Holly Holliday

Haha :D it's the name of Gwyneth Paltrow in Glee~

Still, starting tomorrow, it's going to be my 11 days mid term break! Weeeeeee!

Lots of things need to be done throughout this holiday though...

Hmm~ let's make a list. (yeah~make a list...)


#1 Winter Cleaning! Looking at my room, #sigh 
#2 finish the unfinished reading (hence, notes~) for mid term exam~ #sigh 
#3 sorting the unsorted things in my MacBook. Only 10Gb left! No wonder Ellie is getting slower and slower these days. Hence, I need to burn all those movies into DVDs.
#4 blogs updates! :D I love this part!
#5 DSLR camera survey
#6 put Jeremy into shower.
#7 software updates for MacBook, iPhone, and iPad. it's going to be a long journey of boredom~
#8 interior designing for big bro's new apartment #awesomeness!
#9 wedding anniversary present for mum and dad~
#10 Tracking back all my expenses and report back to dad. #this is going to be ugly


okay... that's all I can think of right now. I'm sure there are plenty more I need to do but these are on the top of the list.

xoxo,
V

Home!

After went through a horrible paper on last Sunday, I just found out that I actually have to make a copy of my GC port folio review in A3 size and sumbit it to Head of Bridging Department, Dr. Faiz Elfaki and since I've got no choice I had to settle it - complete with title blocks, on Monday and my flight was at 4.30 p.m.

I managed to finish everything by 12 and literally ran here and there to find Dr. Faiz only to find that he's not around hence I dropped my port folio at the Bridging office - away from Engineering Building. I left IIUM campus and headed to airport around 1 p.m. Though it's almost impossible, but the T231 bus actually arrived first after I waited for almost an hour for a cab. Phew!

Anyway, I arrived at the airport around 2.30 p.m and I found out that my flight had been delayed. After much trouble with the luggages and everything, I finally departed at 5.45 p.m.

Landed at 8.30 p.m., mum and dad came to pick me up and there I was standing only to find that my lil' bro wasn't there to wait for me. He enrolled into his junior college that very morning.

After that, we stopped by at Pizza Hut and I had a creamy pasta and decided to grab some pizzas.

At home, I dropped all the things that I've carried all 1014 miles to here and dropped dead after that. Kidding. Though I supposed to pick up my big bro from the airport around 1 a.m., I decided to just see him in the morning much later. Hehe (mum had to pick him up~)

Anyway, this 3 weeks break will be about my big bro's wedding, his honeymoon and of course the after party!


xoxo,
V

Mini Break

Right now I'm at home. In Sabah! :D

I know it's only one month before we gonna have the final exam but there's gonna engagement party that there's no way I can miss it! It's my brother's, that's why!

Speaking of which, I just came back from buying so many stuffs for the hantaran things. We, the groom side will be sending 7 trays of it and of course the bride side will be giving 9 trays in respond to that.... Oh! I have to fetch the groom from the airport tomorrow, too!

Tomorrow I'm gonna be busy for the decorating part and I'll be meeting with some photographers and the invitation card designer so hopefully things will be nice smooth as I don't wanna have more headaches... Plus, I still have to do some heavy research on traditional Japanese houses as for the GC assignment, and maths trigonometry is killing me, people! ugh! IBE is definitely NoT helping as there are lots of things I have to read...

Any who ! The engagement party is on Saturday and I'm gonna have to settle things for the wedding arrangements at least on Sunday... Cause on Monday I'll be flying back to KL..

Until then, good bye November, and Hello December!

xoxo,
v

Awesome Weekend!

Well, the previous 3 days was just crazy! With my parents and lil' bro in KL, my big bro and his pre-fiance came down to meet us all at Seri Pacific Hotel. 

On Saturday, their flight arrived at 10 in the morning and I arrived at the hotel like 12 p.m. after meeting up with Kak Ida at KL Sentral. That night, we all went out to have dinner (and LOTS of snacks) literally everywhere! Most of the time me and mum just talked about lots of things - about this semester in Gombak campus, the start of studio  and everything, while my big and lil' bro just went out to other places around KL. 

On Sunday, we went to Times Square, did a little shopping (finally I got myself a backpack! Bought one from Body Glove) and had Papa Johns pizza afterwards. Back in hotel, mum and decided to just chill out there so me and my cousin went to The Mall, right in front of the hotel and checked out some hot sales in Adidas warehouse at second level. I grabbed some socks and a bottle water. I can't spend so much as I know tomorrow I'm gonna spend a lot! Yep! 

