Happy Malaysia

so i decided to be a little more patriotic this year. there was this Project Happy Malaysia going on and there are over 30 bloggers involved in it. (me inclusive). unfortunately, i typed it all out last night and blogger bailed on me. so typical, i know.

anyway, i wrote a weird story last night. i considered writing another this morning, but i'm kinda brain dead right now. so here it goes again. my happy Malaysian story.

***if you knew me, you would know that every year i'd disappear for 2 weeks in December. i have this little retreat which i keep going back to. ask any ex-bounder and they'll testify that Outward Bound is addictive.

2 years back, was actually my first time as a course assistant. course assistants are volunteers who go to OB to help out.

90% of the staff in OB are malays. its not that im a racist. i just thought that it'd be hard to chill out with them for 14 full days - u noe talk their lingo and stuff.

then there's the Project Trust people, who are like exchangees from other countries. In 2004, there were 2 Scottish girls Kirsty and Helen. They were really cool.

that year, my charges were a bunch of spoilt 13-14 year old brats. my watch was divided into the Malays and the Chinese who bickered and argued over the most trivial issues. it was almost nerve wrecking when they start complaining to me, pointing fingers at one another.

OB teaches lots of silly songs and dances and all those other stuff u do at camps. there was this one song called Bumble Bee and it was such a nursery rhyme. seriously. if i sang it aloud outside the premises of OB, ppl will start staring at me. heck, even kids will start staring at me. but i guess when ure in a group, and there's no mtv or channel V, you pretty much sing whatever that comes along!

so there was this one night after night cap, a few of us were chilling in the dining area. Kirsty and Helen were there. so was a couple of instructors, tho i cant remember who. i remember Adrian, our MPCA (multi purpose CA) was with us. And there were a few of my participants. it was already the 5th or 6th day for the participants, and by then, most of us were pooped. fatigue was etched on each of our faces, eyebags puffed under our eyes. all of a sudden Kirsty leapt into the air and started singing Bumble Bee. and as if on cue, everyone joined in! the energy was electrifying because we sung it over and over, each time speeding up the actions and beats. it was so cool!

if you took a step back from the circle, you could see how 2 scottish girls, a handful of spoilt teenage malays and chinese, a couple of CAs from KL, and 2 malay speaking instructors from i-dont-know-where, just singing and dancing together. it was quite amazing!

this story has no beginning, climax nor ending. it has no protagonist whatsoever. in fact it's such a simple story. but i guess when i was there buzzing along with the rest of them to Bumble Bee, i really felt like i belonged. like everyone belonged. so as cheesy as this may sound, that was a truly malaysian moment. :)

***
this is kinda late i know...but i wasn't really in the mood to write somehow...hope it was worth a read anyway. *shrugs*

i *heart* you, Beat!

many call her Bea, but i refused to. i've been calling her Beat for as long as i remember. so i'm stubborn. so i wanna be the only unique one to call her Beat. sue me!

Beat and i go waaaaaaay back. i remember vaguely a very very bubbly senior prefect in SMSJ who has super duper long hair bouncing along the corridors. *pictures image in head*. yup that's Beat in a nutshell....back in 1999, that is. That's when i first met her!





Some people may think i thread directly in her footsteps. because whichever path she took, i was right behind her! from being a prefect, to going for OBS, then to attending Leo Forums in KL, being Membership Director of Leo, being President of Leo and even into the whirlwinds of rock climbing and mountain trekking.





She has this effect on me. Like the common flu, she is contagious! It's like everything she does is turned into whatever the dictionary describes FUN to be. that is, until the point where she went on from climbing recreationally to i'm-now-pro-enough-to-own-my-own-pair-of-climbing-shoes! haha yea, that's pretty much the point where i figured she's gone too far for me to keep up.




so while i'm still diligently renting shoes and harnesses and belay sets from the counter, my dear Beat has won several competitions! while i struggle with a really really slight outward slope (or overhang or whatever it's really called), she does a little one, two, hop movement and she's at the top, biceps bulging and all!

but i digress.

