned something i bought.. i returned a box of cookies from M & S. I saw a better box of chocolates in WHSmith so I just returned it after i bought it for 5 minutes lol. That's so cool.. to be able to return stuff without any reason lol.

Back!

2009-02-01T19:47:00.003Z

I'm back in the UK!

Lots of pictures and stuff to do.

As most of you would have noticed, I've done away with that password/permission thingie.

Still a bit tired and have a slight headache... and I've got to go to work tomorow! and I haven't ironed my clothes!

guh.. i want to sleep soon @@

olrite, I shall update my pictures whenever I can ^^

Christmas

2009-01-04T13:41:00.003Z

Hmm again, somethings keep running in my mind over and over. Shall talk about that later cuz i wanna finish this post quickly before getting my fish and chips from the oven.

So pictures, from the post Christmas party at Hariz's place:
A number of us went up to Sheffield (our UK hometown!) to meet up and celebrate a bit. It was really fun cooking together, with many ppl in the kitchen and lots of laughter lol!

Me, hariz, and James cooked the mashed potato and turkey, Hong Wid did the baked pasta. There were also pizzas, Yorkshire pudding.

Playing the words game on facebook lol
Hariz and his birthday present lol

Everyone digging in

Moar games

The turkey!

We tried a different recipet so the turkey skin and gravy was sweet and sour lol!

Other than that, we spent our days sleeping, eating, and gaming lol! We played all sorts of games... warcraft, dota, mini games, Counterstrike, HALF-LIFE!, and even Risk lol

It was good fun, especially half life hahahha

Anyways, gotta go now.

Happy New Year!

2008-12-31T23:10:00.003Z

Roughly this time last year, I was frantically trying to finish my new year resolution post because many other bloggers are doing the same. It seems that sadly, this year I am probably the only one. Seems like we are pretty much influence by the behaviour of the people around us, I myself am not very motivated to write all these. Nevertheless, i find that it's a good thing, to set your goals and to reflect upon what you have achieved in a year.

First of all, the most obvious thing in 2008, I turned 21! It's such a magical number, some see it as stepping into adulthood, to me, it's also one of my favorite number! The way I see it, it's the changing point (pardon my lack of eloquence, somehow I just can't think of the words I wanted to use) of my life; moving from on phase to another. Looking back a few weeks ago, I realised that I have achieved all that I set out to do last year, helped by the somewhat easy to achieve targets I set. Nevertheless, it was what I really wanted to do and that's good enough for me. Here's the list of some of the major stuff I achieved:

1) Turn 21
2) Graduate with First Class!
3) Got a good job!
4) Traveled around Europe!
5) Finished FF VIII

Other minor stuff
i) Stayed in the UK the whole year!
ii) Experienced Summer in UK!
iii) Parted with so many friends from Sheffield
iv) Gaming "therapy" in Sheffield during Christmas
v) Bummed around for a month or so !
vi) Live in Reading lol
vii) Reached end of disc 2 of FF VII!
viii) Realise that I am not sociable and confident enough
ix) Live a more balanced life, exercise and dietary wise
x) Experienced being a Publicity officer

There are of course, some negative stuff as well:
i) Failed to prevent my friend from trying to do something foolish

Already I'm starting to feel old at 21, not having achieved anything remarkable. Nonetheless, time passed by. Thus, i shall make new goals/resolutions for the new year! What I did not achieve I shall put myself to it!

Hence, I proudly present to you my 2009 New Year Resolutions!

1) Live life to the fullest! (Which includes trying my best to achieve all the other resolutions and not wasting time feeling down and being lazy)

2) Be more sociable and confident!

3) Perform exceedingly well in my job

3) Don't be too materialistic

4) Get 8 packs and a well defined muscular body

5) Finish FF VII

Last but not least,

5) Experience true love! Walalal!
Get Laid.
Master singing skills.
Defeat someone in a real fight with martial arts

Treasure friends and family more =)

Announcement

2008-12-24T21:10:00.003Z

Dear readers,

Due to a number of reasons, I have decided to set up a password for this blog in the near future. If you intend to continue reading please send an email to leejunxue@yahoo.com and I shall inform you of the password ~~after you sent me a cheque for 20 quid, no make it 300~~

Jun Xue

Lincoln trip and lots of other random stuff

2008-12-24T20:03:00.007Z

Well guys, this is turning out to be a pretty depressing christmas. Here I am, all alone in a house for 8 on Christmas Eve with nothing nice on TV and no one to chat to online T__T

I tried uploading some christmas tree pics from my handphone but for some reasons my laptop is refusing to detect my handphone.

