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New Resolution: Learn To Swim

2010-03-12T12:34:00.000+11:00

Okay, I admit it: I can't swim. Never could. Oh, the shame!

But not anymore, I've decided along with all my other life changing resolutions this year, I'm going to learn how to swim.

For years I've been pretty embarrassed about not being able to swim and bearing with the taunts from my sisters about how I can't swim properly. But this year, I thought "I can't swim, I know I can't swim, I should just admit it, stop being embarrassed because that's not going to make me any more able to swim and just learn how to swim properly." Thanks to Sae as well because hearing how she's been swimming regularly at her club somewhat inspired me to want to do that too. Lately, I've been skipping and running more as well and discovering the limitations of my joints, especially my right knee and ankle that went through fairly bad injuries last year. I don't want to injure myself further but I want to be able to increase my cardio as well. Swimming was really the only thing I could think of that would get me exercising without over-exhausting my joints.

When I was little, my parents sent me to swimming classes. I'm guessing I must have been 4 years old because it was in State which is near our house and we only moved there when I was about 4 years old. It was called Atlantis and these days instead of swimming pools, there's a huge building that looks like a Chinese style gravestone except that its white.

I don't really remember anything about these lessons but I remember getting my head pushed in and held down by the instructor (I don't even remember the instructor, but it must have been the instructor) in order to teach me how to breathe. I remember struggling a bit to come up because I didn't actually inhale enough air. (Its possible that I wasn't listening to what the lesson was actually about or what I was supposed to be doing...) But of course I couldn't because of the instructor's hand on my head. And I remember swallowing a whole lot of water and water going up my nose. Well, those classes didn't last very long at all.

Of course, I didn't drown and nothing bad happened to me at all I'm sure. I do remember that I had asthma at around the same time as most kids do and had to go through a lot of X-rays and doctor visits and what not. And somehow I think in my brain, I fused asthma and swimming together.

I love being in the pool and playing around but the moment I reach an area where I know my feet can't touch the ground or my head is under the water without me having gulped big lungfuls of air in preparation, I start to tense up. The moment I swallow a bit of pool water, the same thing happens and I just feeling out of breathe and gasping for air. I know of course that I won't drown and I don't actually think I feel scared or anything but somehow that's just what my body does.

Well, in my effort to get over it, I've started taking private swimming lessons at Melbourne City Baths. Its going really well and I've learnt how to do the freestyle stroke. I've also gained quite a lot of confidence in being in the water and breathing. From now on, it'll just be a matter of practice and practice and persevering through it and trying to change my frame of mind about being underwater. I'm glad I've decided to go for lessons because now I know for sure I'm learning the proper techniques while getting over this psychological state of mind.

I'm quite excited about working through it and hopefully soon, swimming will just be as natural to me as walking. And maybe I can go swimming with Sae as well when I go home.

8 Mar 2010: Labour Day at Melbourne Zoo

2010-03-09T11:37:00.000+11:00

I absolutely love going to the zoo. Chen-Po on the other hand delights in not agreeing to go with me. So we haven't been to the zoo for years, but finally, he relented and agreed to a trip on Labour Day holiday. I think secretly, he wanted to see the baby elephant Mali as much as I did. ;)

After the freak hail storm that hit Melbourne on Saturday, we weren't going to risk going anywhere without an umbrella. And it was good that we brought one, because it started raining quite a fair bit. Which was awesome for driving away the crowds! So we only had to deal with the big crowds of kids at the start of our trip and when we were queueing up to see Mali.

We brought a long our Nikon D60 camera to take photos. Chen-Po's been teaching me how to use it as a proper DSLR, not just as a big point-and-shoot camera. And so our trip yesterday was also a chance for me to practice. I always thought our camera was really fancy and could do everything, but now that I've learnt how to actually use it, I'm starting to see all its limitations. So now, I've joined Chen-Po in hankering after a new DSLR. Photography is expensive!

Well, here's some of my photos:

For more photos, check out my Picasa site.

My favourites were Mali, the meerkats and bestest of all were the red pandas! I absolutely love red pandas, they are super cute and beautiful.

Well, I had a really lovely day at the zoo, hope you all had a wonderful Labour Day holiday too!

Haruki Murakami's What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

2010-03-05T12:34:00.000+11:00

This is the first ever Haruki Murakami book I've read and what really got to me what how he managed to turn something so mundane and repetitive like running into something so interesting to read about. And what really struck me was how normal he is. I think I tend to elevate artists and authors for some reason and so it was really insightful to read that Haruki Murakami goes through the same kind of thoughts and experiences that I do when running.

I read a comment on a book review site where the reader was disappointed by how normal Haruki Murakami is. He had expected someone weird and abnormal judging by the books that Haruki Murakami writes. I'm the opposite, I love that he is just so normal and yet he can come up with such great creative works. It showed me that you don't have to come from some kind of tragic past, struggling and starving and being hit by all kinds of shit luck and getting dragged through hell and a sewer to be able to create something good. You can be a normal person that has a normal good life and still be able to come up with fantastical worlds, characters and stories. That to me is the most inspiring thing about this book.

And the fact that at the age of 60, he can still a run a marathon! Every time I go out for a run and think about stopping before my goal, I tell myself, "You want to be able to run when you're 60, don't you?? Well if you can't handle this now, you won't be able to handle it when you're 60!" or "Haruki Murakami runs a marathon at 60! I'm 27 and I can't even run 15km?? How pathetic!"

Health Check

2010-03-04T12:27:00.000+11:00

I got a free health check today courtesy of my company signing up for the Victorian Government's WorkHealth Check initiative. I got a blood pressure test, a cholesterol test, a waist measurement test and a blood glucose test. I also had to answer a questionnaire about my lifestyle, for example how much I drink or exercise or how much fruits and vegies I eat.

I think I'm a fairly healthy person and I have upped my exercise levels by heaps so I was hoping for pretty good results. So I was a little disappointed with the outcome. :( Turns out my blood pressure is a tiny bit high. The recommended levels as adviced by the Victorian Government is 120/80. Mine was coming up at 127/89. I know this is fairly variable though, a couple of days ago I had it tested at 123/90 and about a month ago it was 105/78. Either way, I'd like to keep it nice and low on average.

I was quite pleased with my cholesterol level, the guideline is 5.5 or less denotes normal cholesterol levels, mine was 2.74. However, my HDL cholesterol which is the good stuff is meant to be more than 1 and mine was only at 0.9. I'll have to stop trying to avoid those daily fish oil supplements and focus on eating more avocados and nuts.

