Sugarbelle from The Sweet Adventures of Sugar Belle is such an inspiration!  She has this trademark way of decorating her cookies where she floods the design and outlines it with a harder icing consistency once the first layer is totally dried. I thought I’d give it a try.

With the aid of the holiday cookie cutters from my big box of Wilton cookie cutters, I came up with these:

Who knew making these cookies would take so many days!!

I prepared the batter on Tuesday night and it was already midnight when I was done, not possible for me to cut out the cookies and start baking!

Wednesday was cookie baking night and Thursday was decorating night (after the cookies have cooled). I used royal icing to decorate my cookies and managed to not get it too sickeningly sweet by adding two tablespoonfuls of lemon juice. For my royal icing, I used meringue powder instead of egg whites as it is just gross since the icing doesn’t actually get cooked so meringue powder works just as well!

So here comes the exciting part!! Decorating! I planned ahead what designs I wanted to use so out came the ipad and Sketchpro!

A rough sketch!

Santa! The peachy orange was quite a challenge to make.

Time for the greens.

Couldn’t be bothered to make the holly at the corner of the stocking as per the sketching.

Green icing for the wreath.

After completing all designs which required green, red and white.

With my ipad as guidance.

One teddy in the making!

The final product!

Close up of each and every design:

Mr. Gingerbread Man… with bit of the eye lost.

The Low Profile Snowman. (with tipped hat)

Christmas wreath…abit cacat.

Santa Blue Eyes.

Mrs. Gingerbread in a Santarina Outfit.

One of the more successful looking cookie…the christmas tree!

The stocking!

Cacat Candycane!

Another cacat  ornament.

Supposed to be a snowflake. *hides face* Now it’s a whimsical star.

Christmas Bell.. looked better in the sketching.

Teddy Christmas

The whole family of cookies! <3
I packed each and everyone of it into individual plastic bags and used my hair straightening iron to seal the bags. I strung a string around each bag and made them into ornaments for our christmas tree!

Voila!!

I can’t stop staring at the cookies whenever I pass by the tree.

Merry Christmas everyone!!! Hope you guys had delicious treats this holiday too!

Random christmas deco in Singapore! As always, so gorgeous!

The crowd that thronged outside Abercrombie and Fitch where the sensational male models were posing for photographs!

I’ve been seeing them all over Facebook and no way in hell can I be so close to Singapore and not pop in to cop a feel, have a look.

You would think that it is super hard to get up close to take photos with the models but there’s actually a wall of very shy girls who somehow managed to get to the front of the line but were quite shy to finish the deed and go.

See! They were waiting! And they were also beckoning girls to come join them! And they made sure to remind you to come for the opening whenever you strike up a conversation.

Whee!! So many grouped together for us!!

This guy was going around taking topless pics with the models too..hahaha Okay lah, boleh lah I see some pectoral outlines there.

LOL Chee Kiang sent this to one of our gay buddies on whatsapp with the caption, “Merry Christmas!”. Hope our friend managed to find time to go check out the boys before their stint is over.

Hahahaha.. this guy so cute and shy. Aww.

Eng Hooi and I went around handpicking our favourites..hahaha!!

In most photos all over the internet, he has a smoldering look going on but mannn.. he has such a nice and genuine smile!!

In this photo, Weng Lum commented that I had very polite hands and that they should have travelled elsewhere. LOL!! Don’t want the guys to be disgusted and sue me for sexual harrassment!

And finally a picture with our lovely boys who encouraged us to catch the A&F boys before it is too late. We have such awesome boyfriends who will actually say things like, “Eh better faster, you want to go see your Abercrombie and Fitch models right? Let’s go! Let’s go!” and played cameramen while we oggled.

Chee Kiang presents to you another addition to the already awesome streets of Singapore’s shopping heaven.

Despite going to Orchard many many times now, I still stumble about, not knowing which underground walkways lead to where, which escalator goes to which shopping mall…anyway long story short, suddenly I was in front of a super cute milkshake shop! I think it was at ION?

Choose your size! <3 (actually I love the colours in this pic hence the pic)

Rule of thumb: Whatever that has peanuts and cream probably tastes damn awesome. This one is called Nutty Peanut Butler!

And Chee Kiang had one called Powderful Milonosaurus! So cute right!! Confirm the name came from Milo dinosaur that most of your mamaks carry.

Previous weekend Daryl+Kim came down and we hung out with Joanne (Daryl’s Sis) and hubby Ser Hon.. and this week another part of the gang came down, Justin+Charlotte. So it’s like a non-stop december weekend thing! Should have brought my camera out last weekend as we went to a whole lot of awesome restaurants!

More of the Sg Christmas deco. I want to see more but we always seem to be rushing to somewhere whenever we are in Orchard. :\ Maybe I’ll pop by one evening to just walk walk and photograph, photograph!

Even the display windows are so gorgeous.

Sigh.

Love this display window too.

All the roads were decked out in these blue lights so everything around you is illuminated in blue. Very avatar.

Every morning I wake up to shocking (but delightful) news that who and who just got engaged, accompanied by a few hundred likes and an entire page of comments. Months later the pre wedding shoots would follow, resulting in another torrent of likes and comments. Somehow the prewedding photographs make it that little bit more official.

I realized that a lot of those who are getting engaged/married are about around the 1989-1985 age group. Somehow the 1984 are only starting to get married now, them being about 27 seems just about right. A friend echoed my sentiments recently and he, being born in 1984, noticed the trend too.
He also said that those who were born before 1984, seemed to get married at a more conventional age of 27-30.

Only a few years back, when wedding bells were heard, we would nudge each other knowingly, looking forward to a baby to play with soon. And most of the time, we were right.