Usually, despite the cold and gloomy weather, Christmas has always managed to lift my spirits when I'm in the UK although it is clearly not happening this year. Not even the cheerful christmas songs I put on help. HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmm....

Well, it wasn't all doom and gloom. I saw a half hour Shrek Christmas special just now and it made me laugh a bit lol. And oh! Three little girls knocked on my door and sang a christmas song. As usual, i don't know how to react to the situation so I just thanked them lol! I thought about giving them something, but wasn't that supposed to be Halloween?

Anyways, let's talk about my Lincoln trip.

As some of you might be aware of, I went to Lincoln to visit my dear cousins Jasmine and Joanne.

Streets of Lincoln. looks very nice doesn't it? very.. rustic.

Poor picture I know, I was experimenting with the manual dial mode and I didn't want to snap tooooo many pictures of them again and again till I get it right. Alan and Jasmine

(Deep?) Fried Potato skin

The starters was very promising, perhaps way too good that the main course couldnt compare.

Lincolnshire Sausages!

Fishcakes

In action

The's this road called steep hill which, like it's name suggests, is very steep. This was just the beginning of the slope. I think it's about 40 degrees, maybe more.

Posing for the camera man lol

Sea gulls!

Joanne!

Reach out

Notice the skating ring outside the shopping mall

Joanne in front of the Cathedral. To be honest, I didn't know it's a city until I saw the Cathedral. And, it was so freezing cold and windy that day that we decided to just stay at home and chill out

Ko lo yok! Jasmine the chef prepared this

And the next day... laksa!

Indeed, lots of good food.

Anyways, I am too lazy to put this on a seperate post. I am still considering going London to experience first hand the infamous boxing day sales craze. However, there are very few trains running in between that day and that kinda limits my time in London. If I still feel kinda ... sien tomorrow I might just go.

Oh, I'm going to Sheffield on the 27th to meet up with friends so that's something I'm truly looking forward to (more like the gaming part... my desire to Dota and Warcraft was ignited after watchign a few games my Malaysian colleagues played.... )

There are other random stuff to talk about but.. it's too random. HAHAHAHA I'm even feeling lazy to write now... hopefulyl there's something nice on TV later tonight or I shall watch Ironman and go to bed early. Tomorrow I shall endevaour to complete FF7! Then, I can continue to FF9! Then FF10! Hopefully by then the bloody PS2 will not screw up and still work properly... or PS3 actually has backward compatibility that'll be great as well.

Aaanyways, I found out something! Paratha, which can be found readily in most shops, is the closest thing to roti canai you can get here! And it's pretty nice too! It's like those frozen roti canais back in Malaysia... wuuhuuu!!!!!!!

I shall post a picture of it in the future lol.

Right, that's all folks

tag

2008-12-08T20:43:00.002Z

Tagged by: Kenny Yeoh

Rules:

1. Link to the person that tagged you.　連結回點名你的人。

2. Post the rules on your blog.　寫下你的規則。

3. Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself. 分享屬於你個人六件不怎麼重要的事情、習慣或癖好。

4. Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.　在文章最後去隨機點名六位朋友。

5. Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website.　去留言讓這六名朋友知道他們被點名了。

6. Reply to me when you finish. 回覆我你完成了吧。

Yes that's what I see when chinese characters are displayed...T___T

anyways,

i) I'm gradually gaining the eight muscle in my abdomen!

ii) Occassionally I will scratch the back of my head when I feel slightly embarrassed.

iii) I like to sing but I have no talent

iv) I sometimes touch my chin as though I have a long beard when I'm thinking (habit from Primary School lol)

v) I only managed to do a full front split once in my life =)

vi) I enjoy looking at the sky

ppl I tag are: Ee Von, Su Lyn, Joanne, Adelle, Wai Tuck, Michelle Khaw

Pictures

2008-11-30T22:02:00.006Z

After all the trouble of uploading these photos, I've lost my mood to.. share my thoughts on a certain subject. Nevertheless, some pictures finally!