My blood glucose level was pretty low at 3.5, with 6.5 being the upper limit of Normal. But I think that is not accurate as I hadn't eaten for about 3 hours and was starting to feel hungry. If I had gone in there just after a chocolate snack, it probably would have shown a pretty high reading.

My waist was bordering on the upper limit of Normal, which makes me even more determined to exercise more. Though right now, I'm making the usual excuses like "She measured over my jeans, 2 singlets and a vest!" and "She measured my waist too low, my hip bones pretty big!" I know all that is bullshit and I need to get it down though. Well, I've been wanting to get it down and now it looks like maybe I need to get it down.

One interesting fact I learnt was that being Asian makes me more susceptible to diabetes. I scored a 6 on my diabetes risk score and that just puts me on Medium Risk (6-14). The nurse told me that I got an automatic 2 points for being an Asian female. If I was an Asian male, I would have gotten 3 points right away.

All in all, I'm glad I got this health check, it's definitely inspired me to take better care about what I eat and how much I exercise because I want to get a good score! So if you have an opportunity to get a free Health Check, you should definitely go for it. This particular program is offered to companies completely free by the Victorian Government so if you work in Victoria, ask your company to set this up so you can get your free Health Check!

Race Matters

2010-02-26T13:13:00.004+11:00

As a Malaysian Chinese living in Australia, the topic of race is always hugely interesting to me. Ten years ago, when I was about to come to Australia to study and actually still to this day, people from the older generation keep telling me to take care in Australia because gweilos are racist against Chinese. Which in ten years, I still have not experienced a drop of racism. Or maybe I'm extremely ignorant...blur as they would say in Malaysia...Not to say that there's no racism here, because I'm sure there is and then, there's the extremely interesting issue of the emasculation of Chinese men in Western culture. Here's an interesting blog about Asians in Western society, specifically Asian Americans. Still I find the "gweilos are racist" advice to be so ironic.

All through growing up in Malaysia, we were taught in school that Malaysia is a multicultural place with many races and religions and we live in perfect harmony and unity. Sounds very lovely, doesn't it? And me being innocent and naive, I came to Australia with that opinion too. I was quite high and mighty about it even. "Hah, these gweilos don't know a thing when it comes to living in a multicultural society! Look, they're all gawking at fire crackers and lion dances as if they've never seen them before." And that was really my extent of knowledge into multiculturalism and racism. I thought us Malaysians were better at being multicultural because we know lots of the customs, traditions and languages of other races, whereas the average Caucasian Australians speak only one language and don't know much about other cultures.

I don't think knowing all that is a bad thing, in fact I do feel proud that I can speak English, Bahasa Melayu, Hokkien, snippets of Mandarin and even less snippets of Cantonese. (Actually, I consider that to be pretty bad when I'm at home trying to remember how to order food in Cantonese, but its seems impressive here in Australia) However, it's taken a journey to a whole different continent away from Malaysia for me to realise its not about what you know or tolerate about other races or religions, but how you respect them.

I've seen a lot more respect for other cultures here in Australia than I have back home in peaceful multicultural Malaysia. In Malaysia, I see a lot of grudging tolerance. Its not nice, but I can see why people feel like that. Starting from the way we're questioned about race and religion in school to entering into adulthood with the government policies that segregate according to race, everything seems to me to be about separating Malaysians, not uniting us. It seems like most people in Malaysia are first and foremost Malay or Chinese or Indian, and then secondly they're Malaysian.

I hate to admit, but I have the same kind of mentality too. When watching anything about Malaysia in the world arena, I'm a true Malaysian. I'll cheer any Malaysian athlete on in any sport regardless of race, gender or religion. And I can get all fired up when any non-Malaysian says anything negative about Malaysia. But first and foremost I want to be identified as a Chinese, specifically a Chinese Malaysian.

Many years ago, I was with a couple of Australian friends and when one learned that I came from Malaysia, he remarked "Oh, so you're Malay." And I said "No, I'm Chinese. I'm a Malaysian, but I'm Chinese. My other Australian friend said to him, "Whoa, you can't say you're a Malay to just any Malaysian, man! Malaysians get max pissed off when you just assume they're Malay."

That got to me, because it was somewhat true. At that moment, I was quite fired up because this person didn't seem to know that just cos you're a Malaysian doesn't mean you're Malay. I felt that they should know what race I was. But then why should they? After all, we call people from Vietnam Vietnamese, people from Thailand are Thai, Irish come from Ireland, Italians from Italy, New Zealanders from New Zealand but yet, I'm a Chinese from Malaysia.

I think this kind of mentality is unhealthy but how do you fix it? Its so deeply ingrained since we were all young. Even though none of the government policies in Malaysia really affect me on a day-to-day basis, just the fact that race segregation policies exist is enough to sow negative seeds. Actually, if the policies are removed, would it fix things? I'm not sure, it might but it would take a long, long time to change the mentality of the people.

I love Malaysia and will always consider myself a Malaysian. But sometimes, I'm don't feel too proud of being Malaysian. And I definitely don't feel proud of my own racist mentality either, no matter how much I try to tell myself that I don't have any.

New Route, New App, New Shoes

2010-02-16T12:16:00.000+11:00

<p><a href="http://www.mapmyrun.com/run/australia/melbourne-cbd/578126620051267963">02/14/2010 Route</a><br/><a href="http://www.mapmyrun.com/find-run/australia/melbourne-cbd">Find more Runs in Melbourne Cbd, Australia</a></p>

On Sunday, with renewed Chinese New Year spirit and Firecracker remains and smoke in my hair, I went for a run. For a while now, I've been thinking of running around The Tan at the Botanical Gardens, but to get there, I always figured I'd have to run down Swanston St which is normally packed with people. So I had been putting it off til I woke up early enough to run through the city before people are out and about. Meaning, it was probably never going to happen.

But as I walked out onto the street, I thought of going around to Treasury and Fitzroy Gardens instead. When I ran there, I found that none of the water fountains worked so that killed my enthusiasm for running around there. So I made my way to The Tan instead. And since I had come via Spring Street, it wasn't people heavy at all.

I didn't really have a route in my head of where I was going to run, I just thought, I want to go around The Tan but did not really plan how to get there, which way to go around and how to get back. So a lot of it was made up as I was running. Which was quite fun actually. Also, my footpod ran out of batteries so I wasn't able to see what distance or pace I was running at. This was a new experience for me and it was quite stress free. I probably wouldn't do it often as I'd like to know that I'm getting faster or going further, but every now and then, just going for a run without caring about time, pace or distance might be nice.