Finally, today, me and my parents went to Taman Melawati West Star Art Shop to get all the stuffs I need for my Graphic Communication subject. Colours, designer portfolio bag, drawing protectors, T-squares, sketch books and lots of other things. The thing about this trip is, it's not that I can't just the get the money from them and go myself but there was this once that I went to the shop and saw some girls with their parents, so.... Yeah, kinda lil' jealous over there... 

Around 12 p.m. my parents sent me back to campus and off to the airports after that. 

feeling down while walking back to Mahallah, a friend called me and asked if I want to join her and some other friends to have lunch in the campus. So yeah.. I said to myself that time, that instead of feeling sad and whatnot, I decided to be awesome! hahaha :D.. Yeah, Barney! Right back at cha'!

My room is just bit crazy right now with so many things on the floor, on the bed and of course on the table. Yup1 Let's get some shelves, shall we?

xoxo,

V

Hello, KL!

Back in the campus on last Sunday! I miss the campus and everything but the KL traffic? Hell, no!

For this semester,... wait up.. wait up... say hello to my new roomie, Q! A first year Law student but she was here one semester before me and K entered this university.

...~ to my ex-roomie, I... Good luck in Kuantan! We do miss ya!

Anyways, it's been one week since the semester had started and I haven't been to either of my Graphic Communication class and Introduction to Built Environment.

Last Friday was a holiday, or I should say, "Happy 48th Birthday, Malaysia!". Yep! It's been 48 years since Sabah and Sarawak joined the Malaya (i.e. Peninsular Malaysia today).

Other than reading some books I borrowed from the library, manga on the Internet, continuing the works of cleaning up my external hard disks, and updating my music and video collections, I really got nothing else to do. (yeah, yeah, the Calculus homework!)

Q went back home and K spent the rest of the weekend either with her sis who came from Dubai or with her new friend who shared the same faculty with her.


I guess that's all for now! Today's entry is quite boring, right... ugh! hopefully more interesting happenings next week...


Signing out!

V

Sandakan, Again.

My Mom is from Sandakan, Sabah and my big bro was born there in Hospital Duchess of Kent, where my grandma used to work. They used to live in the quarters nearby the TB ward and according to my Mom the placed wasn't as much as crowded during her younger days. But then, 4 or 5 years ago I think, the entire neighborhood was abolished together with the a village next to it and now, there's a highway cutting short through the place that used to be my Mom's neighborhood. Though there is only small area left but it'll eventually going to be cleaned out by the government and I have to say, it's a better place now.

Thanks to Musa Aman, I guess. Even though he's from there, the development of his own district is quite slow. Well, Sandakan has a long story of illegal immigrants and if you look at the city, boy. I'm thankful to be born and raised in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah. But of course the city has the potential to be the next most busy place, I hope.

Anyway, the trip to Sandakan with my family recently was the shortest we made so far. Dad drove me and Mom from Papar, around 7 in the morning while my brothers were driving with our Toyota Veego at the back.

We stopped at Ranau for a quick lunch and I grabbed some fruits and though I know it's lame but that was the first time I bought fresh cherries! Awesome!





We arrived in Sandakan around 2 p.m. and first thing first, we stopped at Jambatan 88 nearby Sim Sim Road to have late lunch. As usual, the food's nice. Fresh prawns, y'all!





We checked in at the usual Tyng Garden Hotel and had a good rest for a bit. Around 5, Dad drove all of us  to my grandma's house at Batu Putih Village, at Mile 7. The place is nearby Musa Aman's multi-purpose hall, Dewan Libaran.

In the house, my uncle Ali and his wife with their 3 children, Dila, Diba, and Airul are staying with my grandma together with my eldest uncle Alias, while my uncle Tom and his wife with their 5 children are staying at Taman Mesra, Mile 4. My youngest uncle, Amin and his wife who came back from Seremban, Negeri Sembilan were there too.

The thing about my mom's sibling is, they are 10 of them and only half is still in Sabah. The eldest daughter, my mom's sister, Mak Long is currently staying in Bukit Mertajam, Penang, the sixth daughter, Aunt Bibah, is staying in Perlis with her husband and only daughter, the seventh daughter, Ibu is currently staying in Cheras, KL with her husband and only daughter, and the eighth daughter is staying with my Uncle Amin in Seremban. The fourth son, is staying in Tuaran, Sabah with his wife and his 4 children. Mom is the third daughter in the family.

We had a long conversation among each other. Exchanged stories and updating about each other's lives well, since I've been Gombak campus only for 3 months, I didn't really get the chance to visit any of them who're staying in Peninsular Malaysia.