It was a suprise birthday party for Yong Kah, at Thai Corner in London.

Eng Ee looking adoringly at Yvonne... muahahhaha!

Everyone busy chatting. The table was too long so we were kinda reduced to chatting to the ppl sitting around us.

Paying close attention to other people babbling

I couldn't capture the movement because there was too little light, despite putting ISO 400 (well.. I wanted to use a low apperture as well... ahh greedy me)
Birthday boy posing for camera haha! Before i took this picture I told Michelle to act natural but somehow Yong Kah noticed my camera at the last moment lol

Finally! A picture of me!

Another.. i look pretty tired, but so was everyone because we came straight from work..

Yvonne and Edwin

The food was... so so lar, and definitely not worth how much we paid for it. After the meal we went to the club below the restaurant. There were at least 4-5 bouncers, and they searched our body for weapons as well as scan our identity cards before allowing us in. I was expecting some sort of huge underground dancefloor with a rave party going on behind those huge door.. but.... ai the people didn't really start dancing till quite late. Further, with the exception of Michelle, Yvonne and Edwin, the rest weren't too eager to dance... lol

Oh, a few of us spent the night at Michelle's place and I met up with Yein Shiang the next day. I woke up so late that it got dark soon after T___T

Don't know what she's doing here but,

I think she was talking to me when I ignored her and took this picture. hahah!

Anyways, I think I really have to limit my spending.... gah which reminded me that I haven't bought my train tickets! GAH! I've got all my weekends planned ahead of me until.. perhaps one in January, before i go back to malaysia.. oh no, I need that to do shopping. Oh crap....

*Ilalalalal!

Anyways, I think I slept too much that I'm actually slightly eager to go back to work tomorrow.
It seems that whenever I sit in front of my laptop, I waste most of my time so easily. From today onwards, I shall refrain sitting in front of my laptop unless I have something I really need to do.

Ja~~

lol

2008-11-20T22:10:00.005Z

In order keep the readership high, I've decided to post his extremely boring post about basically nothing.

It's not like I don't have much to talk about (after talking so much just moments ago with Yvonne), but... I just can't find the energy to write it all out again, especially in "proper" English, not Manglish.

Here's a link for you to read if you're interested: Click HERE

Other than that,well, work is pretty fulfiling. Yeap yeap boring stuff. Sometimes I wonder who the loyal readers are; I know of a few as they often leave comments, but are there any silent readers out there?

Oh, I just remembered that I have to send out emails to a couple of ppl about Christmast plans... or rather, potential Christmas reunion with the possibility of eating a huge turkey again.

Another random thought: The lack of pictures must bore a number of you guys, but it is really hard to find the opportunity to take photographs. Firstly, I can only travel on weekends, and even that, I don't always do. Secondly, it gets dark by 4.30 nowadays.

Yet another random thought: I won't be taking any great photos during the christmas company dinenr cuz my camera is too bulky. I want to have a great time and swinging my camera around my hips when I'm dancing/eating/getting drunk/doing crazy stuff with my colleagues/ in a formal dinner is not exactly my idea of fun.

Ok, that's enough random thoughts of the day. Another interesting but useless info: Apparently the punching bag in the gym is actually filled with small pieces of cloth. That explains the light weight and the softness (hence it's so hard to condition my shins)

That's all.

Video

2008-11-18T19:35:00.004Z

I wanted to post something about the ImechE event I attended yesterday and more thoughts, but I kinda lost the feeling to blog about that kind of serious stuff now. So, instead, please enjoy the first video I ever posted on my blog, Can we kiss?:

My thoughts

2008-11-15T14:44:00.002Z

There isn't much to blog about these days, no pictures, so I shall share some of my thoughts today. I'm not in the mood to write properly so it might sound very boring, be warned.