After the run, I was keen to see how far I actually did go, so I created an account at MapMyRun and charted my route, which you can see up there. The site is pretty cool and the best thing is that it has an accompanying iPhone app called iMapMyRun which can chart my route for me as I'm running using the GPS capabilities in the iPhone.

I also had on my new pair of runners that I'm trying to break in before Run for the Kids. I got the Asics GEL-1150 with light yellow trimmings from Shoe Logic for $169.95. I used to run in Nike Free 7.0, which is a really light shoe. It was meant to simulate running barefeet so you really feel the changes in the terrain and you can work out the little muscles in your legs that deal with your stability on uneven surfaces. I really liked them but since my right knee and ankle got quite badly injured last year, I thought I should go for runners that would give me more support and take some pressure off my joints. These new Asics are still quite light but definitely sturdier and I no longer feel that little spasm of fear every time I come across cracks and tiny bumps in my path.

I used to really hate running but with all these new things, its not so bad!

"NO" Signs Around the World

2010-02-13T21:06:00.000+11:00

Review: Peach Blossom Pavilion

2010-02-12T18:04:00.000+11:00

First of all: **Spoiler Alert**

The story of Peach Blossom Pavilion is interesting though familiar; the life story of a young girl named Xiang Xiang given to a prostitution house and trained to be a ming ji aka prestigious prostitute. Memoirs of a Geisha anyone? And so I entered into this book thinking that this was indeed going to be the Chinese version of Memoirs of a Geisha. I was right and wrong. Some of this book is indeed very reminiscent of Memoirs, such as the story of Xiang Xiang and Mr. Anderson, aka Memoirs' Chairman. There were a few other characters in the book that I initially matched to a Memoirs counterpart but was pleasantly surprised when they turned out quite different. I had predicted Xiang Xiang's 'elder sister' Pearl would turn into the evil and jealous Hatsumomo character and surely the quiet and unsuccessful Spring Moon should have followed the path of Pumpkin? But they did not and I was glad of that.

For the first 2/3 of the book, Xiang Xiang's story revolves around her training to become a ming ji in Peach Blossom Pavilion, her relationship with the owners of the house and her prostitute 'sister' Pearl, as well as her experiences with all her different clients. I quite enjoyed this part of the book, it was interesting and quite well paced. My problem is with the last 1/3 of the book. Let's see, she escapes with a lesbian lover, ditches her lesbian lover for a monk, ditches her monk to go back to her lesbian lover, finds out that her lover's husband is the warlord who killed her father, finds her mother, plots to kill evil warlord, doesn't quite succeed, meets Mr Anderson, and marries him. All that within a third of a book! I was really quite baffled at this sudden change of pacing. It really did feel like it was written leisurely, and then suddenly at that 2/3 mark, the author suddenly realised she had a limited number of pages in which to finish her story.

The language used simulates a native Chinese speaker telling her tale in English. Many Chinese style metaphors are used and after awhile, this started driving me insane. For example, the very first time Xiang Xiang learns about sex, the F word is used liberally for it. This is most likely because a maid is telling her about it, so a ruder word is used to indicate the lesser upbringing of the maid. Later on, when she learns more about sex from her masters or her sister, cultivated metaphors are used like "letting his jade stalk enter your golden gate" and "mixing of cloud and rain" and these phrases kept getting repeated. Somehow, I found this to be quite annoying.

As a main character, I couldn't really figure Xiang Xiang out, which I thought to be odd as this story is told in first perspective. I couldn't really see what kind of person she was and what her motivations were (beyond the obvious get revenge one). On the other hand, I really liked the character of Pearl and I found her to be a more believable character that I could relate to.

Overall, I'd give this book a 2/5 score. The story is interesting but I think the way it is told lets it down.

Review: Highpoint Shopping Centre

2010-02-12T12:46:00.001+11:00

Despite living in Melbourne for the past 10 years, last weekend was the first time we stepped into Highpoint Shopping Centre in Maribyrnong. It's located about 8km from the Melbourne CBD and driving there was easy enough. Parking was also great, the undercover parking was bright and open and spacious.

My first impression was that the interior of the place reminded me very much of Chadstone. It had a similar kind of ceiling, and the first food court we came upon was an exact replica of one of the Chadstone food courts. After a quick lunch at a different food court (this one reminded me of the shopping centre that houses Ikea in Richmond), we started our exploration of Highpoint Shopping Centre.

Highpoint has 3 levels of shops, with Myer as its major departmental store and Safeway, Target and Big W each taking up a wing of its own. On Level 1, there's an video arcade centre and Hoyts cinema. There are 2 food courts, one of Level 2 and one on Level 3. Aournd the Hoyts area, there are quite a large number of eateries, like Pancake Parlour, Grill'd, Nandos, etc. There are also a few furniture shops that you can enter from the outside of the shopping centre.

In terms of walk-ability, Highpoint is not bad, the layout is quite clean and you can walk all over without having to overlap areas too much. The glass ceiling lets in natural light and so keeps the place looking quite spacious and bright. However Highpoint is not very big so within 3 hours, we had walked around it twice, including me trying on about 4 pairs of pants.

Shop-ability is where Highpoint scored low points for me. Sure, there were 300 shops. But these are the same shops you see everywhere. At the lower end, you get your typical Best & Less type shops and then the mid range of Sportgirls and at the very highest, Highpoint offers Cue, Oroton and that's about it. I don't think it was the lack of the number of shops, or that there weren't any luxury brands. But rather, it was all very bland. Shops there just didn't look all that exciting or inviting.

All-in-all, I didn't really like Highpoint very much. It was interesting as somewhere new to explore but once that first visit thrill is gone, what else is left? I don't think the nice parking is enough of a draw for me to be a regular Highpointer.

Back to searching for Melbourne's One Utama. ;)

The Monday Song

2010-02-09T01:28:00.003+11:00

I had this sudden desire to dig out my video camera and take a video of myself playing the piano. Just to hear what it sounds like. Like when you record your own voice and then go "I don't sound like that, do I??"

Well I did a few recordings of playing a couple of pieces but then I realised that I don't practice enough, so every now and then I'd hit a wrong note. So I thought, if there are no set notes, I won't hit a wrong one. So I pressed Record and just played whatever came to my fingers.

My colleague listened to this and said "Clearly, Mondays don't make you happy though."

I think the worst time of the week is Sunday night, just when you have to go to sleep.