We all except my big bro who decided to stay some more, (he and my uncle Amin are quite close) went back to hotel around 9 and stopped by at Champ's Bowl to have dinner. I ordered my favourite dish, Watan Kuey Teow or in KL we call it as Kuey Teow Kung Fu but the Kuey Teow isn't fried with egg and boiled instead.

The next day, we all went to my grandpa's graves, the first grandpa was my Dad's uncle who was also the father of mom's half brothers and sisters (the fifth child onwards). Then, we went down (yep, the area is filled with hills) to go to the second grandpa, my Mom's dad. After reading Yasin for both of them, pray for them, we all went back to the city. Well, it was around 1 p.m. so it's time to have lunch! Dad took me to my favourite place, Ikan Bakar stall at Sim Sim Road. The sambal was awesome!

We headed down to my grandma's place and stayed there until 5 p.m. Went back to hotel after that and around 7, Dad took us all to Ocean King's Seafood and had awesome dinner there. Another round of fresh prawns and steamed Kerapu fish with other dishes.

After the dinner, Dad drove me and Mom back to hotel while my bros went with Uncle Amin and his wife to Champ's Bowl to play bowling until midnight. Me? Nah... I'm done with bowling, lol.

The next day, Sunday! Dad went to the wet market with mom and my big bro early in the morning and I stayed in the hotel and packed things up! We checked out from hotel around 10 in the morning and headed down to Kota Kinabalu and arrived in Papar around 5 p.m.

We stopped at Kundasanf Penataran Cafe and had a Raya buffet and I went around for a bit and snapped few pictures.




Even though I was so damn exhausted with the trip and everything, I still managed to prepare the awesome and fresh steamed Bawal Putih with black pepper! Haha Fresh seafoods really gets me going!



Alright, I think that's all for now...

Signing out!

V

Finally home!

Whoa! I just got back from a very short trip to Sandakan, as I visited my grandma on my mom's side of family.

As I'm freaking exhausted right now, I'll update about the whole trip on next entry!


Signing out!

V

Third Day of Eid

Yep! It's the third day of Eid and finally my big bro is off duty and already here in the house after we fetched him from the airport around 7 this evening. I haven't seen him since last May so yeah, I kinda miss him.

First day of Eid, I just spent the whole day with my family at home, cooking the whole morning and served our guests the whole evening. Mom cooked meat soup with mee hoon together with chicken Rendang (chicken with herbs and spices), and I prepared the Batik cake, chicken curry, while Dad bought us some lemang and traditional kuih 'lamban' (steamed glutinous rice wrapped in leaves - these are eaten with spicy nut sambal). Not really tiring as we were done by 5 p.m. and went to my relatives' houses after that. But I turned in to bed around 8 I guess.

Second day of Eid which is yesterday was even crazier than the first day as we had more guests. Most of them are my Dad's friends from his old workplace and their families. I didn't get a chance to even step out of the kitchen. Our special for the day was the stuffed squid. This was the second time I prepared them. This year, I added extra ingredient which is black pepper to the stuffings. Bit aromatic but still inviting. Well, for me at least. We were done by 9 I think so after cleaning up the kitchen, we wrapped for the day.

Anyway, after two days of cooking, today me and Mom decided to prepare simple dishes for our guests today as we're very much exhausted. I even slept with my Baju Kurung yesterday.

Lots of things happened, and I got to meet with my cousins from other parts of Sabah. But I still think that Eid this year has not yet meet to my expectation to be as grand, as busy, and as crazy as 2008 Eid. Eid that year was a total blast. With fireworks! lol

Though it's just third day... Let's hope for more interesting things to happen...

Right now, I'm trying to pack my essentials as we're going to Sandakan tomorrow at dawn. Dad's driving so I got nothing to worry.


That's all for now so I'm signing out!

xoxo,
V


xoxo,
V

Phew!

OMG! I finally done with cleaning the house!

As you all know, tomorrow all the Muslim in the world will celebrating 'Eidul Fitri or in Malay, Hari Raya Aidilfitri...

Therefore, prior to this day of happiness...we all need to prepare our house as our relatives will be coming to the house and join us in celebrating this month.

As I'm done with the living rooms like 2 days ago, the kitchen had almost killed me today as I got rid of 2 trash bags of expired foods, ice-cream containers, plastic bags, unused boxes, etc. etc.

By the way, I just finished baking my first Batik Cake!

... And I reduced the amount of sugar by 200 grams but the taste is still awesome!

(someone's calling me)... Yes, Mom!

Alright, people! I have to go back to the kitchen!


xoxo,
V

Flying Home

Here I am, sitting in the boarding area, looking at the people I'm going to board with in about 45 minutes.

