Blood, Guts and Gore.. it must be Eid!

So it's been a while. My apologies but I can't really be blamed for having a life now, can I? Ahem. So, in case you're wondering (which you probably aren't), I am alive and well and having the best time of my retarded life. Yay. Will dish out details as soon as I get to leave the antiCreativity-Vortex that is INTAN. Seriously, if there's any place on earth that could suck out all your individuality and creativity, it's this place. Guess, it's not that big of a surprise seeing how it is here that mindless government drones are bred and trained every miserable day. But I digress..

It was Eid al Adha and I got to go back for a while. I wanted to post all the really gruesome pictures but I really don't want to offend any of my 3 readers. So, behold the PG pictures..

That person with the white serban and black wellies is the SlaughterMeister extraordinare. This was the moment when Bull became Hamburger.

This was still twitching when it was plopped in front of me. Twitching! It wasn't even connected to the cow anymore. Come on.

These escaped the festivities. Count your blessings, goats!

Pictures are obviously not in sequence. Just a surrounding shot of the site of carnage before any carnage was occurred. People standing around trying to look like they know what they're doing.

Still PG right? Everyone grab a limb and work our way down from there. Bear Gryllis did a whole camel on his own.

Cousin and moi. Ahem. Yes, the headscarf was borrowed and only because it was the only one available. I forgot to bring any of my own. Shut up.

End result. Yummilicious squared. My arteries are still crying over the grease and fat intake from that day. Haha.

FIN.

ohai shanghai

The theme of this Shanghai pictorial is 'Flora and Fauna'. Like your Standard 5 art project. I'm a girl. I like flowers. Deal with it.

I'm a woodland fairy. Whee. Okay, maybe more woodland mafia-hitman than fairy.

This is peony, the national flower of China. They bloom for one week every spring. This peony is blooming. I like peonies. But every time I say 'peony' it comes out sounding wrong.

This is my retarded pose next to a 1000 year old bonsai of my choice. I like this mini-tree. It looks like a surprised Ent.

Maple and Me. Spring was awesome.

This tree was in Suzhou. Erm, at that gardenn-place we went with that crazy crappy tour guide. Darn, I'll check my travel journal after this and do a proper reporting of places I went and name of things and shit. But for the meantime, when was the last time you stepped outside and smelled the flowers?

What Do You Call a Happy Burger?

This post is also titled; Spring Cleaning My Phone Camera Album Because I Take Crappy and the Most Ridiculous Pictures of the Weirdest Stuff.

Tell me if that's not a gorgeous looking plate of grub.
This was my highly aesthetic and very appetizing plate during Ed's Western cookout some time back. We had steak, salad, steamed veges and mashed taters. Good food.
I make awesome mashed potatoes and salad, I don't mind saying so myself.

This is my perfect Saturday morning afternoon.
Tak mandi, in my jammies, playing scrabble by myself with LoTR full volume on the TV, ignoring the piles of laundry that requires folding in the background.
Throw in a Stephen Fry in a James Denton body with Eddie Izzard humor and Jon Stewart wit, I could die happy.
I'll have two of those, thanks. With fries.

This is the view from my cubicle. Sunsets are lovely and I rate my day according to how many squirrels I can see running around before I finish my coffee.

But then again, the boss crazy-o-meter trumps any squirrel, regardless how many. The windows could be splattered with squirrels and I still would have a crummy day thanks to that monster.

So yeah, what do you call a happy burger?

Bergembira!
Har har har.
This joke would be lost on you if you don't speak Malay and have no sense of humor and have no pants that is made out of jam.

India Pictures. More of 'em.

I promised a travelog-esque post on my trip to India but by Io's ankle, I'm fugging lazy. So I'm putting up random pictures from the trip and hope everyone would be sufficiently entertained.

Pictures from our Taj Visit. Everybody should know about Shah Jehan, beloved wife, yadda yadda.. the Taj is that gorgeous with ridiculously intricate stone designs. Flat gorgeous. The addmission fee for foreigners are around RM100 (as opposed to RM10 for locals) and you get to spend as long as you want in the compound. The weather was alright , a little hot but nothing compared to home. You can't mess with a girl who lives in KL and traipse around Labuan weather with the best of them. Bring it on! (yells Nella from her shady, airconditioned office)That's the Taj's side view. Which is no difference from the front view, lateral view, dorsal view. Genius architecture that it is.

Terrorizing the locals for a picture. The shoe cover was provided with every admission fee for foreigners. Or you could opt to take your shoes off. We like the very stylish covers. Tres chic, non?

View from my hotel rooftop. Yes, that's the Taj. Woke up at 6am to watch the Taj at sunrise. Hence the bleary, basi look. Ignore me and look at the Taj already, will you.

Siblings at a photostudio with the Taj Mahal backdrop. They're on discount. Eiffel Tower backdrop was also on discount but that would be too cheesy, we think.

Stay tune for the next installment where I shall post more (disturbing) picture of myself having a nuclear implosion (like having a blast, only more fun) in India.

It's like a mango, only different

I'm back from India and from my PTD induction course in Terengganu. I'm dark, aching, wigging out and not happy.