Fundraising for the Good Friday Appeal

2010-02-05T17:27:00.000+11:00

As I mentioned before, I'll be running in the 14.6km event for Run for the Kids. This run raises funds for the Good Friday Appeal, with all donations going towards Victoria's Royal Children's Hospital. And so this year, I've decided that besides just running and knowing that part of my entry fee will be donated, I'm also going to be a fundraiser! They call us 'Hero' and I must say I like the sound of that.

Here's my fundraising page or I should say my "Hero Page".

So, please visit it and click on that Donate Now button and give a little towards the Good Friday Appeal. And leave me a message too! All proceeds go straight to the Appeal and I won't see a cent of it, so you can feel assured that there are no chances for me to try to be dodgy. ;)

I'm probably going to leave off blogging about running on here for a while and do that on my Hero Page instead. So visit my Hero Page often too! And click Donate Now often too! :)

And to prepare for the run, I'll be going shoe shopping tomorrow for a good pair of runners. It's time to retire my trusty Nike Free's. I'm quite excited about this and I wonder which shoes will be carrying me 14.6km through Melbourne on March 14th!

Australia Day 2010

2010-01-28T13:09:00.001+11:00

Somehow I got talked into going for a 7.30am run around the Royal Botanical Gardens. Luckily, it got pushed back to 9am and so at about 8.45am I set off to tram my way to the Shrine to meet up with my high school mates, Hajar and May Wah.

Only to discover the existence of an Australia Day Parade. Shows how often I wake up before noon on Australia Day...

It didn't really turn out to be a run after all, more of a brisk walk around the Tan but it was a good walk and nice to catch up with Hajar who I hadn't seen or talked to in 10 years since we left high school. We stopped by for coffee along Domain Rd after the walk and then went on to catch a view of the city from the top of the Shrine of Remembrance. Then a rush home to get showered and changed in time for lunch. No trams meant having to walk and since I was already running really late, I got my run for the morning after all.

Another exciting thing that happened was Chen-Po texting me to let me know that there was no water in the apartment, while I was on my way home. "That's going to make it real easy to shower..." was my thoughts at the time. Luckily, by the time I got back, the water was back on so it was easy to shower after all.

Lunch was at the City Wine Shop and it was a really nice, long, filling lunch. We got a couple of tables outside and the weather was just perfect.

Here's some food photos:

This is the risotto that Jun Kit had.

Mei Sze's seared tuna was my second choice, I tried a bit and it was really nice.

I ended up choosing the pan-roasted seafood instead. The sauce was really yummy and I love seafood and this was a great seafood dish so I was happy with it. Hajar and May Wah had this too.

Chen-Po had the veal parmigiana, looks good doesn't it?

During lunch, the conversation veered towards macaroons and so after lunch, we headed to Laurent to hunt for some.

I've been to Laurent only once before and that was with my dad on one of his visits. Every time he visits Melbourne, he'll send us womenfolk off to go shopping around the city while he 'sits outside a cafe and have a coffee and cigarettes on Bourke St'. And we could never figure out where on Bourke St he would do this. Until one day he wanted to have a chat with me and brought me to his coffee-cigarette haunt. And it turned out to be Laurent.

At the time, I was trying to convince him that I wanted to do Engineering in uni. He was trying to convince me otherwise. We sat together and though I didn't want any, he went ahead and ordered me an ice cream while he had a coffee (and a cigarette as always). The ice cream came in a martini glass, big and triangular on the top and a small but adequate base under the stem. After I finished eating, he asked me, "As an engineer, if you were going to build this glass as a structure, what is the most stable way to stand it upright?" I looked at it and saw it was already sturdy and so I said, "Well, its already standing up steadily this way..." He came back with, "No!" turning the goblet upside down so its wide mouth was down on the table. "Only an architect or a designer would make a thing that looks like this glass. An engineer would just find the simplest shape with the sturdiest, biggest base! And engineer doesn't care about what the structure looks like. No engineer is going to build a structure with a thin stem, its a waste of material and doesn't serve any purpose!"

My stubbornness won the battle but lost the war. Sometimes, I have suspicions that my dad knows me better than I know myself.

My dad has given me many, many lectures and talks over the years, these days they are getting funnier by the day and increasingly politically incorrect. For some reason, my first Engineering 101 lesson at Laurent is the one that I think of the most.

Anyway, back to Australia Day, we found our macaroons all right:

I think I like the idea of macaroons more than I like eating them. They're pretty and look sort of quaint but way too sweet!

We also ordered a pecan tart; this one was really yummy.

After dessert, we walked back to Spring Street, intending to roam Fitzroy or Treasury Gardens. But on the way, we were hit by the idea that Hajar had to be treated to one of Melbourne's best toilet views! And that's Level 35 at Sofitel of course. That's my version of a free observation deck. The floor to ceiling window in the toilet shows the entire South East view of Melbourne. Its lovely, day or night.

After that, we went down to the Treasury Gardens and spent some time watching some Beyond Blue hip hop show that was on. Then back to the cars and on our way to Brighton Beach. The main attraction was to have a look at the Bathing Boxes:

We also spent some time pretending we were in a JetStar ad:

After that, we headed to our dinner booking at Sails on the Bay in Elwood. We got a nice table by their floor to ceiling window to watch the sunset from. And we ate a lot:

This was a really yummy, refreshing Minty Mocktail. I'm going to try and make this at home one day.

We ordered a bottle of sparkling wine to go with our meal. It was good, but I have no idea what it is.

The bread was really yummy, especially the olive oil to dip it in. It went really nice with the pink salt.

This was compliments from the chef, but I couldn't help thinking it just looks like scraps off his chopping block! However, the dressing was nice.

This was my entree: Sesame seared scallops, tuna sashimi and vegetable rice paper rolls. The scallops were lovely!

Mei Sze had the quail entree.

This one is Jun Kit's Kingfish entree.

Chen-Po had a crispy skin atlantic salmon for his main. Its served on top of a potato mash.

Jun Kit's grilled marlin on risotto. Hmm Jun Kit had a lot of risotto on Australia Day!

This was my main, also the Special for the day. Crispy skin blue eye, with a Morton Bay bug, seared scallops on top of black sticky rice with squid ink dressing. I really liked it, especially the scallops! I love scallops. :)

This is one of our side dishes, baked Kiffler potatoes.

For dessert, we ordered 2 serves of this platter, which is a tiny bit of each dessert dish they had on offer. I really liked the dark chocolate fondant, but it wasn't the easiest thing to eat right after a whole day of eating.