Beat has always been there for me. through good times and bad. though our roads have diverged - hers a more winding, more rugged path but with a handsome escort by the name of Jo; mine a flatter tar road that goes much much much further than hers :P (sorry i had to, can't give u all the credit now can i?), we're still very much as good friends as we were back during school days.



she's now in Sydney, probably patronizing Coles for more pavlovas and hoping to claim from an accidental mistake from the person at the counter, having the time of her life. then, she'd go and chomp up a dozen Krispy Kremes and go to a lap dancing bar at King's Cross.

uh...yea...i'd imagine she'd do something extreme like that. if not more.

anyway, Happy 21st Birthday Beat!! *heart* ya to bits!

p.s: the emotional elements were meant to make up for the delay in this brithday wish. hope it works!

alamakkkkkk!

click for larger image

i'm not pissed. i swear i'm not. i went all the way down south, missed one of my classes on Saturday (that's RM100 gone), paid SGD26 to be trashed by a parade of chic looking girls in midriffs and hotpants, came back to check my results only to realise i was friggin' disqualified. *curses under breath*

yea...i swear i'm not.

***

i initially wanted to take an entire week off. when i returned from Singapore, my throat was scratchy and i was sneezing my lungs out. the next day, my face was burning up and my eyes were all watery. but Monday was the final day of my Celebrity Fitness 1 week pass. so i tried RPM. with Hin Toong! darn cool i tell ya. i should go for RPM at least twice a week. confirm i'll do better in my tris.

and just now, i went to Fitness First for a free day pass. couldn't resist the Nike Rockstar Bollywood class. which to my dismay, sucked. owell, least the Body Pump was entertaining. the instructor was a chinapek who screams "Tripeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr (Triple)" at the top of his lungs. once in a while he goes "Check my butt! this is how you should be" and he juts his butt out, side profile. it's hilarious! i was laughing so hard i was a hazard to the people around me. I had 5 kgs on my bar bell. i initially wanted to put 2 kgs but the other girls all had 5 kgs at least. so yea...i have an ego and i'm not afraid to admit it.

so yea, instead of resting i had an intensive RPM and Body Pump class. but that's ok. because apart from that i did nothing. next week, training starts. the real deal.

Trailblazer is next weekend. i'm totally psyched! I can't wait! I've waited 1 year and 8 months for this! when the event got cancelled in January this year i was more than disappointed! then now it's back! and i'm going!

i think you can sense how thrilled i am by the number of !!! i have used. it's coming!!!!!!!

the Vietnamese, the technician, the student waiter

you see i've got this Vietnamese in my group for a certain project. he's kinda good looking - tall, tanned, sharp nose, built. he speaks okay English for someone who took a 6 month English course before he started his degree. he's a basketballer. and he's funny. so you see, he's quite a catch in my humble opinion. plus, i found out this other girl in my course, a Korean, has the hots for him. (I know, Metro's quite multinational)

so that day we had a group meeting. but by a twist of fate, everyone else could not make it, but me and him. or him and i. whatever. so yea, conversation started. i asked him why he was here, which part of Vietnam was he from, how did he find our humid land so far and many other things you would normally ask a foreigner. it came to a point where i ran out of conversation topics and the lame topic of currency came to mind. i started asking about exchange rates and then asked him if he had any notes or coins that he could show me. so he took out some coins from his pocket and handed me a 200 dong coin. which i think is worth RM0.10. after examining it like it was oh-so-fascinating, he said "you want to keep it?". my heart leapt. not in the dramatic way, but you know, in a i've-got-something-from-a-cute-foreign-student kinda way.

so yea, final topic of the day was of course his "status". lo and behold...he's taken. by a French speaking, really hot Vietnamese chick. who's studying in France btw. he showed me pictures. she's Covergirl kinda hot. thus, ends the short crush. owell...i've still got the 200 dong. :)

***

i've got a new best friend in college. he's bald and he's cool. he told me i was fat sometime back but he is very much my life saviour. while i was promoting Rock4Hope and Heart4Hope he was always there to lend me a helping hand. he put up t shirts on bunting holders so i could catch more attention. he got me tape and staplers. he was my lelong speaker a few times. really i owe quite a bit to him.
today, as i closed up for the final time, he gave me a standing ovation. he told me how hardworking i was. and i felt so proud. i guess i feed on little praises like these.
but seriously, knowing Miles (or whatever his real name is) means you've got the entire Metropolitan college wired. figuratively and literally speaking. :)
doesn't he look like Ato Boldon?
***

