Its been one whole week since my last entry, and i'm more than glad to inform everyone that the holidays are finally over! It would be perfect if we'd not think of the upcoming exams, and to readers, if you feel that you've not done anything productive (or the Hated word we call *STUDY*), let me assure you whole-heartedly, that you have someone like me! Someone who is aware of the consequences of NOT studying and STILL NOT doing anything about it. Any of you read yesterday's Star Education? The article about our generation of students sitting for exams not to gain knowledge whatsoever, but merely to live up to peer, teacher, and parent's demands. I find it quite depressing reading an article such as this, having lived and still living through it, exams are merely to test one's skills and understanding in a certain subject, to know if that someone has learnt well of that subject, but well, I'm in 4 Bunga Raya, god knows how I got there, but its the 2nd Pure Science class in my school, and sure enough, when you're in a class like that, the majority of students are competing amongst each other, trying to outwit, trying to prove oneself that he or she is smarter than another. I may be saying this because I know, my status in class could be similiarised to Sunderland, or West Bromwich Albion in the English Premier League, in simpler, much understandable words, relegation contenders. But the BIG question is, What are we trying to prove with such attitude towards exams? I have seen people in my class, comparing papers, crying for not getting a perfect score, quietly assuring themselves that they aren't stupid by comparing marks. These are the sore-perfectionists as I call them.

And for some reason, I have been thinking alot about OBS (Outward Bound School) Lumut lately, my YAC course in December 2003. I can still remember the first day when we were required to surrender our luxury items, see new faces from different walks of life all anxiously waiting for the green light to carry our brim-packed haversacks to the dorms. It was then I found out that Gunung Ledang was one of the highest mountains in Malaysia, Ledang watch, which was my watch, shared the guys dorms with Kinabalu, and it so happened that my group, Group 1 consisted of 3 watches which was Ledang, Kinabalu and Camah, and we were quite known as the HAPPENING group. I can still remember very clearly, my gut feeling of homesickness when we were briefed about our to do's and not to do's during the whole course. All the memories of the expedition to the Dam and Pangkor Island, the early morning Negarakus, the notorious one hand monkey in Pangkor, our kayak formations, the final night barbecue, can still play freshly in my mind, the feeling of anxiety and shock everytime we dramatically open our dorm doors to find bed sheets strewn all over the place, rice grains scattered on the floor, tissues painted the toilet floors, the pungent smell of monkeys and their poo. Everytime we would come back to the dorm, be it an expedition, games down at the field, breakfast, lunch or dinner, we would go back to our dorms quite armed with our penknives and torchlights, preparing to strike at any monkeys caught red-handed. I know its been almost 2 years since it has passed, but right now, i would like to thank Ledang watch, my watch, Ben, Tyson, Keen Ho, Elephant, Shu Fei, Kim, Wai Kwan, Hunter, Min Huei, Sheau Shiuh, Alvin and Melissa for helping me during our solo camp (bet ya'll remember that!) Fanning me and giving me water and whistling for help, haha, we so woke up the other watches too! :p Thanks guys! (and a "BIG" thank you to Daniel Lim for ordering your watch to blow the emergency whistles too to confuse our CAs, -.-")

Alright, take a break from the past, yesterday, was my first time to KLPAC a.k.a KL Performing Arts Centre. Brad, you might think its unreasonable, but I paid (am going to pay Em) 32 bucks for the tickets when i couldve gone in for free a week ago. But pay or no pay, I can assurely tell you that its worth every dime and time spent. Romi and Joo Lee dan Lain-lain, cleverly twisted Malaysian version of Shakespear's Romeo and Juliet, with catchy scripts and very very Malaysian style of play, cannot fail to amuse and leave the audience in stitches. Rashid Salleh plays the muka tembok Romi and Nell Ng plays the cute, naive Joo Lee, the rest of the cast like Patrick Teoh, Gavin Yap, Llewyn Marsh and few more sit in to a wide variety of roles and characters from almost all of Shakespear's other plays. Half the time, these guys stole the show. Patrick Teoh cleverly joked that there were some people in the crowd who are really into theatre and there are those who are there just to impress people and show that they do have a little bit of culture in them. Well, I'm there because of both reasons. :) In the end, we were left to nurse our aching stomachs and give a few words of praise or signatures from the casts. Em was quite estatic she got Gavin Yap's signature. And me? I was left with a "god knows when it started" migraine and sulking to myself to why i didnt bring a camera.