Lately I've been thinking quite a bit about my relationship with friends. I found myself often giving advices to friends and people I know .. you know, those typical advice like, calm down, don't get angry before you find out the thruth and don't wrongly accuse people, work hard, study hard, you will regret it later, don't waste too much time doing unproductive stuff etc; all the advice that makes me sound like a cranky old man.

I know that I myself am not perfect, and still do all those stuff I spoke of. However, I welcome advice from others. Although I might felt aggrieved or slighted by unexpected comments, when I calm down I tend to think carefully about what they said and try to follow the advice, most of the time. (actually that brings me to another topic... always thinking about other ppls' advice hence lack of confidence but i shall leave it for next time)

So anyways, I kept asking myself.. is that the right thing to do?

On one point of view, they are your friends and they would definitely love you to accept them as what they are. Usually, ppl who share common characteristics find it easier to get close to each other. What I do might be pushing ppl away. I know the feeling of getting like 20 advice everytime i talk to someone.... it kind of kills the conversation. Further, not everyone can truly comprehend the advice. If you've experienced the consequences you will understand the advice. Otherwise.. it's just... so.... hard......

On another hand, occasionally I do feel very strongly and feel that I have to speak out. Although I do try to keep in mind that everyone are different and have different way of thinking, some actions or intents are so against what I think is right I can't help but to say something. Worst, I give lots of advice to my friends for their sake.. just like what parents do XD. It's not good to do that.. it's good for you if you do this..... But it's all out of wanting the best for them.
Sadness.

Why am I acting this way!?

WHYYY

Any thoughts on this?

London trip and more

2008-11-10T22:30:00.007Z

The reason I post this up is mainly because I was waiting for the washing machine door to unlock itself. A piece of... err.. string/rope got stuck betwee the door and consequently water leaked out. Fortunately, my housemate switched it off for me.

Anyways, moving on. Halloween! is past. I didn't really do much then... Nonetheless, I snapped this picture:
Cute right? I wonder what's the significance.

Also, it snowed! In October! And in Reading! That was really unexpected. The last time it snowed in October in London (area) was more than fifty years ago! The weather is indeed unpredictable. Perhaps I should say mother nature.

Snow!

I expected it to snow maybe only once in March since it's warmer in the South of UK.

Anyways, moving on, I went to London last Saturday to collect my flight tickets; which brings me to another topic: I've confirmed my plans to go back to Malaysia for Chinese New Year! So, anyone who wants to meet up with me please drop me a message so that I can try to arrange something. My schedule seems to be pretty packed since I will only be back for a short period of time.

Ok, where was I, London! On that day, there's also this London Mayor's parade (thanks Yvonne for finding this out!). No idea what it's about, but that doesn't matter anyways lol! There's supposed to be the biggest fireworks display of the year (well, after the New Year's fireworks display) so I thought it would be a great chance to try out my photography skills.

Anyways, here are some photos of the parade:

Guess who I met there:

Santa Clauses! Standing miserably in the drizzle munching cold sandwiches, they are quite a sight to behold.

I also bumped into........

Superman! A timely snap captured him in action before he flew off.

Yvonne with some Roman soldiers

Me and 2 ladies from the..er... late 19th century?

The Mayor's carriage

That's the ... royal.. something... court. Looked like a cathedral to me

Yeah ex-housemates FTW!

Our photogenic Yvonne is quite in love with my camera =D

err.... nvm. lol

Right.. from this point onwards the photographs are kinda messed up and I'm too lazy to susun them. Basically, after i took those photos, it started raining very heavily; probably the heaviest rain in the year. I was bloody soaked wet. We finally met up with Michelle and the others... okok Yong Kah, Chee Yong, Yong Boon (forgive me if I spelt your names wrongly) and Eng Ee for steamboat! (well not before Yvonne bought her REAL LEATHER boots) lol!

We took our own sweet time savouring the food untill we missed the fireworks =(. (I think we ate for about 2 hours or so) It was expensive but it was kind of our lunch and dinner so it wasn't that bad. It was also the first time I had lobsters! Wahhh damn sweet man the meat!