We were the last customers left at Sails, we just had a really, really long dinner. But it was really good and fun and we got to see the sunset:

All in all, the perfect Australia Day. Though instead of learning more about Australia and being more Australian, we ended the day with educating Chen-Po in the use of Manglish. He's now quite 'terror' at it. ;)

Reading In Progress: A Dream of Red Mansions and Three Kingdoms

2010-01-25T16:26:00.000+11:00

One of the ways of learning how to write well is to read a lot. I've just realised that I don't read as much these days as I used to. I plan to start tracking all the books I'm reading from now on via goodreads and also try to learn from them about writing, stories and characters.

So anyway, two of the books that I'm currently reading are A Dream of Red Mansions and Three Kingdoms. Both are two of the Four Great Classical Chinese Novels and bloody difficult to read!

I bought the pictorial books for A Dream of Red Mansion but the story is still difficult to follow, even though the translation uses simple language. The story follows the events that occur in the Chia household. At its core, there is a love story between two cousins Pao-Yu and Tai-Yu but they are unable to marry as Pao-Yu is arranged to be married to a different cousin.

However, the real story to be told here is about the feudal society and life in China at the time and how it causes the great Chia family to rise and then ultimately fall. This is told through many little events and incidents that occur to various people in the family and it doesn't really follow any kind of time line so its a little difficult mapping it in my head. "Did this cousin commit suicide before that other maid from that other incident?"

And yes, a lot of suicide gets committed! One character who was greatly saddened by her mother not approving of her lover bashed her head into the wall during an argument between the three of them and died straight away. Her lover arranged for the funeral with such care that the mother approved of him at last but then he bought another coffin and then committed suicide in it.

While easy to read, events in this pictorial series are described in a way similar to how I've described the above double suicides. It is very much like reading instructions for a science experiment. First, A goes to talk to B. Then B gets angry at A. B slaps A. A commits suicide by refusing to eat for 3 days. B feel remorseful and goes on a long walk in the rain, catches a cold and then dies. Doesn't tug at the heart strings much now, does it? Maybe after reading this pictorial series and having an idea about the story, I will get a proper translated version so that there will be more to read into it. At the moment, I can tell what happens and the face value of the story but I don't think I'm getting any of the motivations or personalities of the characters.

Three Kingdoms on the other hand is a huge epic story about the time when China was divided into (d'uh) three kingdoms. I like to think that the main characters are Liu Bei and Cao Cao and the 5 or so people around them like Zhuge Liang, Zhao Zi Long, Zhang Fei and Guan Yu. But check out this Wikipedia page listing all the people of the Three Kingdoms. I'm not even half way through the first volume and I've already encountered a lot of those names! And therein lies the difficulty of this book. There are just so many characters mentioned and often with quite a lot of background information. They would get a whole paragraph about their names, where they're from, who their family is, some little deed they did and then they'd say one thing or sometimes not at all and then disappear from the story only to reappear many chapters later, making me dig around my head to think, "Who is this guy again??"

I think the trick to reading this is to ensure that you're fully wide awake and extremely focused! The first time I tried reading Three Kingdoms, (note: I have never managed to finish the first volume) I used my usual reading style of skipping around a fair bit on each page. My eyes normally dart around the page, pick up the big picture and then move on. Therefore I normally read books many times over and over and still get something new out of it. I realised that this is just not possible at all for Three Kingdoms. Miss half a sentence and you might miss a subtle event that somehow leads to whole factions defecting and a whole new war starting up.

The other thing that has me confused is that everyone is introduced by their name and their style. For example, Liu Bei's name is Liu Bei and his style is Xuande. Now I have no idea what this 'style' means but then suddenly, he is called Xuande from then on but referred to now and then as Liu Bei. So not only do I have to remember names, I have to remember their so-called 'styles'? I'll have to ask my dad about that one, its thoroughly confusing me.

Despite the difficulty of this book, it's definitely interesting though. Growing up, I've watched movies or heard tales or sayings relating back to the Three Kingdoms. The names Zhuge Liang, and Liu Bei have been familiar to me since I was little, though I had no idea who they were in the big scheme of things or what they've done. So now, as I read through the book, I get flashes of "Hey, that's the story of how they collected so many arrows." or "Hey that's what that movie was about!"

I'm determined to get through this book, even if I have to plot maps and family trees to get me through it!

A New Hobby, Maybe?

2010-01-25T12:54:00.001+11:00

I've just started a new venture because obviously, I don't already have a million other things that I've planned to do in my life. I've just started a short ACS course in Creative Writing. It goes for approximately 100 hours and apparently, that should take me about a year. While I know there probably isn't a set of must-follow rules in writing, I think knowing the basic set of principles and theories is always a good start. Like when David Helfgott was learning how to play the Rach 3 in that movie Shine, 'Learn the notes first, then forget them.'

I'm never quite sure whether or not I believe in talent. Actually that's not quite true, I like to believe in talent when I can use it as an excuse. "Of course, I can never be a good pianist like so-and-so, they have talent!" "I don't have the talent to cook, so of course it all tastes the same!" But deep, deep down, I know its not about having talent, its about not being lazy.

I do believe in natural inclination, rather than talent. I believe that if you have two people, one with 'natural inclination' towards music and one doesn't, and you get them practising the same amount of time, the one with the natural inclination towards music will be better. And that could be because they are more responsive towards the way music works, or they like it better and therefore have more passion for it. Or their brain is wired to think in a certain way, just like in maths for example. Some people are just better at maths than others, doesn't mean that you can't get good at it if you try hard enough though.

Back to Writing. I definitely know I don't have any kind of 'talent' for writing. When I told my dad I was doing this course, he said to me, "Hmm...your writing is really not that good." Gee thanks Pa, great vote of confidence! But as I told him, "Well, that's why I'm taking a course right? If I was already good, then why would I take a course in it?" So yeah, this course is for me to see if I do have a natural inclination towards writing, whether I enjoy it, whether I have something to gain from it and obviously to learn all the theory and techniques that is always good to know when starting to do anything.

Many tips I've read about writing is to, wait for it....write. More specifically, write often. And so, I will write often. I have a blog after all, what better way of killing two birds with one stone? Having a regularly updated blog and practice my writing. Score!

So stay tuned to read more about My Adventures in the World of Creative Writing!

