5th April 2009 - My Birthday Celebration

I woke up early Sunday morning, not knowing that today would be one of the best days of my life. It was my birthday the day before (4th April) but tradition requires that I join my family for ChengBeng, so my birthday celebration was postponed to the next day.

As usual, I boarded the ferry over to the mainland, alone this time, as CY had to join his family for ChengBeng. It took them a while to come pick me up as it turns out they got lost on the way to the jetty. No matter, I needed some fresh air to wake myself up and the sea air pretty much did the trick.

For some strange reason, we found ourselves in front of Pacific instead of Sunway, which is where we were headed. A few more lost and confused moments later, WenC finally managed to drive us to the intended shopping mall.

We bought tickets to Shinjuku Incident and were stopped by the ticket-collector to check if we were indeed old enough to watch this movie. Unfortunately, Ying wasn't and we got into a tiny pickle where the ticket-collector kept scolding us with an unnecessarily loud voice. Oh well, we got in anyways in the end.

We found out why it was rated for 18+. The movie was incredibly violent and had people's face being slashed and hands being chopped off. Well, it was pretty much expected as it was a movie about yakuza: notorious Japanese organised crime-gangs.

2 hours of violence and confusing plotlines later, we went to pick XinMay up at her house and headed for a nice cozy little place called Sunday's Café. And here's where it gets fun.

They made me open the small gift they gave me when they picked me up from the jetty. I wanted to open it at home but there were 3 girls and only one me. Many jumbled up illogical reasoning from them later, I gave up and started to unfold the paper wrappings.

I unwrapped. And unwrapped. And unwrapped. And unwrapped. This thing was wrapped beneath layers and layers of newspaper! I was getting mildly frustrated and a little suspicious. They told me it was a Jack-in-the-box. A trick. Yeah, right!

Countless layers of newspaper later, I came upon a small box which contained a small plushie of some weird black thing with a suction-cup thingy for you to hang on walls and one of those things you hang on mobile phones. I was like, okaaaaaaaaaaaaay ... It wasn't that I didn't like it. I did! I just found it weird that WenC deliberately wrapped it under so many layers of newspaper. Hmmmm ... something didn't feel right ...

And my hunch was right. The instant we finished munching on the toast we ordered May and Ying suddenly said they were still hungry and wanted to order something else. They scribbled something on the order form and showed it to a waitress, who then brought over a huge box with a ribbon tied neatly on top. At first my mind went blank and wondered what this is. And it hit me the next moment: this was for me!

I was speechless. What a surprise! No one's ever done this for me before and I didn't know how to express my feelings then. I was so touched that I could cry right there on the spot if it wasn't for my feeling shocked and surprised. The massive gift-box contained an assortment of items which ranged from plush-toys to T-shirts. The plushies, key-chains and other matter of collectibles had a similar theme: they were either in black or in white or both and most of them featured the skeletal character Jack from The Night Before Christmas.

After paying for our orders (which, to my annoyance, they did) we decided to go to Ying's place for some singing. Karaoke time! The karaoke room in Ying's house was a cute and cozy little in-between room upstairs. It's an in-between room because it's in between the upstairs hallway and the master bedroom.

We spent pretty much the rest of the day in that tiny little room singing whatever songs we find, which is a lot. It'd take us like 5 years to finish listening to every song they have. Non-stop. It was a really nice place to just sit, relax and sing so Ying, can we visit again sometime? XD

We went out for dinner, which was pretty uneventful except that I finally got to pay for something that day. WenC drove me back to the jetty so I can catch a ferry home. Heading home, I carried the huge boxful of gifts and an even bigger smile on my face, which stuck there until I went to sleep that night.

Thanks, girls, for everything ... It was by far the best birthday I've ever had ... *Sniff* :')

The gift they gave me for the first phase on their plan to surprise me.



The enclosed birthday card.

The contents of the card.

Picking out songs from a list of infinite choices to input into the singing list.

Some nifty lighting to set the karaoke mood.

Let's karaoke!

Singing got boring. Stuffed-doggie fight! That's WenC's head in my lap. *Blush*

This is Jack. He's uhhh ... gettin' jiggy with it. Whatever that means.

This is all the stuff I recieved from them ... I love you guys!