But now, almost everyone in a relationship for more than two years are tying the knot!

It’s just funny how come those born on or after 1985 are choosing to get married earlier than those who were born before 1985. Another friend mentioned that it could be because those born after 1985 somehow wants to have it all at a young age. Impatient and impulsive. Do you think so?

I know a lot us in this age group need to get married for a variety of reasons. There is the dreaded government posting which a lot of people in the medical and education field have to work around, to secure a preferred state by getting hitched. Sometimes, this method doesn’t even work. Then I hear there are the more religious ones who are getting married because they want to stay together. *shifty eyes*

And then there are those like me, who have been in a really really long relationship. I know of many other couples like that, couples who have grown up with us, as a couple. Also not getting married anytime soon. We have plans, yes. But nothing official. Mainly because we have things to sort out like savings, an idea of where we really really want to be and how are we going to afford a nice wedding. How do people do it? Maybe most of those who are in long term relationships from high school/college are stuck in the mindset that we are still ‘young’. Thus continuously believing that it’s not the right time, we are not done with what what we need as individuals etc etc.

But high school sweethearts aside (most of those that I know who have been together as long as us, are still dating too. Nothing announced.), a lot of the people who are about our age are getting engaged and some have even had their weddings.

I don’t know.. it’s just a little mind boggling for me. Trying quite hard not to be influenced by peer pressure (I can admit it okay! I’m Jolene Lai. Not shy!) and constantly reminding ourselves that when we’re ready, we’re ready because we are. Not because everyone else is. Honestly, every single posting that I go to, the nurses there will ask me when am I getting married (once they found out that I’m living in sin). I openly tell people at work that I’m here in JB with my boyfriend and that we’re living together. For some, it’s a foreign concept, a sacrilege! But like being gay, society has to start accepting somehow that there are people doing things differently from their norm.

I know this way of life is pushing it but there were times when I wondered what if I ever get knocked up before tying the knot. Firstly dad will kill me. LOL. But that aside, we all know the direction we are heading to. We are everything but short of a document to be man and wife. Mum once said that if something like that was to happen, then we should fast fast plan for the wedding. I had the craziest idea though – I thought that it would be a good case study for society to observe how it is perfectly okay for an unmarried woman to go around being pregnant and take her own sweet time to plan the wedding and even fit in a slimming program to be svelte before the big day. It would also be so awesome to have the kid around.

Sure, relatives will probably be shocked and flock around to gossip about me. But if more people can do this, why not? It will slowly become normal. Like how shot gun marriages are so normal now. Nothing shocking about it.

Actually, at our age, shot gun marriage is also sort of a blessing because then you’ll have a date to work around instead of not knowing when you want to get hitched.

I know a lot of parents still shake their heads at the idea of their daughter getting knocked up before marriage.

In my opinion, there are only three bad knocked-up scenarios:

1) The kid is still schooling. High school, college or university. All bad. I think I can give some leeway to final year students at uni. Heh.
2) The husband to be is a wifebeater/womanizer/an unambitious sloth living on his future wife’s money
3) The father of the child is not your boyfriend
4) The father of the child doesn’t want to be your boyfriend anymore lol

So for people who are in long term, stable relationships, it is OKAY. I don’t know. Anybody want to pick a bone with me?

Sigh, think I digressed too far. Well. #justsaying.

Anyway, congratulations to all my friends who are getting married this year and next year!

Blogging is SUCH a chore, you know?!

But it’s good to be back to share sometimes.

So for those who have wondered where I have disappeared off to, I’m currently in my second year of my compulsory service with the government. When my FYDOship ended, I was supposed to report for duty at Batu Pahat!! After many tearful phone calls to the headquarters and a very fortunate switch with a colleague in JB, I’m still in JB, living with Chee Kiang who is still working in Singapore.

We’ve been doing this for over 7 months now and living together has been amazing. We cook almost every week night, sometimes I dump him here and drive home to Subang Shah Alam myself. Yeah, my family has moved away from Subang too. It still hurts when I think about my childhood house in SS18.  Going into Singapore whenever friends want to meet up, exploring JB together, watching downloaded movies together on our landlord’s flatscreen and sleeping in the living room every single night because the entire apartment is literally our bedroom.

Oh! I’ve started baking and cooking more too!

Butter cookies fresh from the oven! I wanted to decorate it with royal icing but the icing i made was way too sweet and runny, so I gave up. I’ll need to head out to buy lemons and meringue powder to try again. Don’t think I’ll use raw egg whites again as it is not hygienic. And I have no idea where I can get pasteurized egg whites.

Spinach pan mee with the necessary yums

Tried roasting a chicken. Tasted okay, couldn’t get it to be a dark crispy brown.

Herbal chicken, not too bad!

And my favourite and my best dish (ahem), chicken+broccoli+carrots+french beans dimsum style. <3

I think I drifted off again.

Yes, so throughout university I knew that I had to, needed to, MUST end up in Johor in order to put an end to the nonsense that was a long distance relationship. I was sent to Kluang first when I first entered the workforce and after making it through 6 months, I am finally in JB. When my first year training ended, I managed to secure myself to be permanently based in JB.

It’s all going to plan, isn’t it?

But deep down in my heart, I wanted.. or thought that it was to be this way: That the both of us complete our respective three years with the government and move back home to finally start our lives somewhere permanent.

But it’s not fair to uproot him from Singapore when he has put in so much effort building up his career here. Not only that, if I go back, I will have to start networking all over again. It’s okay if we start off immediately after the end of our compulsory service because we are still relatively young then and can slug it out. But I’m afraid that won’t be the case and we’ll probably have more…well, changes in our lives if we wait it out a few years and head back in our very late 20s or early 30s.