My Longest Run...So Far

2010-01-24T20:59:00.000+11:00

My plan was to run to Princes Park (approx 1.5km), run around it (3.2km) and then run home until I hit the 5km mark. But as I reached Princes Park, I decided to run a longer lap of the park incorporating path leading to Melbourne Zoo and get the total up to 8km. And then it morphed into "Might as well make it to 10km and see how long I take". At this time, I changed my watch display to distance and ignored my pace and time. I wanted to get to 10km, no matter how long that would take me.

My goal for 2010 is to run 10km in under an hour. It has been my goal for a while now but this year, it will come true.

How do I know this? Because there is no reason why I should not be able to work up to running 10km in under one hour. Sure, I have had a couple of injuries in the last year, but those injuries are now healed. And besides injuries, there really isn't any other reason to stop myself from running and training.

As I hit my 9.9 km mark, I decided to take on an extra km. Since my running watch isn't calibrated properly, 10km on the watch is properly quite a bit less than 10km in real life. As I hit 11km, I thought to myself, "Just one more km, then I will stop and walk back to the water fountain." That particular water fountain marks the starting and ending point of the park for me. So it was onto 12km. At 12km, I was running alongside Royal Parade, in my mind, this is the last stretch of the lap around the park, so it was silly really to just stop now and walk the rest of the way. So the milestone changed to 'Run til the water fountain and then stop, stretch and go home.' At the water fountain, my tummy started rumbling a tiny bit and I thought about the long 1.5 km walk home. "Screw it, just run home and get home faster" became my final motivation.

And so I reached home and my watch read 14km. That is the longest distance I have ever run! I've done 10km before, but never more than that. In my first run for 2010, I only did 5km. Various runs before that was also between 5 - 8km. So, its quite a big leap for me to go up to 14km! I took 1 hour 36 minutes and I was running pretty damn slowly but the whole point of it is that I was running. Besides several water breaks and 1-2 traffic lights on the way to and from the Park, I didn't stop to rest or walk. Here's my running graph:

I'm really happy about my run, so happy that I was easily persuaded to enter the 14.6km Run for the Kids event coming up on March 14th.

To be honest, the fact that I could physically run 14km in one sitting was not the most surprising thing to me. The most surprising thing was that I could mentally run 14km. The mental aspects of running have always worn me out before the physical, so I'm not quite sure how I did this run. The weather was pretty hot, the sun was quite scorching, and my right knee started to succumb to an old injury about 8km into the run. But yet, it was not difficult to tell myself, "Just one more, okay just one more, why not one more, ah might as well do one more." I'm not quite sure what it was. Maybe I was just in a really good and positive frame of mind at the time? Or I had the right music and ability to tune out everything else? Or maybe my increased stamina from skipping almost every day meant running for a long time was easier on my body and therefore, my mind?

Whatever it was, I hope it stays this way!

Insecurities

2010-01-22T18:33:00.000+11:00

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about feelings of insecurity. Most people will feel insecure at some point in life I think. Maybe not the most confident, egoistical, arrogant and oblivious person in the world. I'm sure there are those kinds of people too and I think I know a few in my life.

I think feeling insecure is more of a good thing than bad. Sure, its important to be confident about what you're doing, but I think that feeling uncertain is good motivation to learn and improve. If you're always sure that you're right and perfect, then there's no reason to ever better yourself. Well that's what I believe anyway.

Of course, if you're just feeling insecure about absolutely everything in life, that's a whole different problem.

The worst way to try fixing insecurity is to put other people down to make yourself feel good. I know people who do that and it may be unconsciously done, but its a really dumb way to approach it. And I think it really doesn't work at all. If you can't do something well and you're feeling insecure about it, putting people down around you isn't going to mean you can do that something any better. Unless you're feeling insecure about your ability to put people down.

I've recently been a victim of being put down by someone feeling insecure about themselves. While it annoyed me, I feel pretty sorry for that person too. Putting me down and seeing me belittle myself might bring shallow, short term satisfaction. But its not going to erase that feeling of insecurity, is it?

Like when I'm running for example; I know that I'm not as fit as I should be. I look at someone running slower than me and then I can think "Hah, that person is slower than me! Heeheehee!" But that doesn't mean I'm fit either and I'll keep knowing that I'm not. Thinking or putting that person down isn't going to make me fit, I have to put in the work and exercise to do that.

Well, I can't do anything about people who want to go about treating other people badly to get over their own insecurities. But I can make sure that I don't turn into that kind of person myself. Instead I'll go on recognising areas that I'm weak in and insecure about and then work towards getting better in it so that I won't be insecure about it any longer.

New Music Discovery: Sugizo

2010-01-15T13:00:00.001+11:00

My colleague lent me a few albums of different Japanese artists, one of them being Miyavi's Azn Pride - This Iz The Japanese Kabuki Rock. It didn't really appeal to me, except for one track "Hi no Hikari Sae Todokanai Kono Basho de" that featured a guitarist known as Sugizo.

So yesterday, I suddenly felt like listening to that song again and then that led on to searching for the video on youtube, which led to seeing what other stuff both artists had to offer, which led to me now being a new fan of Sugizo. I don't know much about him, he's played in a few different bands including Luna Sea and X Japan I think, but his solo work is awesome.

Here's some clips of Sugizo on a violin:

The singer that comes in at the end just fully wrecks the whole song :p. But here's another one that I think is really nice:

I'm a sucker for bands that include the more traditional/classical type instruments like violins, pianos.

Here's a few more videos with him playing the guitar this time:

This is one of the albums that has some of the songs I've posted, click on it if you want to check it out at Amazon:

Grow Up, Cash Down

2010-01-14T18:32:00.000+11:00

Growing up means that the stuff that you're umm-ing and ahh-ing to buy just keeps getting more and more expensive!

Twenty years ago, well I guess I wasn't so much umm-ing, it was more of a "Mummy, I WAAAAANT!!!!" *sulk sulk sulk*

Fifteen years ago, I remember poring over teenybopper magazines in the tiny, crappy news agency near my house, working through it with twelve year old logic. "This one's got heaps of stickers for me to stick on my diary, but that one's got that poster of that cute guy!"

Ten years ago, I remember my friends and I heading to Dome in KLCC for lunch, at the time our poshest lunch ever. I think there were about 5-7 of us and the bill came up totalling a bit over $100. Whoa, what a splurge, I remember thinking that at the time.

Five years ago, I spent ages umm-ing over a Dell 24" monitor that came up to $1300. Good investment though, I'm still using that monitor so that's $260 for it each year.