Shall regale the masses (all 4 of them) with stories of my back to back adventures later. Meantime, here's some pictures to appease you lot(the aforementioned 4). Pictures of happier days. When I wasn't so dark, when I was ache-free, calm and relatively happier. Good old days, them 15 days ago. Sigh.

Camwhoring with my sister.

I can't rightly remember what this building is.

Poppies at the royal garden of Fatehpur Sikri.

Wind Palace of the Pink City.

The happy clan (minus one) at the Amber Fort.

Pwetty oliphaunt at the Amber Fort.

Crazy fun with Amanda celebrating the Holi on April 22nd. It was beyond awesome.

Hungover

Went to a wedding last night at the JW Marriot. It was my first Chinese Wedding and I had crazy fun. Crazy. Fun. Between the 7-course French gourmet dinner and the open bar and good live band music and the endless (endless!) YaaaaaaAAAaaaAAAmmmm SeeEEEEnnNNGGGgg toasting to the bride and the groom (and to the families and the guests and friends), I enjoyed myself tremendously. It was a tad long winded but the company was awesome and the ballroom looked amazing as did the happy couple; Alesia and Julian. The event ended at midnight and it was more than torture for me to wake up this Monday morning to go to work.
Here are some super crappy pictures of the whole shindig. It was taken on my Motorola just so you know.
Monday was invented so that we have something definite to hate. Groan. Hold head.

By the by; I have 4 ex classmates who are preggers right now. Fatin, Anne, Irmazian and Afzan. Afzan got married last November. As happy as I am for them (delirious), I still think .. you know what, nevermind. I am happy for them and let's just leave it at that, shall we. Congrats, you fertile lot!

Nhu Ya

How was your new year?

Mine was celebrated according to tradition i.e. I was sleeping and oblivious to anything.
Ho ho.

Celebrated my mom's birthday the next day.

Order was restored after the party. Only the 2 balloons remained as a testament to the festivity that was once held there.

Went to Ed's for some scrumptious dinner Reena and Ulfah scraped up on Saturday. Great food, great (albeit slightly mental) company and great view. Fireworks picture above is taken from Ed's balcony last year. Amazing view of KL from his place. Lucky bastard.

Ed and his marvelous brownie concoction. This was desert, of course. No one cared to stop eating during dinner long enough to take any pictures. Food was go-Ud. Also, that's Reena, kitchen goddess.

Camwhores, Ulfah and I. Our impression of a goldfish. Not too bad at all.
We look high don't we? It was probably the brownies. Ahem.

Been spending quite some time with a lot of my friends recently (and I'm glad) but not with this group of retardos I know. Kinda miss them. Oh well.

Banjir

Ati asked about the flood. Well Ati, basically Pahang, Kelantan and Terengganu banjir. Damn bad banjir it was too. It has since receded significantly but at one point almost 2500 people in Pahang was forced out of their houses because they cant breathe underwater and that was where their houses were. There has also been deaths from drowning. Ghastly stuff. And we have a house in Temerloh. Which is in Pahang. Nothing happened to it (it just got slightly damp from the rain, good thing it's made out of paper) but my uncle's houses were not so lucky. Temerloh also lost a couple days of power and water due to the banjir. Here are some pictures.
The ironic thing is, this house in the picture is their banjir safe-house. This house is on a hill and was built so that when the original house gets flooded, they could hightailed it to this house. So much for a contingency banjir plan. Snort. And before you feel sorry, these people actually lives in KL. The one that got submerged and almost-submerged was the weekend house (the original, flood bent house) which is affectionately known as the chalet. The almost submerged, so called safe house on stilts is called the annex. My family's house is the bungalow (the one that is not made of paper). Yes, original people we are when it comes to naming stuff. But the banjir, to us, was all good. The kids had fun playing with the water and the boats and fishing. Only my aunt (you could see her in the second picture) got mad that her citrus groove got muddy. She's very particular about her lemon trees.

Taiping Tripping

I went to Taiping with my cousins last weekend. It was great fun. We've been planning for this trip since Eid. So me, my sister and 9 other cousins (Azzad, Dhuna, Deedy, Amru, Abbaei, Amy and her kids; twin Irfan & Izzat and Cha) bundled off in 3 cars for our great northern adventure.

First thing Saturday morning we (KL area cousins) met up with our Kajang cousins at the PLUS Rawang R&R. From there we headed North. First stop on our excursion was Gua Tempurung off Gopeng exit.

Look how happy, clean and fresh everyone is. We opted for the 'Top of the World' tour that was described as a 'exciting and slightly strenous'. We paid RM9 and followed our guide and some others into the gaping chasm of Gua Tempurung.
They should have named the tour 'Visit to Hell in a Handbasket' tour. The cave was fine but 'slightly strenous' apparently translates into 'you'll sweat, you'll skid and slip on the slimy, rickety looking, skimpy metal stairs, you'll climb, you'll pray for the tour to end, you'll get vertigo from the height, you'll wear off your deodrant, you'll hike and walk and hike, and did I mentioned you'll sweat?'