I do want to open my clinic one day and I want to open it somewhere where I will grow old.

I am confused about plans to work in Johor, KL or Singapore.

The reason why I want to go home is so that my children can grow up around their grandparents and I can be there for my family. It’s just horrible to have to grow up and old without your parents around. But most people don’t have a choice because of their careers and I am afraid that we might just be one of those people.

For an AIMST graduate, it might be a little tricky because the degree is not listed in the list that the Singapore Dental Council has come up with. Most of the Malaysian public dental schools aren’t even on the list too. We have to sit for an exam which, IF you can qualify for it with the suitable requirements, has a waiting list of 2 years. I hear that it’s the final paper for the Year 5 NUS students. I will of course try for it if I have the chance to. I would need to study really really really hard for it and cross all possible fingers and toes.

Singapore would be nice. But I really need some guidance if Johor is just as good, if not better. Or even better than KL for that matter, which I hear is pretty saturated now.

It gives me hope that there is so much development going on in the city and there is a buzz of excitement about the endless possibilities. Healthcare facilities, residential areas, educational institutions (though I’ll probably still send my kids to a government school to let them see the real Malaysia and save the money for their overseas education) etc.

The whole Johor-Singapore thing works very well for us now. I know a big chunk of Johor roads now, made a horde of new friends from work and more contacts from helping out with the southern zone’s dental association….

I just hope that it is the right choice to be based here.

To get us accustomed to the dos and don’ts of being on-call, we tag-call with a senior who will show us the ropes. I am very lucky because both my seniors were very patient and even let me have a go at doing some simple lacerated wounds. But I get tensed up easily and when we’re on-call, we’re expected to be doing these procedures at the bed side which means no comfy dental chair to work on and good posture just flies out the window. Just last night I was suturing a laceration wound and because the lighting was bad, the bed was so low I had to bend almost 90 degrees to finish up my work and each time I tried to stand up, it was almost impossible. You know like when you’ve done one too many sit-ups you just can’t do another one? Yeah imagine it in the reverse. I found it so hard to straighten back-up. There was a puddle of my sweat on the floor next to the patient’s bed. I’ll need those sweatbands for my next round of calls. Even in the clinics I can sweat a river during particularly difficult extractions.

My first trip to the red zone was quite an eye opener. We were supposed to tend to some wounds on a trauma patient’s chin area but we had to stand aside as the medical team was trying to resuscitate her. That was particularly scary especially seeing how it is done. My senior said that would take awhile so we went home first. And for the whole evening my senior did not call me….which means that the patient didn’t make it.

I’m babbling so much because what I am trying to say is that I have been busy hence the neglect here.

SO ANYWAY. I was in Manchester back in July for Mervyn’s graduation! And I think this is the first time photos from my Olympus E-PL2 are posted here.

Just trying to be artsy-fartsy with this round of photos.

Even though it was summer, the weather was still too cold for me!

A starbucks cafe, like it’s not a big deal there.

Palace Hotel was just opposite our hotel!

Oxford Road was also just behind our hotel!

The road that we were staying on was Oxford Road which was just a straight road down to Mervyn’s uni.

In Manchester, everywhere is within walking distance.

A rustic old street sign on a brick wall. <3

Why not!! (

Dad’s best impression of an old monkey.

Chinese visiting Chinatown.

Mervyn showed us the particularly dodgy establishments around the area. Somehow, Chinatown everywhere is associated with dodginess.

it looks as if this poor pigeon got shot. (

We arrived very early on Sunday morning and were just in time to see the remnants of Saturday night’s mayhem. We went before the riots took place so this is just a normal weekend in the UK.

The shopping heaven that is Market Street!

Mother and Son oohing and aahing.

Overlooking some pub area.

That shop on the lower left right hand corner is Jigsaw which was the company that Kate Middleton used to work at!

The wheel of Manchester!

This looks like a mini Picadilly Circus right here!

Balloons bobbing along a river near Manchester’s gay district.

It’s like a party road!

With pretty pink doors. <3

Gay Sparkle!! The sparkle fonts are made from super glittery cardboards which totally had me staring at it for a good 10 minutes or so, with my mouth wide open in wonder.

Don’t know what it means..

More of the streets along Manchester.

There are random space invaders all over the city. Mervyn mentioned to me that it is done by a group of artists where they try to incorporate space invaders at the strangest of places. Here a link to see where else that one can find them space invaders.

Under an overhead bridge.

Some random graffiti..

That’s part of Mervyn’s uni and that’s dad crossing the road. Why did the father cross the road?

Another view of the old campus.

Cute surfaces at Costa Coffee!

Archie’s!! I didn’t get a good picture of the snack bar but it’s basically trying to be like Pop Tate’s Choc’lit Shoppe in Archie Comics and this is their delivery car.

Manchester at dusk.

The tram tracks at night – so beautifully illuminated.

I love walking around manchester at night because it’s just so damn cold! Something I don’t get to do often and always want to do more of whenever I’m in a cold country.

Mervyn brought us to a pub on our first night there.

Having a pint like the locals.

A fruit stall down the road from our hotel.

Old architecture + bluest of skies = <3

this looks like an old theatre! It’s a building near my brother’s apartment.

Mervyn walking home.

Potholes, just like back home!

Love sticking my camera into the grass and going trigger happy.

This is when I switched to my telelens!

Mum and the superbokeh at the back.

Oh puffy dandelions, how I miss thee!

And lavenders! I can’t get enough of it!!

That’s Mervyn’s common kitchen which he share with his other flatmates.

Found this on the window of a laundromat that we wanted to go to. Thank god we came too late.