I followed Lizamey and Chih Mei to Taylor's College PJ to dine and wine in the Hospitality and Hotel Management practical assessment. Thahirah came along. It was kinda cool. I actually think conventional courses like hospitality and management is much moreinteresting than the average business degree. our waiter, Maxwell, was nervous like hell. i don't blame him. his examiner was pms-ing. but really, i had fun! we had a 3 course meal, which for some reason stuffed me up. i couldn't finish my dessert!
the both of us (Thahirah and i) were treated by the both of them (Liz and chih mei). i feel so...appreciated. :)

NB Real Run

you see, when you go to a foreign land to race, it's very hard to draw expectations. but i always do. especially after my fantastic lucky outcome last week at Bt Gasing, underneath my humble facade was an expectation to kick some kiasu asses that was dying to get out. so it is needless to say that the blow i got did not only strained my calves and hemstrings even more, it punched brutally into my ego.

race flagged off at 7.45 am - a little late, but i'll try not to be a bitch. the place was sardine-packed! so much so, we were walking for 3 whole minutes from flag off. i was the only idiot with a hydrapak. but it did pay off because then i didnt have to rub sweaty shoulders at the drinking stations. i was happily overtaking them during those moments.

road stretch was 5 km. then there was a sand stretch of 500m. sand running is hard. it's like taking 2 steps front and 1 step back. i seriously had a hard time keeping my pace. after 500m, there was about a km of road again, and then back onto the sand for another km approximately. it's so easy to lose your focus when times are rough. subconsciously, i felt myself slowing down. i have to hand it to the race marshalls though. all along the route, standing about 3-4 feet apart were race marshalls cheering you on! it really made a difference. it got my head back in the game, maintaining my pace.

Singaporeans are REALLY fit. all the way i was not able to break off from the general crowd. so used to being amongst the front runners in KL, it bugged me that i was just-one-of-the-many here.

finally i came onto the trail running. now this i almost laughed. errected right outside the stretch was a sign which read "Jungle Challenge route starts here". i thought, yay! but all i ran on was a tar road, with potted plants on either side of it. Sure there were some trees growing from the ground which hovered somewhere above my head. Sure the road went uphill and downhill on intervals. but seriously, where was the dirt people!??! owell, i was forewarned.

i managed to run in before the clock touched 1 hour 1 minute. a sea of people were already cooling down with cold cans of 100 plus. slightly disappointed, i consoled myself that i just ran 10 km in an hour even with sand-running. i am, overall, satisfied i guess. :) many thanks to Kelvin for inviting me to join. and for all that he's done for me during my short stint in the Lion City.

p/s: Once again, blogger photos not working, photobucket not loading. photos tmr la. gnite!

*edit* when in doubt, slide it!

real runnin'

i love this picture. it's so cool! the person who thought of it was a genius!

yup, this weekend is the New Balance Real Run in Sentosa Island. It's a 10km run, which encompasses 3 different terrains. The race starts of with a 6km road run, followed by a 1.6km stretch on sand, and it ends with a 2.4km trail run. No reason why i shouldn't want to go for it rite? i've never done sand-running before. i mean, i tried to on Bondi, and my feet hurt like hell. don't know if it was caused by my running barefoot, or the intense amount of walking i did in Sydney, or the merciless cold weather. either way, sand-running ain't easy.

i only managed to do a single run session this week since Bt Gasing last sunday. but i supposed the 12 sun salutations i did in Yoga on tuesday, and the 1 hour Dance Aerobics i did in Celebrity Fitness before Yoga, counts as some form of cardio exercise. on wednesday i actually had the free time, but my bed had looked more tempting. it was the first thing i reached for when i staggered through the door, dumped my bag on my bedroom floor and dug the lenses out of my eyes. i literally plomped onto bed. 8 am - 6 pm straight, in college, lectures back-to-back, promotional activities in between - that, my friends, is en.du.rance!

tomorrow i'm leaving for the Lion City at 3-ish pm. Mummy dearest will be tagging along because there has been a change of plans. My cousin whom i was supposed to follow back on Sunday decided to take a day off to visit relatives in JB. so, me being the obedient college-goer, still reluctant to spoil my zero-absenteeism rate for tutorials for this semester (too early to start disappearing), would have to take the bus home on Sunday evening. and mummy dearest, being the protective mother she always is, cannot bear to see me take the bus home by myself. hehe...yea i know, i love her too. :)

alright. my vision is blurry from excessive yawning. i really should be sleeping. good night!