Picture at the end of our leg of the tour. Word that comes to mind looking at this bunch would be : manky. Not the best smelling people you'll find. You could go on further into the cave if you want. We had to go back the same way we came in. Just when I thought climbing up the stairs was bad.

Next we headed to the overrated Kellie's Castle. It wasn't all that but it was hard not to have ridiculous fun with these people. We had a pseudo-lunch there and it rained when we were about to start the castle exploration, bummer. I'm still waiting for better pictures from the other 7000 cameras my other cousins brought along for this trip, but for the time being:

Then we continued with our way to Taiping. Checked in and went on to the great Taiping zoo. That was the original plan but the zoo was already closed for the day. We've already gone on the night tour of the zoo 2 years ago so we went for dinner at the infamous food court instead. Had ridiculous amount of Rojak Sotong Kangkung. Good times. Later went for a detour at Tesco to stock up on the junk food for our horror movie which was next on the agenda. For lack of better movies to watch, we watched The Grudge 2 and was not impressed.
The next morning, bright and early, we headed to the Taiping zoo. This bunch was easily amused by the huge Araipaima fishes (we were stuck at the pond for almost 3o minutes waiting for them to finish gawking at the fishes) and the most over-used word of the trip was, "It's huuuge!" which was understandable because all the animals were bigger than it looked in Animals Planet. Taiping Zoo is undoubtedly the damn zoo in Malaysia. The animals looked happy and well looked after (except for their snakes enclosures) and the zoo environment was clean, green, well kept and beautiful. It was worth the RM5 admittance ticket and this second return.

3 hours later, we checked out of the hotel and headed to our Auntie's house in Kemunting. The first time we were in Taiping was for this Auntie's grand daughter's wedding (i.e. My cousin's daughter's wedding). This time, 2 years later, we were in Taiping to see their babies. Yes, my cousin's daughter's babies. Technically, we were grandparents. We are normally absurdly close to all our relatives but my auntie's family is a tad estranged from us after my uncle's death 24 years ago. Nothing bad, just don't see each other enough. The boys are 8 months old twins and are the 3rd twin in our extended family. We came bearing gifts. The babies were not impressed.
Done with our familial resposibilty, we started the journey home. We stopped by Kuala Kangsar to see the sights. Although I still think nothing good ever came out of Kuala Kangsar (ahem) the places of interest wasn't all that bad, really. Stopped by the Ubudiah mosque for prayers. And the newly-renovated-but-still-unofficiated-therefore-not-open-for-public Royal museum. Look at this good looking bunch.
And later to the Handicraft square for some souvenirs shopping. We left Kuala Kangsar and after a pitstop at Tapah, continued our way home in the rain.

However, right after the Ulu Bernam R&R and 5km before the Lembah Beringin exit, Dhuna's car got into a 5 cars fender bender. It was around 9.30 pm and it slowed traffic down up to 10 km. No one was hurt. I was in Deedy's car and we managed to stop and Deedy helped with stuff. Azzard's missed and waited for us at the Rawang rest stop.
I took forever to get the cars off the right lane into the emergency lanes, it took forever for the PLUS people to come, it took forever to sort everything out and bring everyone to the nearest police station in Ulu Bernam, it took FOREVER to process and finish the police reports and it took forever for us to continue with our way home. But it was all good. We had one half of the twins with us at the police station and it was their birthday.
I arrived home at 4 am Monday morning and had to work the very next day. All in all it was a tremendous trip and we are already planning for the next one. But Dhuna said she's not gonna drive for that one. Word.

a Non Raya Post

Several eons ago, I invited Shiren to my humble kampung for the fruits season. Here are the pictures.

Started the kampung excursion by arriving early to experience the unique 'pekan sari', a traditional street market event in town which happens every Sunday. Shiren insisted on being a complete townie by taking pictures of the market place and embarrassing the hell outta me. Also she revolted some local people by looking Malay but speaking English and directing her questions through an interpreter, i.e. me. Switching between languages messed up my authentic Pahang dialect and English grammar. B*tch made me look bad in my own hood, yo.

Appropriately clad for kebun tromping, durian seeking and mangosteen galah-ing activities. The person behing us is my uncle having breakfast al fresco. I don't like him very much but my mom insisted on feeding him. I wish she wont. Ignore him and observe the very stylish rubber wellies we had on. Fetching.

The day's bounty. The best damned durian you can eat. I personally am not a big fan but I have to admit the superiority of these. And you know I am not biased at all.

Shiren and I with my mom and various relatives helping with the coconut husking process which was seriously fun and quite challenging to do. Observe how happy everyone looked in this picture. Yep, we were probably high.

The ancestral seat falling into decay since my grandparents passed away. It used to have a great flower garden and people living in it. Now its just a highlight in our kampung tour under the 'haunted house' title. Last time I went in was to retrieve some extra plates for a kenduri and had a bat tangled in my hair. Scariest moment in my life. We like to think there are really ghosts in the house. Wouldn't that be totally awesome?

View of my family's kampung retreat chalet from the back, near the river bank. We build this house because you couldn't pay us to stay in the old house. Oh yes, we are all a bunch of wussies and we don't care. The old house is seriously that spooky.