These days, I feel way in over my head. Should we buy a house and spend 50-60k on deposit and be tied to a mortgage for the next 30 years? Should we start a business that would mean putting up 50-60k up front? Should we go on a big, major holiday which could be a once in a lifetime chance? Should I go back to uni? Should we buy a new car? Should I buy a grand piano, not that it could fit into our apartment, hence leading back to the should we buy a house question? And let's not forget the less money-sucking but no doubt important little things in life. Good food, nice clothes, fancy shoes, fun outings, gadgets, books, music, good furniture, a pony, diamonds.

Time to win the lottery, methinks!

Learning to Skip

2010-01-13T13:24:00.000+11:00

As part of my New Year's Resolution, I want to learn to skip as good as Chen-Po. Late last year, I bought him a new skipping rope and so he's cut down his old one for me. So lately, with my very own skipping rope, I've been learning how to skip.

It sort of sounds silly, doesn't it? That I need to learn how to skip. But I am really uncoordinated so simple things like using arms to swing a rope around while jumping with both legs over the rope does require learning on my part.

When I started, it was very elephant-ish. I'd get paranoid that my legs would get caught up in the rope so I had to make sure I was off the ground for the longest possible time. Which meant jumping ultra high and bending knees a lot. Which resulted in loud, ground shaking stomps, threatening to break through the thin floor of the bedroom upstairs. And I couldn't go for very many seconds at a time because it got tiring really quickly, jumping so enthusiastically while wildly flapping my arms around so the rope would quickly pass under me.

I wasn't too keen at the start as I never thought I would be able to ever get the hang of it and oh wow, it really killed my calves! But Chen-Po was very encouraging and I really wanted to be able to do it so I could have an at-home cardio routine.

So I persevered and slowly, I started getting more of a rhythm. My knees started unbending, my jumps weren't as high and my arms didn't need to flap anymore. And I could go for longer and longer. In my latest skipping session, I did 7 sets of 2 minute skipping. This week, I plan to increase my non-stop time to 3 minutes. One day, maybe I can go on and on and on forever.

At the moment, I'm pretty confident when skipping with both feet jumping. So my next thing to conquer is to be able to skip on one feet and alternate. Sort of as if I was running on the spot. Its a lot harder than it looks! And then who knows, cross-overs, two rope swings per jump, backflips? The sky's the limit. ;)

I used to hate it because I couldn't do it, but now I must say I do enjoy skipping quite a lot. I definitely recommend it as a really good, convenient cardio workout that you can do at home, all you need is a skipping rope and a little bit of space.

The Bestest Presents for My Family

2010-01-12T11:30:00.001+11:00

I was at a loss as to what to give my family for presents this year. Normally I get my nephews and nieces a million toys, all of which get played a few times and then added to the mountain of toys, causing my dad to frown at them and get all growly. And everything I get my mum or dad gets me a Money Saving Lecture in return. So this year, I decided no more toys for the kids and no material-y type things for anyone. I got my inspiration from Nori, who gave us one of our best wedding presents, a caricature style portrait:

So I commissioned Nori to create 3 pieces for my sisters and my parents. I absolutely love the results and so did my family! It was the hit of the holidays and were all proudly displayed on the big sideboard table that you see as soon as you walk into the house. As each of my sisters left to go home after the holidays, they carefully packed their painting up to be displayed in their own homes.

Here's one of my family (my second sister, me, my mum, my dad and my eldest sister). I asked for a more formal style setting as it would be for my parents:

Here's the one I gave to my eldest sister (Leon, Shiong at the top, my eldest sister and Gummie in the center). Leon used to play soccer and my sister's a soccer fan and the kiddies have been influenced too so soccer was one of the themes I suggested and Nori came up with this brilliant composition:

This one's my second sister's family (Yen-Yen, my second sister, Mark and Rong-Rong). My second sister and her family travel a great deal so I asked for a global type theme hence the landmarks in the background. One of the stories I told Nori about my little nephew Rong-Rong was that he's got a pet turtle who he bullies (Chen-Po assures me that all little boys do this?!). Nori worked in the stressed out turtle into the painting and really captured Rong-Rong's laugh perfectly!

They are just so excellent! I have no idea how to top this for next year's lot of presents...

When There's A Remote, Use It!

2010-01-12T08:00:00.002+11:00

To continue with our Car Adventures in Malaysia, our second car-related incident happened on the second day of our Malaysia trip.

We went to Penang for a short visit and my brother-in-law lent us his Honda Accord to use during our stay. His family was off to Hong Kong for a holiday and so besides the keys and a short note on where it was parked, he didn't leave us any other info about the car. Which to many other people would not have been a problem.

But you see, I'm not used to driving cars with remote controls. So first thing I do is stick the key into the door to unlock the door. We get in, do the whole adjusting seats, buckling up thing and then I turn the key in the ignition.

For that split second, nothing... and then "Beeeeeep Beeeeeeep Beeeeeeep!!!"

I scrambled to turn the car off, the alarm kept on going, then more scrambling on pressing various buttons and opening and closing the car door and then finally silence...

I think we giggled, sighed with relief and then I put the key in to start the car up again and...

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!!!!!!!

This time, it was like some kind of second aggro level of alarm! The car was pissed!

So back to scrambling. I remember Sae laughing at me. Which was not helpful at all! Though I think I was laughing at myself too.

Finally, through Chen-Po and Terence's calm and logical thinking, we figured the car didn't like me unlocking it with the key instead of the remote and so worked through undoing my mistake. Finally, after some sequence of button presses, there was silence once again. The car stopped attacking us with its flashing lights and loud beeps.

And once again, I started it up again, with much nervous giggling and then the nice quiet rumbling of the Accord coming to live, purring peacefully at us. Obviously the car had forgotten that we had just tried to break into it twice and was now accepting us with open arms.

So words of wisdom from this adventure: When there is a remote control to unlock a car, use it!

Happy 200 Posts To Me!

2010-01-11T18:33:00.000+11:00

Well this post makes it 201 actually. But never mind...:)

Through the 3 years or so that I've had this blog, I always have these moments of yearning for a blog where I get visited by millions of readers. But then, I know that won't ever happen since my blog is...pretty random. I think the most successful blogs are the specialised ones, dealing in a particular topic.

But I do like the fact that my blog is very much like me, wishy-washy and all over the place. :)

And at the end of the day, my blog has become like that because I made it so and I like just randomly posting whatever catches my fancy at the time.

Like for example, how angry I am at this stupid 43 degree weather! I want to peel my skin off, its that hot. But I think that would hurt a lot... :(

Happy New Year!

2010-01-05T08:00:00.000+11:00

So 2010 is going to be great!

