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My mother was born on 14 February 1950. Which makes her a Valentine's baby. 36 years later, she gave birth to me.

Let me be brutally honest here. I have never EVER celebrated Valentine's Day in true Valentine's Day-Hallmark Edition-Style. I have never EVER had someone call me up a week or even a few days prior to Valentine's Day to ask me out for dinner. I have never EVER dressed up and died in anticipation for someone to come pick me up for dinner on Valentine's Day. I have never EVER received a bouquet of flowers nor a box of chocolates for Valentine's Day (ok, maybe I have received a stalk of rose back when I was in kindergarten but that doesn't count).

Every Valentine's Day for the past 20 Valentine's Day I have spent it with my mom and dad..because we go out for her birthday dinner. Not that I'm saying that her birthday celebration is the very reason why I have never had a Valentine's Day-Hallmark Edition-Style Valentine's Day.

The hearthbreaking truth: No one's ever asked me out.

BWAH! *sniffs tear away*

Should I be bothered. No. YES..! I mean..No. Oh fuck.

Anyone looking to earn points to enter Heaven? Come give me a call and bring me out on Valentine's Day. I promise I won't eat nor drink too much. Maybe I'll just have a salad. I meant, a FRUIT salad. I'll be really economical, I promise. And you don't have to bother with those chocolates...I'm trying to keep my weight under control.

Anyone? Heaven points?

Yet Another.

So Poh Chai held her 21st birthday party when she was still 20 years of age. Strange? I think not! Just some pictures for the ever-lovely Ms Yap to feast her eyes upon. Eh, you know..it's so weird that you're not around during such functions..we miss you so much la!

Anyway, you might question the obscene amounts of photographs I have of ME with other people.. considering it's Poh Chai's birthday.

I can defend myself. She had herself a designated photographer who was snapping millions of photos of her. So I felt unused. And unloved. Hence I started snapping photos of myself with other people there. Hehe.

Photos.




Look! Poh Chai's youth!



Pre-alcohol expression. OK, it was orange cordial. And we made her stand on the chair while I made her a toast. And darn it pohchai, no one bought us drinks that night!! The gods must know that you're not legally 21 yet hence the refusal to grant me my toast.



Post-alcohol expression. Yes yes..to hell with the gods. MELANIE will supply you with drinks.



HAPPY way in advance 21st BIRTHDAY POH CHAI!!
lots of love from us..!

I do not camwhore.

To make myself feel happy-(er) on Friday night.

I'd like to say thank you to Daniel's plain white (or is it creamish-beige??) wall. Without it, this would've never materialised.
I'd also like to thank Nikki and Rajeswary for happily complying with my wishes and being my models. Without you guys, I'd have looked seriously camwhorish.
And lastly I'd like to thank Daniel and Weng Yew for being the patient photographers that they are.





oh SHOOT! I nearly forgot...Thank you Daniel and Weng Yew for the photograph above and also for providing me 30 minutes of side-splitting pain-inducing laughter.

I really needed that.

oops.

HAPPY BELATED 21st BIRTHDAY DANIAO!

I want to cry from the sheer absurdity of it all...but i can't. Right this moment, it all seems like a cosmic joke to me, and i'm the one being laughed at.

The fourth time amounted to nothing. As always.

I have decided to give up. There's no point in pursuing the impossible or the unattainable. It is like travelling down a road that you KNOW is wrong but refusing to make a u-turn to go back to the point where everything was still clear. And you keep travelling down the wrong road telling yourself that you've come so far, why give up now? Just press on, there might be another by-way that will lead you to your destination. And you just go on and on and on...oblivious to everything else.

One-tracked mind.

It would have been so much easier if a u-turn was made right at the very second when you knew you were taking the wrong road. You save time. You save energy.

The fourth time amounted to nothing. Stop leaving me in a lurch, please.

Bisa? Tak bisa...

I've just been to Bali and back and trust me, when i say the days are too short, i mean.. what the hell only 24 hours GOD PLEASE MAKE IT 45 PUHLEESE DEAR GOD kinda short. ahem. before we even knew it, it was time to go home.