This photograph is kind of out of place. View from my window

Group photo before we all went home. Michelle seemed displeased in this picture.. I wonder why lol

LOBSTERSSSSSSSS!

Michelle busy snapping away

And after that, we went Karaoke! After so long, i finally had the chance to sing my heart out (some alcochol helped me do that). The placed looked really dodgy from outside though.... it's like some underground gambling den T___T but it's allright inside. Ahhh I gotta train my vocals!

All told, I didn't had any chance to really try out my photography skills. I did some experimenting but nothing fantastic came out of it. Nevermind, there's always next time. Oh, it's about time I restart the washing machine and go to bed. I can afford to sleep late tonight because I'm attending the internal training course tomorrow which starts only at 9.

I shall end this post with the strange, out-of-place picture of Robin trapped in a telephone booth to escape the rain.

Smile!

Think think

2008-11-05T23:20:00.003Z

I'm contemplating putting a password for access to my blog.
Sometimes, it's just not safe talking about everything.
Oh! I can create another blog with password haha!

Hmm. People....... What can you do about them? Sigh.

I'm back!

2008-11-03T22:37:00.002Z

gah! Finally! Internet! But yet, still as shitty as before. Sigh. Now I feel unsafe making online transactions.....

JX

My new camera

2008-10-26T16:12:00.002Z

This post is dedicate solely to my camera.

In case you are wondering, no, my camera did not go kaputt. Some of my dear (dear?? dear!?) readers seem to have not noticed that I have gotten myself a new camera for the Europe Trip with my parents (well, my dad got it from Malaysia actually) so this post is to officially introduce all of you to my camera!

It's a 10.1 megapixel 18X zoom Nikon camera. It is not a DSLR camera, but there's more options with regards to exposure and apperture compared to most digicams. I got this because I didn't want to go straight to DSLR until I really prepared for it.
It is quite bulky, but well, I have not fully utilized this baby, so we shall see if it's really worth the money (well so far it is haha)

Random photos, Pizza

2008-10-26T15:18:00.011Z

Hello people!

Yes, another post.. suprisingly. I shall start off with updates about my life. I'm getting more work coming my way, and I welcome that. Life is pretty satisfying now, actually, more balanced. Work and exercise... and keeping myself healthy! The next step would be to develop myself in other areas... say, public speaking and socialising. I've not registered for the fellwalking club as well!

There's so many clubs/society both in and outside the company I can join. It's almost like university again, just that this time I have the money to join them! MONEY! AHHAHAHAH!

What I meant was, I'm going to make full use of it now. To experience more things in life!

Right right, I'm getting carried away, but what the hell let's delve into this subject while we're at it. I find that my "interests" are too diversified now. Photography, cooking, martial arts. All three (well, I can't think of anymore right now...) require time and effort to be good at. I was thinking to myself the other day, well, if I just dabble a bit in everything, isn't that quite a waste of time and effort? Where does my real passion lies?

Also, I was thinking about the drawbacks of each activity. Cooking actually costs more than you can imagine... almost half of my weekly grocery shopping went to just one dish I was trying out T____T

Martial arts could have negative effect on health on the long run if not done correctly. Why do I pursue martial arts? The spirit? Beat people up? Self-confidence? Fun? Something deeper?

Photography.. there's yet so many things I have to learn. I finally accepted using software to modify photographs. It suddenly struck me as a type of art as well. Expressing your way to a certain extent, because everyone would modify a photograph differently... or am I wrong?

Right right, enough of self reflection on my blog. Yes people, I often think about things like this when I keep quiet... Do you?

Recently, I have also discovered the importance of babbling away to keep the conversation going even though you don't particualarly feel like talking. Well, at least that's what you need to do to socialise better. I've always thought that it's prudent to keep quiet and speak only when you need to. Too often have I encountered people who like to talk on and on about things they aren't sure of or have no idea at all.

Ok, back to the topic. Oh yes! Life is quite fun. Working each day, and exercising often makes you tired and sleep early. Nowadays, I seldom watch anime/movies or game (gah... I must finish my FF7 before I die... one of my goals in life =)] That is good, I believe.