How do I know this? Because this morning I woke up at 7.45am and got to work at 9.15am. Hence already a great start on my "Get to work early" resolution.

In 2010, I am going to:

Up my exercise levels heaps! I'm thinking kung fu classes at least 4 times a week, lunch time gym sessions at least 3 times a week, a weekly run and I'm going to do lots of skipping. I aim to learn to skip as good as Chen-Po.
Cook more so that we're eating home cooked food more often than not. And when we go out to eat, I aim to eat only half the standard portion as portions here are huge!
Better time management, which all starts with waking up early. Go to work early, come home early, get everything done early, then I'll have more time to spend on my hobbies.
Run 10km in 1 hour or less.
Resist the temptation to dye my hair.
Buy a new pair of jeans that will make me happy.
Save lots of money.

Hmm, I'm almost on the brink of failing my go home early resolution as it is now almost 6 and I could have gone home half an hour ago!

Tang Chek Festival

2010-01-05T00:45:00.000+11:00

On 22nd December, my family celebrated Tang Chek, which is what we call Dong Zhi or Winter Solstice Festival in Hokkien. This festival probably has a lot more significance for people living in countries where they actually have winter in December, as it marks the day of weakest sunshine and shortest daylight. After the Winter Solstice, days will become longer which apparently signifies positive energy.

We don't get winter in Malaysia but that doesn't mean we can't celebrate it too! :)

Chen-Po and I were on our last day in Penang on Tang Chek. At first, it completely slipped my mind and I was baffled by the larger than normal crowd at the Penang Buddhist Association. I had gone to pray to my grandma and grandpa as I do every time I'm in Penang and it looked as if all of Penang was doing the same too:

Those offering tables are normally pretty empty on any other day. In fact the temple is normally pretty empty, which gives it that nice peaceful feeling.

The mystery was cleared when I visited my aunt and received a bowl of Tong Yun. I probably should have realised it earlier as a lot of those offering bowls at the temple contained Tong Yun too. We went on to visit my late uncle at a different temple to pray to him too.

Looks like we picked the correct, proper traditional day for visiting the temples. :)

When we got home to PJ, my dad was all fired up to start making Tong Yun which we also call Kuih Yee. This is a family tradition that gets done everytime the family is together. My dad loves his Tong Yun! This is us making Tong Yun earlier this year, during Chinese New Year:

Our usual process begins with my eldest sister mixing the flour with water and colouring and getting us big dough balls of many different colours. My mum is normally in charge of the soup, which is a sweet syrupy soup flavoured quite strongly with ginger. This time around, she made a special non-ginger pot for Chen-Po and one of my nieces as they both don't like ginger much.

The rest of us troops will start creating tiny little balls of dough. This are rolled in our palms til they're compact and round and often my dad insists that these trays of Tong Yun balls get re-rolled at least twice. Something about the rounder and smoother they are, the better. Knowing most Chinese traditions, I'm sure its something to do with luck, prosperity or perhaps yin yang balance?

Normally the kids will start out enthusiastically enough, rolling the balls properly. Then eventually, they will start playing with the dough more than doing any actual work. So we often get mixed colours or swirls in each ball. Sometimes we get super big balls and sometimes super tiny ones. About half an hour in, Chen-Po and I are the ones doing the bulk of the proper ball sizing and shaping. My dad would have moved onto his second round of rolling and the kids will just be making a mess.

Inevitably, my dad will eventually send all the kids away as he gets impatient with them not doing it properly and causing a big huge mess all over the table and the floor.

After the balls are done, they get put into the soup and boiled until they float. And then everyone gets a bowl of this hot steaming gingery sweet soup with the multicoloured, swirly, weird sized balls.

Tang Chek is a time for being together with your family and so by association, drinking Tong Yun is done with the whole family too:

Tang Chek and the whole making of Tong Yun is one of my favourite things in life. :)

Park Brake Lights on forever = No Brake Fluid!

2010-01-04T15:42:00.000+11:00

We had 3 car-related adventures over the holiday period, this is the first of them:

My dad told me I could drive the old Honda Civic while I was home. This suited me well, its old and beat up. But it's small, fun to drive... and beat up meaning my dodgy driving would be well-suited to it. AKA scratches and tiny bumps here and there won't get me yelled at. :) Before embarking on our first drive, my mum told me the Park Brake Lights were broken, they'd just stay on forever even after releasing the park brakes and I could just ignore it.

So away we went on our first shopping trip to One Utama, on our quest to find a wedding present for Hazie and Firhan. On the very first turning, I noticed that I had to step fairly hard on the brakes to get the car to stop. I figured, "Super old, beat up car" and just drove ultra carefully, braking while still far away from cars to ensure that I'd stop in time without hitting anything. Chen-Po suggested we might be low on brake fluid. I thought, oh well, we'll just top it up when we get home. Besides a sore foot from stepping on it really hard, it was all going fine. Until it started raining! Then there was no more road friction to help me out and I had a panic moment where no matter how much I was slamming the brake pedal to the floor, the car was just not slowing down! Luckily I was going pretty slow anyway due to the jam going into the shopping mall carpark and I could use park brakes to stop the car. I was close to shitting myself when I saw the ramps to the carpark. What if I had to stop half way up the ramp? Luckily, all worked out well and I could go up the ramp without having to stop until I was on level ground. I got a car spot on the rooftop where it was already pouring with rain and we got fairly drenched looking under the hood to discover...the car was running on zero brake fluid!

So our shopping trip for wedding present turned into shopping trip for brake fluid. I'd never ever gone to One Utama in search of any car-related items so I was worried that the only shops that might stock brake fluid would be those targeted at car enthusiasts. I wasn't looking forward to spending hundreds on some high performance brake fluid for my crappy beat up Civic! Luckily there was a huge car accessory shop that sold all things cars so we found reasonable priced brake fluid. Then it was back out into the pouring rain to fill up the brake fluid. It took a bit of pumping of the brake and by the end of it, the brake was feeling slightly better, I could definitely tell that it was working and we could drive home safely. But still slowly...just in case!

And hey what do you know, the Park Brake Lights went off after we filled in the brake fluid! Not so broken after all. :p

So, in conclusion, I have learnt that when the P light comes on and your Park Brakes are off, that means you're low on Brake Fluid. My dad said after this incident, "Why don't they have a separate light for it called B??" Yeah, I wonder why... I have also learnt that it is useful to drive around with your husband, because if Chen-Po wasn't there, I'd have no clue that it was the brake fluid or even where brake fluid goes in a car.