Bali is still as beautiful as i remembered it to be. although this time around, i got to see more of how the real Bali operates, and not just through the eyes of a bus-travelling tourist-guide-saddled tourist. we actually hired a car to go around along with the help of 2 trusty maps. and i must say we did a pretty good job even though we got lost about a million times.

stayed over at Legian Beach which is just next to Kuta. hotel room was ok. better than what i imagined it to be...what with Yihaur telling us how crap the room was and etc. damn it.

there's so much i want to write about...but yet again words fail me. i'll just post up pictures and write what i can remember.



The above was at Legian Beach and the moment i saw it it took my breath away. Not exaggerating. It was just so beautiful and the waves were terribly strong and huge. sweet. and the sun was just about setting and there were all these huge white fluffy clouds in the sky.. SWEET! oh and it was low tide. triple points!






Bintang beer is the homebrand...if i'm not mistaken. i've tasted quite a lot of beers and rate hoegaarden and corona being pretty much up there. BINTANG sits up there with them now. it's so good..like..really good. and it's cheap. at 10 000rp per bottle, that makes it about rm4.00. QUADRUPLE POINTS!

the two best places to live on earth? Langkawi and Bali. need i say more?




The next day, we headed off to yet another temple called Uluwatu, situated at the southwestern tip of the island. renowned for its sunset but we went there in the morning, hoping to catch the sunset at another spectacular temple called Tanah Lot. we failed miserably and therefore there was NO SUNSET. bad maps, sucky road signs and death-defying indonesian motorcyclists were some of the factors which culminated into our failure.




Look how cute Li Fu is.




The above was at this place called Puri Saren at Ubud. used to be the palace of the ruler of Ubud long long time ago. Very nice. visited it once with my parents. this time around most of the place was off limits to tourists. DAMN! but nevertheless still a very pretty place.



While we were in Bali our only meals were authentic Balinese food. and by authentic, i mean road side stalls. like...people pushing their carts along the road kinda stalls. throughout the whole trip, we've only had Bakso, which is like an Indonesian meatball dish...comes with a gigantic meatball, a few smaller sized meatballs, some tofu stuffed with meat, sliced cabbage and bits of noodles. very nice. then we had this thing called Babi Guling which i personally found horrible. it's rice with bits of roasted pork, fried pork intestines, fried pork stomach, fried pork lungs...you get the drift. and apparently it's the bomb in bali (no pun intended)...oh well..at least some people liked it.



On our last day in the hotel room. We look real jolly but actually we were devastated. someone suggested we turn into illegal immigrants and start a bakso stall.



Went over to Kuta Beach for some last moments of camwhoring. Kuta is the famous beach. it is THE beach. but Legian's better. honest.




Sadness. do i want to come home? No. do i want to be Balinese? Yes.



Go Team Bintang!

ps. someone got quite drunk..hohoho...but it wasn't meeee! no prizes for correct guesses.

You know you're just digging your own grave right?
No i'm NOT!

Honest la..i'm not.

I am NOT emo.

even though i may be the emo banana thieving devilish devious tortoise. to which i refute all except the devious part. because everyone DESERVES to be devious. or else the world will be a much sterile and boring place.

1.46 am.

I've always had this love-hate relationship with Sydney. And at the best of times, it would STILL be more hate than love. After spending 2 consecutive years there, I've still not been able to make myself love that place so much as to want to uproot myself, apply for a PR, get a permanent job and spend the rest of my years dealing in AUD.

2 years down the road and i still want to come home.

I ask myself all the time, Why this blatant dislike for Sydney? I mean, it's cool. It has the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. Very pretty structures; architecture-enthusiasts would definitely appreciate it. Then there are million and one pubs all over the city...all over EVERYWHERE! Alcohol is so accessible there and no one discriminates against you or forms some sort of judgement if they see you holding a pint of Toohey's Extra Dry even if it IS 3.35 pm. And let's not forget about the whole white-man atmosphere. I'm in WhiteMan-Land...I'm guessing that plenty of asians would love to have an opportunity as i have.