Ya I know I’m one lousy tourist – this is obviously a historical monument but I don’t even know its name.

Artsy shot of the historical monument.

Dad and his trademark eye roll.

There was a pub next to the historical monument that serves Monday lunch at 505 off! I think all four of us ate like £20 in total. For such a filling meal too!

I don’t know la hah I’m not that good at describing my meals. But I do have moments when I want to grow up to be a food blogger.

Mashy tomato on something green and something yellow. Cheese maybe? Who knows. It tasted goood!

Thin crusts pizza are ALWAYS THE BOMB.

Everywhere you go in England you’ll definitely have chips.

A rustic pub somewhere in town.

Balls around town.

My fit brother!

Dad’s my dad.

Mervyn introduced an Indian restaurant to us called Zouk, which is off Oxford Road.

Cute decors!

basically it’s a little middle eastern mixed with indian cuisine. So here is something grilled.

And you have the sour salad!

Grainy rice!

Curry something

Curry something else?

Another curry dish!

Piccadilly Gardens!

I love it how the streets are always bursting with colours and personalities doing all sorts of things!

For one of the dinners, Mervyn had a pint of pie. Sounds nauseating right? So much pie!

Dad and I had pork ribs!

Man eating pork.

MUm had…I think a fish dish.

The fish dish.

Aku tengah konpius nih!

Oh so good…….

Saw a sticker on the side of a bus stop.

More of the sights we took in during one of our long evening walks in the cold.

Trainers are on because I’m still wary of the cold weather.

A river that my brother walks along almost every other day.

So romantic right?

A bridge across the river.

Their judgemental stares..:P It was meant to hurry us along.

My brother holds his gaze.

Look what I found!

This is Mervyn on his graduation day.

Been quite  awhile since I last camwhored. Still got it I see.

My brother, the law graduate, who still has to slave for 1 year and 9 months before he is a full fledged lawyer!

Mervyn and some of his coursemates.

Awww… mum doing something she always does.

Thought I’d help out by capturing Mervyn’s final moments with his friends.

The hall where the commencement ceremony took place.

Paparazzis with so much love in their hearts.

Hahahahha! I love this shot of my brother. He looks utterly ecstatic.

One of our few family photos. Thanks William!

And of all people that I bumped into in the UK.. Li-Lynn!! My kindergarten classmate!!

Love love love this shot of the mortarboards in the air.

I do think my skills are improving..hehe.

One of our nicest family photos.

Mervyn and more of his buddies.

Mum insisted on getting him a graduation bear.

Love this shot of dad and mum!

To all my fellow dentists, you know what i mean. “Ambil coupland.”

Mervyn says goodbye to his beloved uni.

And I happily camwhore away.

I feel this photo would make a good poster for the play “How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying”.

For his graduation celebratory dinner, we had it at a fancy restaurant called San Carlo!

Apparently plenty of celebrities have been there before.

So fancy.

But super cramped too.

Me amidst the clutter of glasses and plates.

Another beautiful walk back to our hotel in the cold summer night.

This bar is called Taps I think! Very amusing because the alcohol is literally served from the tap!

No idea what St. George’s House is but I know it looks quite nice.

Another pub behind our hotel.

The next morning, we were lucky enough to spot the Red Bull entourage!

Over at Picadilly Gardens, a flock of pigeons wait for the next jet of water from the fountain for their bath time.

Always in awe of these street performers!

Saw this on a wall in a music store.

So big!!

This is one old building. I was taking this photo from a Subway sandwich shop. How times have changed eh?

On our last day, we went to Lake District! It is apparently the largest lake in the UK and it rains all the time there.

Why did the swan cross the road?

The swan is so cute!

*gulp*

No  I didn’t eat the swan.. I had something else. Fish and chips!

Dad and Mevyn enjoying their meals too.

Awww..he wants some! He really likes chips.

A seagull floats aimlessly.

Saw his friend kot.

We rented a boat which we could drive out on our own to the middle of nowhere.

Mervyn and I making the “Mmmm sweet lemonade” face. Can anyone guess where that face is from?

Mum at the wheels.

Spotted a fellow sailor in the distance. We waved.

Found a wall with a heart spray painted on! <3

My FB profile pic which has received so damn many likes!

Mervyn has a go with the heart on the wall.

Heart balloon!

I like this one.

I think this looks like something right out of a movie.

Some pretty pipes along the sides of a house.

So old fashioned! Would be even cooler if they had milk bottles!

Not quite the believer.

Pretty chalk written menu!

Chocolates!

So cute right?!

I had to climb this little hill to get to the blue flowers.

The blue flowers!!

It’s like they reach right up to the heavens!

Me and the blue blue flowers.

My favourite shade of blue.

More of the boats bobbing along Lake District.

A judgmental crow.

And I end this long overdue post with a pretty duck.

I cried when I had to let go of an interview in The Star back in 2005, like it was the most important thing to do in my blogging career. ( that article did propel four bloggers who went on to enjoy phenomenal success with their blogs) but I really don’t feel anything about it now.

I was envious of peers who had higher readership and tried hard to get there but would fail and feel hurt when opportunities would come for them and not for me.

I was a lot of stupid things.

I really don’t care about all that now. I don’t even get advertorials anymore and continue to turn down the odd clueless company pr people who just don’t do their research on obviously retired bloggers. How can a blogger give you any publicity if she only posts once or twice a month?

Now all I think about is if I should further my studies, charting my career path, if I should open my own clinic, if so, how many can I have, where will the money come from, how do I manage my finance, what establishments can I join in the future, expanding the sticker monster, if I should buy an oven so I can finally cook in all possible ways and maybe pick up baking…so many things!