Very well then, so much for a Monday night. Peace!

Isnt it funny? When the holiday season's here, all i can think of is going back to those 6.30 am wake-up call weekdays. Mum's been pestering me about preparing for the exams, which, in time, would make me very very irritated.

Glad to say anyway, that i have already finished my add maths project, thanks to john, jo lin, jean yi, melissa and ben for his residence, it took us a mere 2 hours to rap things up, and also thanks to them for NOT letting my add maths project go untouched throughout the whole holiday.

Yesterday, we celebrated dad's birthday in Shangri-La with family friends, nothing highlighted anyway except for the monstrous variety of food, basicly, there's everything! East to West. most notably, was the Penne in melted parmesan and the Tuna with white cream and caviar. We had few intervals for toilet and rejuvenation in between our 4 hour brunch cum tea, which would mean, we ate to our heart's delight.

Come to the thought of it, I've not trained since winning the MSSS inter-school relay and i'm pretty aware that MSSM is just round the corner, so, lets just hope i'll regain that training urge sooner than usual.

And lastly, anyone with plans for a movie? or lunch? or dinner? or Genting? please! please! add me in! :p
P.s. If i wasnt such a BAD planner, i wouldnt have typed the above... -.-"

Nervous-ness and butterflies, all for this.

Posted by Jinny

The reward for a tough run.

Posted by Jinny

A rainbow, symbol of never-ending dreams and magical hope. Taken this evening.

Posted by Jinny

A rainbow, possibly the most beautiful and most complete rainbow i've ever seen. Taken this evening during a slight drizzle. Simply breath-taking.

Posted by Jinny

After all the nervous-ness, butterflies flying inside, It pretty much paid off. Winning the MSS Selangor Inter School Relay 4x200m Form 4 Boys Category, this entitles me, i mean, us, to represent our school and our state of Selangor in the upcoming MSS Malaysia Inter School Relay Competition held in Kedah in September.

Apart from winning gold, we managed to set a new record of 1:38 in the 4x200m event, which is, pretty much of a BIG achievement. Watch out for Jordan's (or maybe OUR) picture in the papers these few days.

But well, not all things are perfect, and perfect would mean having the Form 2s to come with us to Kedah, according to a photo-finish, the guys missed out on gold by a NOSE! And the girls, well, they got silver but lets just say their race wasn't really too close to call. But if given a choice, i'd bring all of them to Kedah with us! The more the merrier!

This is it, MSS Selangor Inter-School Relay competition is tomorrow! Mentally prepared, physically, erm, for me, not so. Three odd seconds faster than last year's winning time, and then one of our runner is on the verge of pulling out.

Thank god, we are running as a full team as it is tomorrow and hopefully old injuries, and mishaps are to be forgotten, we are ever so determined to get this straight and end up representing Selangor for MSSM level in Langkawi, its not like we've never done it before, and that, we do stand a good chance in doing so again.

The only problem for me, is the issue of breakfast, well, as cheesy as it may sound, I've always had this problem about breakfast before competitions, its either i gobble a little too much, pop in the wrong stuff, or I end up not eating at all. Well, Its not like i've never tried Powerbars before, but i assure you, it only has 2 outcomes, melt in the heat of my bag half-eaten or kept in my refrigerator long enough to realise it has expired probably one and half years ago. I have since then, strived to find something edible, energy-fuelling, something carbohydrate-ic to savour before competitions.