But it is for all these reasons that i hate being in Sydney sometimes. the whole big-city vibe. everyone rushing everywhere. people with stoned faces walking down George or Pitt Streets. drunks who stumble onto buses and sit beside you. homeless people who lie about on walkways with their sob-stories written on pieces of cardboard. the girl who comes up to you with a Hare Krishna Foundation bucket appealing for donations every damned day.

All this with a backdrop of the amazing light-and-sound show that is Sydney with it's tall sky scrapers and metal-and-glass buildings. high-society. sophistication. glamour.

Everytime i find myself in the city, especially, i just feel as though i'm being sucked into this giant vacuum of buses and trains and urgency. where no one cares. it's like staring at a giant multi-faceted crystal ball and having dust on your finger as you trace it across the surface. it looks perfect but it's not.

But then when i leave the city and travel down country roads where trees line the sides..Or when i'm taking the train up to the Blue Mountains..Or when i see amazingly beautiful flowers blooming in suburban gardens when i'm out for a jog..i realise why i'm still sane enough to remain in this place and not have gone crying and screaming back to my parents, demanding for a one-way ticket back to KL. i've realised that when you strip Sydney of its tall towers and quaint over-priced cafes, and model-ish looking people with gigantic sunnies...what you get is a really pretty country.

The views are amazing. the scenery is spectacular. driving from Orange to Canowindra where all you can see is flat pastoral land dotted with flowers and the occasional herd of cows/sheep or horses and the blue blue sky overhead with not a single cloud...all this with the windows wound down and DeathCab playing...it's like a dream. if ever i'm gonna consider staying in Sydney for ever, these factors will be on the 'Pro' column.

I'm such a stickler for nature. sigh. my mom thinks i've got my priorities twisted up.

The truth is..i've only got myself about a month's time before i'm shuttled back to Sydney. and it's making me really sad now because as always, time passes so damn fast. and i'm even more sad because my parents don't want me coming home at the end of this year...they want me to stay put in sydney and WORK. sigh. the injustice. so right now i'm stuck with this mentality that every bowl of pan mee i eat, every vist i take to seremban or klang, every sunday church service i sit through..may potentially be my last one..for at least quite a long while.

it's very morbid and depressing you know.

And to make things worse..my parents don't want me coming back to Malaysia...because they think that this country holds no future for me. which saddens me a lot too because this is my HOME and if i do not come HOME where do i go to? i'd love to be able to come back to KL to work...but because of colour issues etc my parents think i should just stay put in Sydney. in fact, that's the general consensus from all the aunties and uncles that i meet. but if talent keep abandoning Malaysia for 'brighter prospects', this country will become 'extinct'..sooner than later. Dilemma now. garhgarghawfbaefeuAFLAogfnaeutasefnwoet.

I just want to be able to come home.

whoa long ramble. need sleep. bye.

I know i said a billion times that i most positively do NOT!
But i'm beginning to think now that i DO! i still DO! i STILL do!!

This is so typical of me. sigh.
Hopeless romantic...here we go again.

why la mel..why? didn't the past year teach you ANYTHING? why la do you refuse to learn from your mistakes? you must like the taste of disappointment very much. strange. you so strange.

but then..the calls. the talks. i think i'm going crazy.

i think...i shall move to Greenland. or Canberra. yes.

Aesop's Fable.

I was hanging out with my mom, her friend AND her friend's mom today in Putrajaya. We were having teh tarik halia at the food court over looking the lake. We were seated beside the big glass walls and from where i was, i could look outside. There was this table just over the barrier of glass and there was an Indian man eating what looks like chicken rice. When he was done, he left.

His plate was still on the table but there were bits of rice left. Suddenly one brown sparrow flew down and on to his plate and started pecking at the bits of rice. Eventually it flew off. However more sparrows started swooping in and the last i counted before i lost interest was 6 sparrows on the plate at a single time.