All I am saying is that there was a period of time where I let it all out because i thought that’s who i am and i enjoyed doing it and now I’m over it. In a way I have become less in tune with my blogger self so when shit happens I get more upset easily than I used to be.

While my father’s worries for me were of people trying to defame me by digging up dirt from my blog when I run for prime minister or something, my concerns are for the asshole public’s lack of tack and humanity to take things from my blog and dissect it in forums where anonymous bastards only has physical opinions to give about anything female being posted there.

My friend and junior from uni, Tee Luun, alerted me on facebook about a post in lowyat. While slightly hurtful, it was just a replica of what happened in the past.

Last time, there was a post on lowyat about the blogger girls used in an advertorial for maxis broadband. A few of us were invited on a girls’ day out and were loan a netbook each. So naturally we had to blog about it and there were photographs of us on our respective blogs, newspapers and magazines. No prizes for guessing who stuck out like a sore thumb among our crop of petite and slender popular girl bloggers. So yeah, flamed on the forums for being big sized and ugly, I was hurt. Before I opened the link to that forum, I was already expecting that i would get such treatment.

Then it became the past.

Sometime before I graduated, my post on creating double eyelids (which I have privatized ever since) was taken and the people on that forum were horrified by the ugliness of it all, cursing while they were at it. That post has been freaked-out-about on some foreign blogs and forums, usually about how Asian girls can’t deal with the fact that they have slitty eyes..but the treatment it received from that particular local forum (can’t remember the address..kopitiam something) pretty much took the cake. The comments were so mean and humiliating. I felt embarrassed because I was about to come out into the working world and I felt like I had no dignity when put in that kind of light so I asked the moderator to remove the post, explaining my situation and he was kind enough to do it. I privatized that particular post because I didn’t like the attention it received.

That too became the past.

It’s not easy to continue feeling neutral about myself when time and time again random douchebags keep reminding me about it. I know I am not ugly to the point where people recoil in horror when they see me out in the streets but perhaps compared to the usual hot chics they prefer to see fleeting across their computer screens, they are left with a bad taste in their mouth when someone like me, not a porn star, nor a typical doe eyed sexy beauty, suddenly appearing on their LCD screens, surely it’s a stark contrast! So…this always always happens. So sien.

What happened today was mild, just a post referring to my height and if I am tall (because I claim to be, standing at 169cm) but of course you got the trolls who will always always always always relate everything to my face. The photos they used were recent too, photos from Kluang and I’m not going to be one of those who privatize my whole blog.

Link: http://forum.lowyat.net/topic/1935892

It’s either I keep going or I just delete it.

If I keep going, who knows what else will be misconstrued, twisted into something unflattering on the forums?

If I delete it, I lose years of memories, years of interactions and a record of every single bit of emotion I have felt in my late teens to early adulthood.

But sometimes it is easier to just press delete and not have to worry about trolls anymore. Is it worth it to be brave about it?

Can anybody explain to me why trolls do what they do?

What do they derive from it?

Is there some satisfaction from humiliating people and all? I mean yea you might cringe when you see someone making a fool of themselves on YouTube, but why comment at all with hurtful words? (no I don’t have embarrassing YouTube videos, I’m just saying.)

Can my future employers understand that I’m just someone normal who enjoys a good laugh without showing her panties to the world or popping out a boob or doing drugs (complete with photos) or even murdering animals or defaming the name of my current workplace(with photos too!) who just so happen to be unfortunate enough to be the subject of a few trolls along the way who have no qualms about making a fool of me with what I was born with (or what I ate over the years)?

I just want to keep this space on the net without worrying too much and feeling so much, please?

Thanks to an awesome app called Kobo, i managed to get my hands on a copy of the ebook. Seriously, if you have exhausted ‘all ways’ to get an eBook, give Kobo a try! (while I’m at it, an awesome android app I have on my samsung galaxy is Magic Hour!! It is prettier than Instagram and with more filters for your pictures than you can imagine! And super fast too with adorable graphics!)

So..anyway..I’m at the part where Michael is waiting in agony for a callback from the Starbucks store manager after his interview.

It reminded me of my agony filled afternoons at the end of the 2002 school year when almost the entire bunch of form four students at my school, SMK Subang Utama, went out in full force to apply for part time jobs at Sunway Pyramid.

While studying for our form four finals, most of us already had a list as to where we were interested in working at for the school holidays. I knew I would die of boredom if I worked at a clothes store..so my list had things like shampoo girl at a cut above, pet store assistant, swensens waitress, baskin robbin ice cream girl, tgv ticket girl, Nail Artz manicurist (the job I eventually got), Starbucks or coffee bean Batista…but it had to be somewhere swanky with all my friends, like at a mall so we could all be together!

An office job was too boring but those paid the most, in the eyes of a rm30 per week pocket money collecting high school kid. But nah, still too boring.

Those days the average wage per hour was RM4 and if you were lucky, you’d get a RM5.50 per hour job! I was underpaid because I was below the legal age to work, was only 15 at that time slogging away for RM3.50…or was it RM3? I remember I couldn’t even bring myself to have McDonalds for lunch because that was a luxury in itself. (it still is a pricey snack now!)

I remember applying to all those places that I wanted and only a handful called back because places like Coffee Bean and Starbucks sent their Baristas for training and most of us could only afford to work with them for 6-7 weeks!

In the end, I was called for an interview with Kimberley (the now defunct accessories store on the highest floor) and Nail Artz, which is also long gone.

I accepted the job at Nail Artz because of my so called passion in nail arts. I was told that I had to do plenty of manual labour like scrubbing customers’ feet, pouring the water from the pedicure machine into a big tub, and wheeling that big tub of water filled with dead skin and grime to the toilet the next morning, sweep, mop, polish the glass cabinets, take out each nail polish bottle and wiping it down, bringing tea to the customers and on top of it all, greeting customers.