Right, now that I have bored most of you who actually took the effort to read what I wrote, let's move on to the photographs! Now, I read in BBC somewhere that this year's autumn colours will be very beautiful, because of the cool/wet summer (can't remember). Now do I know that weather can affect the leaves' colour when they wither. More intersting facts! I do notice that the leaves are redder, but I'm not sure if that's only this year.

Red!

One day, I was sitting on my desk calmly reading some stuff when suddenly! Some guy dangled infront of me in all rock climbing gear! No, it was no SAS crack force arresting me for picking my nose. These guys were hanging around tapping the structure, and I'm guessing they are just testing the structural integrity (what a scary thought actually). I was too shy (yes, shy... Sigh none of my friends believes me when I say that) to open the curtain bigger to snap a photo of that guy.

"Gahh! This is so exciting! *tap tap tap*"

Another thing that I forgot to mention long ago, I got a great desk! Where i'm sitting, I get to enjoy the view of sunrise everyday. It is nice to see the clouds roll by when you're taking a short break from work, as well as to just admire the sky. I think I'm not supposed to snap any photographs inside the building, but since this is just a view outside, I guess it's ok?

Yeap, that's the reflection of myself ruining the photo.

This picture is dedicated to one of my best friends.

Right, this never-ending post is goin on about fog. I came back from my colleague's housewarming party one night to see lots of fog. The street lamps cast beams of light through the mist with some help of the thick folliage. Quite a beautiful and mysterious sight to behold.

But poorly taken by my Phone's camera

This is a sample of the type of food I cook for myself everyday.

I am of course, just joking. I got this lamb with red wine thingy in an italian restaurant.

More sunrise. By now, you should have noticed that the reason I have all this disjointed stories in one post is because all these photographs were taken with my handphone; all of which I have neglected to upload until today.

The last part (finally!): Pizza! I had some fantastic homemade pizza courtesy of Elias. Traditional Italian recipe. He said that he'll open a pizza restaurant if he fails as an engineer lol!
*For some reasons, the pictures I have posted came out the other way around. So, we shall backstep from the final product:

Peperroni!

Master Elias serving the square pizza with his deft hands

Actually, all pizzas started of as squares. That, my friend, is the original pizza. Okok you are tired of my lame jokes now, I get it. Don't worry, we're reaching the end of this incoherent post.
Elias hidding his secret recipe. Saim is busy snapping away. Oh, he was sent to Abu Dhabi for an assignment, so this is some kind of a farewell party for him as well.

Last photo of him preparing. I am truly honoured to be invited to have those fantastic pizzas!

Last of all, the daylight saving time has just been reverted today. Although I did get an extra hour of sleep, I will be going back in the dark everyday now. Gradually, I will see less and less sunshine and become moodier. LOL let's hope not.

Ok, signing out for now.

Trip to Notthingham

2008-10-23T21:56:00.005+01:00

Hello People! It's been a long while since I last updated, and there's quite a bit of stories to share. To begin with, I shall blog about my trip to Notthingham to find my cousin Joanne. Well, pictures tell the tale better than words, and it's getting late, so here we go:

The streets of Notthingham

Joanne and her Nasi Lemak. RAAWWRRR

Shadow

Peculiar corner

Market tents basking in sunlight

Joanne and her salmon. Yum!

More posing. My first experiment at taking proper shots of people. If not for the fact that she's good at posing, it would be much worse lol!

We had dinner with Leann and some of her friends in Nandos

Finally! A picture of me lol! Gah.. she showed me a picture of me from 7 years ago, and we both agreed I haven't changed a bit. ....................... I wish i could say I'm very happy about that.

Ughh... That was rather brief. Okok I shall briefly describe what we did then. Basically, she brought me shopping in Notthingham lol! As she just came to Notthingham not long ago, the city's pretty new to her (yeah.. and I showed her the directions a once or twice... lol I feel so proud about it). Anyways, I bought a black shirt (finally!) and saw a few nice coats (not sure if they are trench coats) which I quite like so I'm waiting for the sales now hahah!