Before that, look at 2 awesome figures that greeted me in front of the entrance just now! I'm sorry for the low quality pics as I'm just using my Sony Ericsson W995 that happened to be at the back pocket of my jeans that time as my hands are occupied with a LOT of things so I only managed to get few snaps of pics as I was also in a hurry to go to the check-in counter.

The awesome Bumblebee!

...and the great Optimus Prime!

As I arrived at the airport around 3, after checking-in all the luggages, I went to Starbucks to get my favourite:

Vanilla Cream Frappucino

.... and head to the boarding area right after. Oh! I forgot to mention that I went to Sembonia just to get a huge shopping bag to put extra stuffs i.e. extra kilograms that I couldn't get them into my luggages.

Now that I think of it, while tracing back when I first enrolled to IIUM, I actually never think that airport will be the one place I'll be going to every 3 to 4 months at least. I witnessed the changes, renovations, improvement in term of services, annoying new rules and etc. but one thing about airport that I notice is, it's a place that full with stories. As people travel from all around the world to this country via airplanes, airport is definitely a place to stop by.

As I'm the type of person that can never sit somewhere alone and not talking with someone, I always hang out in Starbucks for a cup of coffee or McDonald for the hot french fries before the boarding time. Sitting with some friendly travelers and exchanging stories is one of the great ways to kill some time, right?

Other than gaining some experiences on how to talk properly and drawing the lines of conversation, having new acquaintances outside of the campus and family connections is more than welcome...

Anyway, I'm still thinking of the things I wanna do for the upcoming 2 months vacation. Other than updating the company profiles, arranging the papers in the office and completing projects reports, I was thinking of making a 'make-over' to my little garden surrounding the garage in front of my house... The theme is Japanese tea garden... I'm gonna work on the sketch first then make some sort of proposal to my dad before handing them to my mom for approval...

Alright, then... I need to pick up my things and start to line up to board on the plane...

Happy flying, everyone!

xoxo,

V

What a Nice Day It Is!

There are plenty of reasons why it is a nice day but the main reason is I'm flying home for the first time since I enrolled into this university - I mean this campus!

Even hearing the sound of the lawn mower first thing in the morning didn't pissed me off anymore!

I slept around 4 this morning and since I usually have a 8.30 morning Computer class, I did woke up around 7.

Basically I'm done with packing the things I'm going to leave in the room... Right! The thing about this whole packing my stuffs is, there's a story behind it. Around 4 o'clock yesterday, I was already done packing my clothes, books, all the files and stationeries into the boxes, preparing for them to be located inside the storage room. At that point, all that was left to pack are my bed stuffs and some boxes filled with DVDs. Then, a friend of mine, a 4th year Law student, R came to my window (my room is on the ground floor before you guys making weird faces) just to say hi and asked me if I can give her soft copies of movies from my external hard drive. When she saw all the 5 sealed-boxes that I put in front of my room, she asked me what are the contents. When I told her those are my stuffs that I'm going to put in the storage room, she laughed and then asked me why didn't I just arranged them properly in my locker?

Of course, I went speechless. I thought we weren't allowed to use the lockers in the room as I'm afraid the stuffs will be long gone before I finally come back for the next semester. Then I thought, since I'm going to use the same room for the next semester, why bother to pack all the stuffs and put them in the storage?

Good news is, though a bit unfortunate for my roommate as she already packed everything in boxes and sent them upstairs, I can use her locker to put my things in it.

Phew! Thanks to my bestie, I got an extra padlock for the 'extra' locker... =)

Owh! Look what I found among the stuffs under my study table! Got this the day the movie premiere! Very useful (to cover our eyes) while I was watching Insidious with my bestie.

Kung Fu Panda 2 Giant Tumbler! The top part is for the popcorn =)

Anyway, all I could think about right now (and yesterday too!) is the list of things I want to do in the next 2 months! Is it gonna be a summer holiday? Where I'll just go out and have fun like all the time - except during August (Ramadhan) or is it going to be a fall holiday? Where I just stay at the house most of the time reading Dan Brown's and Nicholas Sparks? Or maybe a spring holiday where I'm gonna go crazy finding new flowers for my mini garden?

As Malaysian, we're not a 4-season country and that's a fact but for me, I use those terms to define my holiday. But the bottom line is, holiday for me is all about spending quality (and quantity) times with my parents and brothers. Of course with my other kids cousins, too!

whatever. whatever! I'm going to finish packing, get ready and do a little (yeah, right!) shopping before hitting the airport around 2...


xoxo,
V