My dad was at first horrified about the prospect of me having to mop and sweep (he didn’t know about the scrubbing feet part) when I didn’t even have to do any of that in my own home. (mind you, come uni and working life, I have been sweeping and mopping my own floors, thank you very much!) but in the end I got my way and went on to earn a huge fortune of RM900 for my entire stint at Nail Artz. One of the first things I did with the money was to modify my phone lighting..haha. Instead of the conventional greenish yellow led lights in a Nokia 3310, I had purple and white lights installed! So cool man.

But the joy of being accepted to work was such an awesome feeling! I felt so adult!

By the middle of November most of us had secured our part time jobs.

Amanda worked at Miss Selfridge and I would be able to see her sweeping the floor at the entrance of the store from my booth at the floor above. We’d wave excitedly at each other whenever we could!

Nigel and Yijin were both working at a Nike store, having a good time buying cheaper branded sport shoes.

Chee Kiang was also working at Vikings, a hot dog stand at the entrance of Sunway Pyramid and I could almost see him if I strained my neck hard enough over my counter top. He got very good at frying sausages and layaning old uncles’ sausage jokes.

E Guy had a stable job at Sushi King with Kay Hong.

Thinking back about Kay Hong’s work experience during that time cracks me up. He would steal away from his job at Focus Point, the optical store, and then continue part of his shift at Sushi King, lol. On top of that, whenever he could, he’d work at Holiday Villa as a banquet waiter. He threw the towel down at Sushi King one day after getting into a spat with a superior. It was hilarious. And literally. towel. throw. floor. Hahaha!!

But those were good times, when we dabbled at jobs, jobs our parents slogged hard to put us through university for so we would never have to do.

Loved the thrill of getting a fun part time job, with some pocket money and being in a shopping mall everyday!  It’s very different from getting a job after graduation because with that job you are expected to progress in your career, pay taxes and ..well, take it seriously.

Okay, I’ll continue reading the ebook now. Hope my post wasn’t too nonsensical.

He was about to get married soon and he was beating himself up about not being enough of a casanova for his future wife. We were reflecting on the crazy romantic things that he used to do when he was a teenager. He would write songs for all his love interests and it never worked out, but one or two of the girls would keep his songs close to heart, because they were so beautiful! But still he picked himself up, wrote another song for another beautiful girl with all his heart. He loved genuinely and he was always faithfully in love. My friend, he was a very passionate little boy.

In our teens our idea of a relationship was just to be caught in a whirlwind of romance, with an admirer dancing on the roof of a school block while belting out “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You”…nevermind the possibility that he would fall three floors down to the cement. Seriously, that was the kind of  fantasies I had in form3 as I looked out my class window during a boring BM class.

If I had a crush, the furthest I thought about would be what it would be like to hold his hand. And a kiss? Oh my! Well, I never. That would be… wow. Too much. My breath would then come in short gasps and my heart would palpitate at the most intense imagination of what a kiss would feel like. I would squeal into my pillow and tell myself to go to sleep. Maybe it’ll happen one day. Maybe.

I was a very forward little girl, as most of you probably already know with all my revelations of past love interests over the years on this blog. The kind of things I did would be to write poems. I had books filled with poems of  heartbreak, pining and confusion. All little girls love drama in their lives. It was the kind of bittersweet sugar rush rose tinted kind of perception about what love is.

I kind of enjoyed the feeling of pining then and I would draw inspiration from it to churn out puppy love poems. The more I pined, the better the poem. When I got heartbroken, the poem became mindblowing. (ahem) I’ll probably get it out one day and put it here. Hehe.

My books were filling with such melancholic words like these:

I saw you walk on by under the afternoon sky,
I was waiting for you to catch my eye,
You pretended not to see, not to hear,
The deafening sound of my heart breaking here.

Hehehe. So drama and silly. Whoever the poor boy was was probably all caught up in conversation with some friend about some Starcraft game or some football game later in the afternoon.

If I had a go at writing poems now, it’ll probably be something like:

The floor I swept and then I mopped,
But I didn’t do the table top,
The bathroom you promised to clean,
And later please put a plastic bag in the bin.
I love you.

LOL. I can’t imagine myself writing my love sick nonsense to Chee Kiang. It would seem so silly. In a relationship so drama free, without heartbreaks, without anger, without pining, so much normalcy…there’s really no space for any poem writing. Granted he came into my life when I was still a kid but we didn’t happen till much later. We always have this running joke about how our courtship happened when we were about 15-16.. so our idea of dating is like stuck in time. It never grew into an adult form, so if touch wood, we are thrown back into the sea at this age now, we’ll be going around asking people “I like you, you like me? Can we couple plz? Oh and do you have ICQ?”

I am very happy with our stability, when so many people are finding it hard to trudge on with their own long term relationships. It breaks my heart every time I hear a fellow comrade fall out of love. Over the years, we would have couple friends whom we thought we could always double date with and then along the way they would stop loving each other and we would feel a sense of loss. Some people get together for a few months and then go their own ways, and we even have trips planned ahead longer than their relationship. It’s strange. A few months is a lifetime of a relationship for some, but to me it’s just a few moments in mine filled with things we want to do and need to do.

I’m sure all of us have grown up in some way to learn to adapt to our concept of love. For me, comfort, security, understanding, inside jokes are so important. But if you ask the 12 year old me, she would tell you that love would be when he tells you he loves you back after all that you have said and done.

And then what? Well, she won’t have a clue.