What else.... we had some malaysia food for lunch, and some fish-y food on Sunday. HAHAH I guess that's a pretty poor description, but I think the name of the restaurant was Loch Fyne or something. I had sea Bass with mash and peas, and it tasted quite good! (just that it's tad bit too salty). We didnt' do anything very exciting, but it was good to meet up with my cousin after such a long time... well, slightly more than a year as I remembered.

We spent quite some time chatting, so it's quite a good bonding session as well lol.

Anyways, more stories about my life tommorow, or when the internet connection gets better. I really have to talk to the landlord. We've put up a password but quite often the connection is still shitty.

Allrights, that's all folks. I need rest and sleeepppp

Trip to London

2008-10-05T10:58:00.007+01:00

Right. Trip to London. I went to London last Sunday to meet up with Yvonne and other friends. It was my first time to London from Reading. The train took about 25 minutes.. hmm about the the time for the bus ride from my place to city centre T__T. So here are some pictures I took!

That's yvonne and su khok

Michelle with her char kuey teow!

Posing with the... "thing". lol. We had our deserts here. Oh the waitress in this restaurant is not friendly at all.. very eager to get rid of us although there weren't many customers at all T__T

View under the Jubilee bridge

Posing with Tien Han

Our model of the day

Too bad the background is like shit. hahha!

One day I must get my friends to be my model.. to practise my photography skills. Any volunteers?

Michelle's dyed hair. I don't know why I put this picture up seriously

Cute graffiti

By the riverside

Yvonne and her cat picture

Guhh.. i don't want to describe this photo.

Oh, after that, we went to a Belgium restaurant Tian Hann recommended. Quite cool setting underground.

Chocolate beer! Tastes exotic at first.. but i got tired of the weird aftertaste soon.
Can't remember what this is.. but it's nice! Beef, stewed with apple and carrot and other sauces. coolz

One kilo of mussels! hahahaha! we all shared it though

Ahh I forgot the photos of the pistachio ice cream and the waffle with Belgian dark chocolate, both of which are fantastic. Anyways, that's the end of my adventures in London.

Of Mooncakes and dew

2008-10-01T21:45:00.003+01:00

Well hello! Yes I've finally managed to upload my photos. More photos to come, if all goes well. Anyways, here are the photos as promised.

I recieved a parcel from garnet girl i think..2 weeks ago. She sent me mooncakes! Suprisingly, it was only RM30 to send two mooncakes here. I expected it to cost more than that.

Parcel!

Nice packaging! I never knew they sell 2 mooncake with a packaging like this.. I've always thought it's either one or four lol

WHOAAA Heaven

My tea!

Yum yum!

I've finished the single yolk, shared a bit of it with my housemates. I'm going to finish the other one tonight hehe

Anyways, one Saturday, I woke up to the sight of heavy fog again! However, I was too lazy to walk about to take photos, partly because I'm afraid it will rain as well. I did take some photos of spider webs decorated with dew though!

There's so many spider webs T__T

Making nests everywhere

I quite like this picture.

I still have my London trip photos, as well as my "adventures" to blog about (thruth be told, both are quite boring), but I'm going to have my breakfast first. Ja!

Jun Xue

2008-09-20T12:45:00.002+01:00

Today, it feels like it's summer again. Warm, or perhaps, hot, weather and a clear blue sky. Such things are so rare in the UK. The sun is so glaring that I'm actually thinking of getting sunglasses.

So far, work is not too bad. Although I still spend quite a lot of time reading stuff which barely enter my mind, I'm starting to get more responsibilty gradually and that's pretty exciting. Well, at least for now, whilst the stressful period has yet to come.

I plan to roast lamb shoulder for tonight's dinner, because I want to finish off my mint sauce ere it goes bad, like my blackcurrant jam. I must slowly finish off my stock of food... there's really too much.

As for the art exhibition taking place in London this evening, I have decided not to attend it mainly due to laziness in my part, as well as the lack of late trains back to Reading. They really should improve the transportation system... a train at 3 am would be fantastic.

Oh, I recieved the mooncakes from Yee Huai! I have yet to open the parcel, but I shall, maybe tonight, and I will post pictures of it here. So, no pictures for now ^^