At the End of Penang Island

WY a.k.a. Aisling a.k.a. my mei mei pulled me out from in front of the PC and out of my comfortable little cul-de-sac to accompany her on a search for a place that neither I nor her have heard about: a Penang National Park.

So we took off with her in the driver's seat. We took a wrong turn at PCGHS and wound up lost in a residential area for a while. We managed to find our way out on to the main road and just followed along it.

The journey was pretty uneventful from here on out. We had a little chat and repeatedly listened to a song called Our Song by Taylor Swift for pretty much the whole length of the journey.

I found out that HooiKhim had been thinking about making our next primary school class-reunion a hike or trek through said park. Yeah, as if those spoiled rich brats would want to walk through a dense forest in the early hours of the day. (Good thing none of them visit my blog.)

About an hour and half of driving later, and passing by many beaches that tempted us to stop, we found ourselves at a dead end and considered asking around for directions. But when we got off the car we saw that the dead end was exactly what we were looking for. It was the main entrance into the park. She went to collect some information at the counter and we proceed to lunch at the Gurney Plaza.

A modest meal at Kim Gary later and we headed for home.

We got lost and ended up on the Penang bridge! ... Yeah, right. Nobody's that stupid.



The Pejabat Taman Negara Pulau Pinang building.

The fishing docks.

Seaweed-flavoured fries and cheese-baked rice: My staple meal at Kim Gary.

Wasting some time by filling out a feedback-form. Mei mei made some pretty useful comments that they should observe.

She wouldn't let me take a picture of her without me being in it with her. You can see how annoyed I am with this.

Joey, the Demon Girl

Boy, am I bored to actually post this up ... This is nothing ... just wanted to tell the world - or at least a small part of it - that I have befriended another weirdo ... I seem to attract these types ...

Her name is Joey and she's a self-proclaimed devil or something. She contacted me to ask about The One Academy (TOA), which is the college I'm going to.

We've only had about 5 online conversations so far, and I haven't even met the girl and we're already arguing about little things, of which I've mostly forgotten.

I still don't know much about her and I'm still trying to get to know her more. I want to see the extent of her weirdness, even though she says she's completely normal. Yeah, right.

You can go visit her blog. I've put up a link on the right, under "Take a Peek".

This is Joey. She wouldn't give me a clearer picture of her face. Yes, Joey, we all think you're cute. *Rolls eyes*

Sweet Sixteens

Just wanted to give a shout-out to my favourite newly-sixteen-year-olds XinMay and HoayYing. Happy birthday, you two, and uhhhh ... well, keep being you!

XinMay: March 15th


HoayYing: March 16th

CNY Santa

I found this floating about when I was doing some cleaning on the PC hard disk-drives. This was from early this year. I find this amusing and funny, even if it was only meant as a joke.

Haha, my dear Sheralyn ... I think we can arrange something in the future. But I'm not Santa. And even if I am, Santa don't do CNYs ...

Hike-Hike II

T'was the day after WenSee's early birthday celebration ... I invited KuangHaw and SiauWei (also known as Eoywn on the internet. I wonder how do you pronounce that) to an early morning hike. I told them to wake up at 5am. How I very much regretted that.

They really did wake up at 5am and came to pick me up at about 5.30am. The problem was, I've been up all night chatting on messenger, mainly with WenSee, and only went to sleep at about 4.30am. As you can imagine, I was pretty unprepared when they came and rang the house bell and called me on the phone. Luckily, these morning things don't need much preparation.

We got there at about 6am and it was freakishly dark, although the fresh pain in our knees and lungs helped distract us from that. And the torches I asked them to bring were pretty useful with lokking for footpaths.

We got to the ledges or small cliffs in front of checkpoint 3 pretty fast so it was still dark. We climbed a rock and sat there to watch the sun come up. As usual, there was a thick fog or mist or whatever (sorry, I don't really know or care about the difference) and the sunrise wasn't perfect, but it was pretty awesome anyways.

When it was bright enough we continued on out way up, towards checkpoint 5, the Moongate. And so meet we, the challenge of the damned stairs. I've been up this mountain many times before and I still hate those stairs.

We reached the top pretty fast. Those two are pretty good, considering they've never been up there. I think SiauWei mentioned that she did once, but it wasn't the same path and the same checkpoints. So we just sat there and talked. Chatting about stuff that's mostly nonsense and past happenings and school life and heck-knows-what. We were there for nearly two hours before we headed down.