Aren’t you glad we do now?

just thought you might like to know what has happened for you for the next eight years of your life.

You don’t have to cry after the modern maths trial paper thinking that if modern maths was shit, add maths would just  bury you alive. You don’t have to walk around school a week or two before SPM saying in a soft voice to friends that you probably won’t make it to college with your shit trial results. College did seem like an impossible goal then, clouded by the piles of books you had to devour for SPM. Thankfully the greater portion of Malaysian SPM candidates are not super smart like the kids from 5 Gamma or have the means to go for tuition to be spoonfed – hence the 8A’s you managed to get for SPM.

Bubbles and Shih Ling would finally consummate their relationship on the morning of your Biology paper (the irony!) and would pop out five puppies, 2 of which would be stillborn and the remaining puppies are named Oreo, Chazzy and Angel. Angel would grow up to be a half dog half human kind of family mutant. The entire family would love her so much and she remains as the longest surviving dog in the Lai household. Still very much loved because of her evergreen puppy like features despite being at the grand old age of 7 years old!

Don’t you worry about Mervyn, who shook his head at your super thick biology textbook. For his own biology paper three years later, he would only start studying 2 hours before his SPM paper, going on to score a miraculous D. He would find his true calling in law and would excel so much in it that everyone in the family are so thankful that maturity has caught up with him and that he is, in fact, a brilliant student. He just didn’t like science.

I don’t have to ask you to spend more time with Mama, Yeah yeah and Yee Ma because you already do as it is. Mama and Yeah Yeah would die within a week of each other in 2005, Yeah yeah finally succumbing to his COPD and Mama would suffer a stroke two days after Yeah Yeah’s death because she went without her diabetic medication for a couple of days. Yee Ma’s death would come as the most shocking of all. She would fall from a ladder while attempting to clean out some bird nests from her window. It’s been three years now and the pain is less now but you would still remember her and pine for those Malacca visits. Popo would come to live with you, mum, dad and mervyn..and it is a blessing in disguise because you thought you would never be able to feel super close to Popo, the grandma you only visit a few times a year. But for the three years that Popo has been living with you, you’d be able to ask her so much questions about her past and learn so much about her and feel a stronger and better bond with her.

You wondered if you would be able to finally go through with just that ONE ambition. Enough of wanting to be an astronaut, an entertainment lawyer, a veterinarian…you thought about becoming an orthodontist. You didn’t know the road to becoming an orthodontist would be filled with so many obstacles. Time, finance, opportunities. You didn’t realize that you would first need to be a dentist (which is a super long journey as well) and work for a few years before finally having the time, money and opportunity to be able to further your studies. But you would learn to feel tired at the thought of orthodontics in university. You would start work in a daze not knowing whether to remain as a general dentist or to further your studies. But after six months of working, I can tell you that your strength is in dealing with children. You love children and you have a way in persuading them to do things they really don’t want to do. Maybe you can consider becoming a pediatric dentist. Yes, there is such a profession, you just didn’t know at that time.

You know Chee Kiang? Yeah, I know, he is always topping you in class but don’t be bitchy to him because he is just so much smarter and you can’t change that! Stop being bitter! He would later on tell you that he felt very upset at the way you treated him during the whole of Form 5 and wish that you guys were the way you were back in form 4 when you were almost together but not quite. You would stop dangling the proverbial carrot sometime during your A-levels and his A-levels (though he would do his in Singapore, and you in your backyard, Taylor’s College) and finally get together at the end of 2004. Don’t freak out…. but things get very serious.

This is how serious it would become. You would share an apartment together. So stop being mean to him okay? He might have enough ammo against you and refuse to wash the dishes after dinner.

There would come a time in your life when you would start penning your thoughts in an online journal that the world wide web would refer to as a blog. But your thoughts would not be mere thoughts of how your day went but it would be filled with photos of things you have done and things you want to show the world! Blogging would play a big big part of your life from college right up to the first few years of university. You would even say things like, “But blogging is my life!!” when daddy would call you up to tell you off for revealing too much of yourself online. You would feel so upset and feel uneasy if you don’t share every single thing that has happened to you.

You would get involved with a community of like minded people who penned their thoughts online and be so caught up in it. Fortunately, your effort would pay off and there are people who would love to read your blog because you would be shameless and be extremely generous with self depreciating humour. Almost all your friends would read your blog and everyone would remember you as a blogger. Sometimes, people in your past who never quite cared to be your friend, would become chummy just because you had a blog that was read by quite a large number of people. I know it sounds conceited, but it’s true. In a way you don’t have to try so hard to make friends because during this period of time, most of your friends’ friends would have read your blog at least once and know know you ‘quite well’ already, even though you have never met that person before. Aside from superficial friendships made and rekindled, it also opened the doors to many opportunities for you. You would be acquainted with people you probably wouldn’t have had the chance to meet and later on, blogging would mean the opportunity to endorse a few products and you get to keep them for free!

You would go on to be grateful for having had this opportunity, this experience, but blogging would become an activity that is few and far in between towards tbe end of your uni life. It wouldn’t matter as much anymore. The phase would pass just as quickly as it came. You would only write when you want to…or worse, remember to.

Sometime in the middle of university, you would find a hobby that would eventually take over blogging. You know how much you love stickers right? Right, you would actually turn it into a business. While it is not going to get listed anytime soon, it has grown in the past three years and some months, the profits are even enough to pay all your bills for you!