And when Powergel comes into the mind, it could only be disrupted by the fact that Powergels are by far the most useless energy-providing substance known to mankind (probably to me only). Since introduced to me in 2003, i may never know how far has it work for me, but for all i DO know, I have by far, NEVER felt the effects of Powergel, to me, i guess its some useless gel which stimulates the mind to think that it has effects, sort of a psychological treatment. Lance Armstrong would never admit that and so does Nestle, and thats because its making hell lotta money from people who thinks that some stupid substance could win them a race. ( I WAS one of em)

I guess I've written long enough, now is the time to fill my stomach with butterflies and start nervous-ing about tomorrow's race(s). Bid ME and US luck! Peace!

The Meaningful & The Hated

Very often do we need inspiration to produce a quality post, but these are the days when inspiration doesnt flow like a swift river anymore. In fact, I can solemnly say nothing much inspires me anymore. The behaviour of others are most notably, ungratefulness, bias-ism, plus the ever-worsening haze. PJ is NOT a good place to live in right now, and im pretty sure it doesnt apply to PJ only, probably the whole world isnt a good place to live in!

I know that inside me, i have pages and pages to express, but i just feel that, although it is my blog, it's not right to mess around with the feelings of readers, coz you'll never know when you might just slip something out to offend them, so to me, my personal feelings, it's much much better to play safe.

Yesterday, i have this friend tell me 2 kinds of people in this world, the first kind, those who use their lives to listen to stories, and then there are those who use their lives to write a story. So she asked me which one was i, well, took me awhile to kinda figure it out, dig deep inside and ask myself, although its a simple question with simple explanations, its one of the most meaningful questions ive ever been asked, in the end, i told her, i'm the kind of person who's in between, I'm the kind of person who'll listen to other stories on the outside, and make my own inside. She told me to make my life story as interesting as possible, so i'll be able to look back at it one day and enjoy it. Makes alot of sense.

And then to end my night yesterday, i read this blog of a friend dissing someone on how fake, and phoney that person's been to my friend, in my opinion, when someone's really pissed off, their tongues seem to loosen, they say stuff solely just to hurt others, not knowing the destruction and consequences behind it all. And may i remind you my friend, that there are those things in life where you just use the "friendship glue" to paste it all up, and then there are those which are beyond repair.

Like i mentioned earlier, inspiration doesnt come cheap nowadays, these are the few things i've managed to scrape from the surface. Peace!

Dreams flying high..

After the last post, i've always had thoughts flickering in my mind constantly telling me " Eujinn! You've gotta blog this, you've gotta blog that" And now, when I'm here, working my fingers out on a post, it all dissolves away! Maybe its just not a time to write blogs, oh who knows!

Today, i had a short chat with Foo Kong in the car on the way to lunch, his rusty, worn out, creaky little erm, piece of steel, but even so, it seems that Foo Kong's been paying attention to the air-cons only, its works better than any other car i've been in and i guess it is the only part of the car well taken care of! No'fense! Well, he started off by bombarding me with questions, and somehow, we ended up talking about opportunities in pursue-ing a Pilot status.

Neither did i know that Foo Kong was actually training to be a pilot or something like that, in my mind i thought "wow this guy knows alot about planes", and he sure does, i can rather say he's been pretty successful in persuading me to give piloting a try, being the usual listener, he complained i was being too quiet (note: i drank sirap ais before training and puked it all out, so, to have an empty stomach, i knew i had every reason to feel exhausted and tired) so, i told him why i've never thought of being a pilot, it was quite amusing thinking back, me complaining about screwing up the plane's controls, or pressing the intercom instead of landing gear, or being the first person in the plane to pass out if there's a terrorist attack, or even not making it out of training alive.. Foo Kong then talked about the odds of being attack by a suicide bomber, or that the mechanicals in the plane are as easy as driving a car, lots more, but from what i know, he answered every doubt and every question, with convincing answers.

So guys, dont be surprised if you hear "Captain Chia" on the intercom on your next flight to Amsterdam or Bangladesh, and i assure you, I'll TRY to not be the first one to pass out if something does go wrong!