What i really wanted to say was that the sparrows reminded me of something that happened when i was in Standard 4. We were moving into a new class and there was a new cupboard and one day we opened that new cupboard and lo and behold there was a nest of baby sparrows in it!

My friend took out one of the baby sparrows and we let the others go free. Then all the little kids including me huddled around him and we christened the baby sparrow..but i can't remember what the name was. Anyway, he took the baby sparrow back.

The next day when school started everyone was damn excited and we asked him how the sparrow was and he said it had a fever so he gave it a cold bath to cool it down. The next day we asked him again on the state of the baby sparrow and he said it still had it's fever and so he gave it more baths. Then we were concerned that it wasn't eating so we started digging around for worms for him to take back.

This went on for about a week until one day he walks in and tells us that the baby sparrow is dead. Apparently baby sparrows aren't meant to take so many baths in the span of one week.

What we may think is good and right may not necessarily be good or right at all. Sometimes, it can prove to be fatal.

And it's true...the people who love you most are the ones who'll stab you where it really hurts.

Yet another.

Also for the benefit of She Who Is In Hawaii:



By the time i got to the party, they had already finished with the contents of the steamboat, the birthday song had already been sung and the cake cut...actually, there was just one slice left which was cut in 2 (the other half was for Poh Leng who came even later). the drinks were half-gone too and the huge decanter of wine was already half-empty. needless to say, i entered into a rather happy, warm and flushed company.

okok..make that...a couple of happy, warm and flushed guys.

AND..i did not drink.

Then i saw one half of the Tans. he was commenting on the state of cleanliness of some of his clients' rooms since he is now the unofficial Internet Guy and how he thinks me and abby are brats because our mothers sent us to school while he and his brother had to take the Sum Bus from Country Heights to school everyday. 50 cents.

And then Pui Yan got quite sad because she was no longer the only 21-year-old in our group now that Chin and spouse are officially 21 as well. so here i was trying to cheer her up. i think i did a great job.

So to end it all...yet another birthday wish!

Happy 21st Birthday Chin Chee Loong aka Tai Lou!

En Memoria.

If ever i'm gonna die, it will be from bronchitis or some other form of bronchial infection. You know...days of uncontrollable coughing, heaving and hacking followed by chest pains and a feeling of out-of-breath concluded by a sense of light-headedness.

Like now, for instance.

ugh..i've been sick since the New Year...literally from the start of 2007 and IT SUCKS! the most ironic thing is that i highly suspect the culprit to be that jug of long island. it tipped over the whole delicate ecosystem i have going on in me and aggravated my cough a million fold.

sigh...i guess it's befitting, in a most ironic way.

Melanie Ho Jia Ling
1986-2007
Beloved daughter and friend,
Killed by that she loved best.

Bastard of a drink.

What your mother never told you.

I'm sure when all of us were kids, our parents would have told us stories...in hopes of moulding us into right-and-true pillars for a society into which we would one day be a part of.

Oh, you know, stories like...

'Girl, you should never run around with scissors or you'll trip, stab yourself in the heart and die.'

Or maybe,

'Boy, you should finish all the rice on your plate..or else your wife will have as many pimples as the grains of rice you've wasted...then you'll be so heartbroken you'll die.'

Or how about,

'Eh girl, stop jumping around after your dinner or else the rice will jump out of your stomach...you'll get appendicitis and die.'

But of course, there's the classic one..

'Boy, don't swallow the watermelon seeds or you'll grow watermelons from the top of your head and DIE!'

But i'm sure..oh-so-sure that your parents forgot to tell you this one most important story! Never EVER keep soft toys in your car because they will come to life and do some Wong-Fei-Hong-esque flying kick at you while you're driving AND I SWEAR TO GOD YOU.WILL.DIE!

Characters to watch out for: Tarepanda and Hello Kitty-male version.



Although you can't really tell from her expressions because all you can see is her curly hair, but let me assure you that the scene in-situ was pretty horrific. That Tarepanda...he's one mean dude who never gives up.



Poor Poh Leng, she had to learn it the hard way. R.I.P.

The first 21st.

This is for the benefit of The One who is currently residing in Hawaii.