Back then, you would be so crazy about the latest Acer laptops that was promoted in the brochures that came with the newspaper. What was most important to you back then was to have a laptop that had wifi and a cd burner. Daddy bought you an Acer laptop just a couple of days before your Chemistry SPM paper and you would be so amazed at the ability to go online anywhere in your house. But what if I told you that you would have the internet in your hands ANYWHERE in Malaysia? A PDA like phone called smartphones would emerge and it would change how Malaysians go online. You’ve probably already started playing Friendster but now, 8 years later, social network has taken the world by storm and changed the way we communicate. Everyone, including Angel, would be on Facebook. Imagine that! I know you just got streamyx installed, but would you believe it if I told you that there is wireless internet provided by telco companies, providing you with an internet connection anytime, anywhere? There would also be a piece of technology called the iPad. It’s just a flat screen, a really really flat screen, even thinner than mummy’s chopping board and you can go online with it? Just by tapping on the screen! Can you believe it??

You would get your driving license next year but you’d  always get lost when venturing to a new territory. A technology called GPS would be able to bring you to your destination with precise directions and instructions. You thought your Nokia 3310 was awesome, the best thing ever. But wait till you get your hands on a GPS.

I know you think you’re going to miss all your friends and you’re clamoring to take as many photos as you can with all of them. But those that you want to see again, you will always see them. Probably the only friends you see in Subang for all the years after high school. The girls are now scattered all over the place, most of them would go on to work in the finance sector. In fact, Mel would be the first to get married and as I type this, she is on a flight to Melbourne to get married to an awesome guy named Tim. You and a few of the girls would go down for their wedding later in the year! As for the guys in your year, you would still see them a lot too. If they are not in finance, they are in engineering. It’s awesome that you will still get to see them and to be able to share so many years of friendship with this big bunch of people that you know so well.

You would meet a girl called Lie Yuen in college next year. She might seem quiet… but do take notice of her because she would go on to become your closest friend for the next five years of your life in university. You would share a house with her and she would be the one who knows you so well, even things mum and dad don’t know about you. It’s not easy to meet such a friend who would listen to all your life stories, tell you all her life stories, predict you so well, share so many inside jokes with…basically she would be your rock in your time of need at uni. We would become the extra daughter to each of our families. Popo even gave her japanese roses to plant in our pathetic garden.

You know the whole thing that you do with guys bums, slapping them and grabbing them whenever and wherever to the cheers and shrieks of laughter from your friends? You would actually grimace at it later on in life. What were you trying to prove? You thought it was a way to show these boys (and some girls) that you’re a cheeky girl who have no qualms about being appropriate. You thought it would make people warm up to you because you’re not one of those ‘quiet types’. Well, glad you’ve had your fun. But thank god you would stop doing that in college. You would still give the occasional butt whack to some familiar faces around college but other than that, it has stopped. Fortunately. A lot of people, including Chee Kiang, would tell you that you have become more serious over the years. You would not be quite sure what to make of that. But then again, almost everyone has changed since they started work. It’s true. Just you wait and see.

I hope you like hearing about how your late teens and early twenties have come and gone. Will tell you more when I hit 35.

We are moving the first of our things into our very first rented apartment together. My pots and pans and textbooks will go first. Only that alone has taken up the whole car!! @.@ Might have to use the textbooks as decor on the ceiling or the walls in our tiny apartment.

I would say this is a pretty huge milestone for us as we have been playing the long distance game for.. well, forever! We have never been the couple who saw each other day which I believe allowed us our own space to grow during the past six years in our own ways and yet whenever we get to meet during our semester holidays, we make the most of it and then go back to living our own lives. It was difficult at times but you get used to it.

Being in Kluang for the past six months was great because I could go home anytime I wanted (space) or choosing to go down to him (spending time together). It was a perfect balance, a gradual step to living together.

I have been praying and bugging and praying and bugging and begging for the second leg of my first year dental officer posting to be done in JB and thankfully, I GOT IT!!! We went apartment hunting the very next day.

It still hasn’t quite sunk in… this whole living together thing. It’s exciting and strange at the same time because living on my own usually means that I have housemates. Is he my housemate? My family? What is he? What is this?? It’s a strange limbo between boyfriend and husband. It’s a whole new level of closeness. I think this is what people mean when they say taking the next step.

The both of us did feel awkward as we surveyed the apartments, quite shy to introduce ourselves as a couple, almost like as if we’re too young to be a ‘couple’. We really need to get this whole We-Are-Still-Kids mentality out of our heads because god knows how long ago that was. This is what being in university for far too long does to you. You grow up a little later than your peers.

I have friends my age already buying houses, some even buying houses on their own without a partner involved. It’s all very adultish!

The idea was to get an apartment that was not too far from the causeway, super safe and near enough to my workplace. But because of the rotations a FYDO would have to do, I’ll have to drive around Johor Bahru for quite a bit and best of all, against the crazy morning traffic!

We were very fortunate, albeit very much poorer now too after paying 3 months rental plus utilities deposit for a 700 sq ft place within spitting distance from Hospital Sultanah Aminah, one of the places I’ll be attached to! I keep telling everyone that it’s really within spitting distance! Like, I can literally throw paper planes from my balcony and it would land in the hospital grounds! It’s also a stone’s throw from the seaside..which is basically just rocks because you ain’t got no beach front along the causeway area. No worries! I still have a seaside residence! The sea breeze blows in pretty strongly so I think we can save on aircon usage!

A lovely plus is the fact that Hospital Sultanah Aminah is THE place for all emergency cases so that means when I am on-call, I can just walk over when my phone goes off!

I’m so glad we’re here, the end of our long distance relationship journey. This moment was a hope we held on to dearly for the 5-6 years. We were even surveying Johor Bahru two years before graduation…that’s how excited we were! And to finally be here, we really don’t quite know what to make of it.

and yes, we have both our parents’ blessings to be doing this together. More like no eye see.. hahahaha. <3