We went to McDonald's for breakfast and headed home. Oh, and KuangHaw almost killed us all when he took a wrong turn at the round-about and went onto the road heading for the opposite direction.

Once back inside my preferably dimly-lit house, all I wanted to do was just crash onto my bed and doze, seeing as I didn't get much sleep the previous night. But no, it was not to be. Mom wanted me to go take a shower so I don't stink for when we go visit the education fair at PISA.

We met up with JT there and we registered for digital animation at The One Academy (TOA). The course costs like RM60k total. RM60,000! It felt too early for me because I was thinking of taking up something else. Maybe culinary arts at KDU. But it's too late now. *Sigh* At least we'll be getting a 20% scholarship.

So after that was settled, we took a short walk around the whole fair and just went home. Finally I get to go get some much needed rest.

The magnificent view of the sunlight slicing through the clouds. Or fog. Or mist. Or haze.



Bad picture, I know. But I was sleepy so I was in no mood to make a good expression and the bad quality is due to my hand shivering. Not of cold, but of sleep deprivation.
From left: KuangHaw, SiauWei and me.

We finally made it! Bloody sairs ...

最棒的回忆

One month of looking-forward-to.

Two weeks of planning.

Three days of discussions.

Twelve hours of excitement.

Ten minutes of last minute decisions.

One beloved friend.

One memory to last me to my grave.

:

:

:

:

The 6th of March was the pre-determined date to celebrate WenSee's birthday. Understandable, as it is her birthday that day. I had already thought of a birthday present but, unfortunately, it is very rarely found here in Penang. CY wanted to share in my idea so, what the heck, as long as I managed to get it to give it to her.

But then, disaster struck. HoayYing and XinMay suddenly told us they wanted to do it on the coming Saturday. Also understandable, as they're still in school and are preparing to sit their exams the following week. We panicked. All hell broke loose in my world. I love her, I wanted this to be perfect. But this seemed impossible as the days passed by and as Saturday looms closer and closer.

Then it came. The others suggested we just treat her to a meal or something. I agreed, but I never gave up. I was resolved to find that item for her even if Saturday has passed. But in the end, I didn't have to. Luck was on our side.

We continued on as planned. We went over on a ferry and met them at WenSee's place of residence, or, simply put, her home. We had lunch and proceeded to Pacific shopping mall to just hang around.

It was when we were heading for the cinema to catch a movie that me and CY saw it. The elusive item that I was hell-bent on giving her for a birthday present. Turns out it wasn't so hard to find in that particular shopping mall as the shop we visited had their walls literally lined with similar gift-items. We payed for it and left it there for it to be wrapped and went after the others to watch the movie: Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li.

The movie was quite a disappointment as the fight scenes looked pretty lame. After the movie, we just stretched our legs and walked around for a while. We even played with the photo-booth thingies and I have to say, those things are very cramped and only 2 minutes in one of those caused perspiration that would otherwise happen only during outdoors when the sun is high.

We had one more stop before we headed back to the jetty for our ride home. It was the shop where we bought her present. WenSee even grumbled a little because we refused to enter that shop earlier so as not to ruin the surprise. It was perfect. Her less-than-happy mood, our last-minute luck and definitely the surprise awaiting her. Everything was simply perfect.

We loved her reaction when we revealed why we were being so secretive ever since we came out of the movie. She was speechless. Although it wasn't much, the look on her face was worth everything we've done up until now. For the first time for a very long time, I was actually sincerely happy that someone else is happy. It was truely the best feeling ever.

Playing around with the designs for the pictures we took in the booth.







And the result is ... total weirdness. What's with the baby? I have no hand in this.






"我跟你讲!"

Aww ... how cute! This was the surprise present. I suppose you were pretty curious as to what this hard-to-find item was, eh? Since I didn't mention what it was in all the text above.

Mami, I love you! Hope you liked our little gift! Uhh ... bad choice of words, since the thing was so frickin' HUGE. And I'm so touched at what you said in your blog that I couldn't help using the 5 words in your article that made me tear up as the title. I hope you don't mind ...

This is to all of you:

Mami, HoayYing, ChuanYong, XinMay and WenLoong.