See...you never think it's real until it happens to you. What was once a conspiracy thought to have been cooked up by the Greater Beings is actually just a simple biological process: Getting Old. And when i say Getting Old..i mean..HoleyShots-Turning-21-Oh-Great-Balls-of-Fire kinda Getting Old. When you've gotta shop for the perfect 21st birthday present; running out of brainjuice thinking what to buy, what would be most meaningful, to make or not to make...well..it just hits you.

It's one small step for Father Time and one big leap into the eternal chasm of wrinkles, short term memory loss, saggy skin, menopause and thinning hair for you. sigh.

So kudos to Lam Pui Yan, who turns 21 today...although that cheat celebrated her 21st on the 1st of January...damn wei..it's like..she can't wait to get old or something..pfft.

Yet again..visual aid:




You know that myth where your parents hand you this symbolic key on your 21st birthday for you to wear around your neck? To symbolise that you're an adult now and that you've got freedom? It's a LIE. There is NEVER freedom from parents.

oh..we were staring at her 'key'.

Here's another interesting fact: All the girls in the collage are single. oh wait..except the birthday girl. And the one in green on the right in the lower left hand corner; her current status is still unclear. But the rest are. So any single and good-looking guys out there, don't be shy. Drop us a line when you're in Kajang, ok?

Ironically though, if i ever had a son, i'll tell him to stay away from Kajang girls.


So there you have it, you Hawaiian..no one's really changed much.

And to Lam Pui Yan..HAPPY 21st BIRTHDAY!!

and and...to the masses..i'm sorry..i know the earthquake in Taiwan has caused mass chaos on the internet scene what with slow connection rates and all. and here i am posting pictures. sigh. i can only tell you that this is not the end.

Delayed.

This is 3 days too late...what was meant to be a pre-2007 reminiscing session has turned into yet another ordinary post.

I'm not one to make resolutions for the new year because i honestly think it's a waste of time and my stats (from reliable sources and also personal observation) claims that only 17% of all resolutions made during the new year is actually accomplished.

However, to prove that i wasn't a cynic, i joined into the whole revelry of making new year resolutions last year..albeit with a little help from a good friend called Absolut Citron and her merry band of 4 shot glasses. amid the clinking of glasses and good-natured laughter i vaguely remember that i shall resolve to be thinner, more out-going, more patient with my parents, get myself a boyfriend and to forget him/you.

Upon hindsight, i have realised that i've accomplished neither. i have not lost any weight, i am still rather shy (it's TRUEEEE!!), yelling matches still ensue once a while, i am still single AND i still think of him/you.

Not one to conform with majority, but i belong in the other 83% of all evaluated members of society. DAMN!

Therefore, i've resolved (pun intended) that there shall be NO MORE resolutions. all i can say is that from now on, i shall not repeat the mistakes i made last year.

2006 held laughter and tears, loneliness and complete warmth, times where i did extremely well and times where i just totally screwed up, i drank, i smoked (it was a one-off, mind you), i suffered temporary amnesia, times when i just wanted to scream and run away, times when i couldn't believe how lucky i am, and moments where i just sat there stoning about him/you. but i came through all these with great friends beside me. so for this, i thank you. no more mistakes, now.

just a recap on how the year went: visual aid! in no particular order or ranking of preference (bwahaha)












Chris Walla! DCFC is God. ok no. that's blasphemous. DCFC is second to God.

So there you have it..a little slice of how my 2006 went. may 2007 be as interesting as 2006 was.

p.s. okok..i DID make a resolution at 5.45 am in Nikki's house, with a glass of Mandarin&Sunkist in hand. i've resolved to not be the mindfuck-ee from this year hence. if there's gonna be any mindfucking...it's gonna be ME doing it! i'm gonna be the mindfuck-er this time around. DAMNIT! i will NOT be mindfucked! no MORE! i shall mindfuck from now on!

ahh.

felt good.

and..damn it. can i please try to follow my head a little less from now on? go with the heart. don't be so realistic, damnit.

cX...let's go catch a movie.