chicken

Am working like mad recently, 12 hours a day, 6 days a week until Christmas week. Hence no serious, emo, mind provoking blogs within the next two weeks.

So here comes another filler.

Peter and I are getting better in our cooking nowadays.


No bluff. The picture says a thousand words.

Compassion

I was having lunch with my colleague and another friend at Sri Petaling last Friday. It was a typical mamak shop, crowded, sweaty, oily and congested with pungent smell of spices and curry. Anyway, while i'm happily eating my briyanni rice, suddenly i felt someone approached me from the sideway. I turned and saw this beggar, a very old man with filthy clothes, holding a cane on one hand and a cup on another asking for money.

To be frank, i usually dont give money to beggar, in my definition, its a crime to give to a person of right age, with no apparent mental in capabilities. But for some reason, i have a soft spot for those old ones/kids. Whenever i look at them, the picture of loneliness and unwanted sprung up my mind.

When i was in Jakarta last year, i have to mentally confronted this feeling everytime the taxi stops, whether its in the middle of the traffic jam or infront of the traffic light, there is always someone, some child, persistently knocking on the glass window, extending their hands out. To turn away my eyes from them is one of the cruelest thing i felt i've done. After 3 days of staying in the city, i felt like wanna run away and never return again.

Back to my story, i was searching my purse for small cash to give to the old man, but only to find that the smallest note i have is RM5, without second thought i took it out and put into his can. and thats when my colleague gave me the "i cant believe you have just did that" look. They were shaking their head in disbelief as though i've done something bizarre and outrageous. In order to knock some sense into me, my colleague told me another incident happened in Bangsar quite sometime ago.

In was the same mamak setting and there was this old man who begged for money from table to table. The only difference was that this old man was hunching, it seems like his back was somehow deformed and he was having difficulties in walking around. My colleague's friend felt pity for him and took out a 50 cents and gave to the old man.

Then miracles happened, as soon as the old man received the 50 cents, he straighten his back and walk out of the restaurant like any other normal person. My colleague was utterly speechless, he felt so amused and told his friend that he is Jesus, cuz he healed the hunchback with 50 cents.

Although it sounds rare, but the fact is there are some people who do feel compassionate towards the disabled and poor. But with these kind of incidents actually occuring, i am sure people's heart will soon be hardened. And this is sad, people cannot do good without worrying being cheated. Good qualities such as compassionate and charitable are killed easily in the society we live today, there are no chance for these qualities to be nurtured so that it can bless more people.

This is definitely sad.

On being Adult

I was rushing in and out of the office for the past few days trying to sort out the accommodation/flight bookings for for my family Christmas holiday trip to Langkawi, as well as their 2 days stay in KL right after the trip. Well, lets just say it this way, its not as easy as log into www.airasia.com, click, click, click, key in your credit card number, click to confirm and wala ... DONE!

Its complicated, headachingly complicated.

My parents are traveling on government servants subsidized holiday package (yes, there are such entitlement for government servants, bet you dont know that!), and there are many terms and condition into it. One of the most difficult term is that there is strictly NO flying with Airasia! (see, not EVERYONE CAN FLY with airasia). On top of that, it was a last minute decision and most of the holiday resort/hotels in Langkawi and around Bukit Bintang area were fully booked, not to mention the rates were sky high since its peak season.

not EVERYONE CAN FLY with airasia

The thing is the Langkawi trip was decided last minute, but the idea of having a family Christmas trip was conceived, lets say ONE YEAR ago. Due to my dad indecisiveness, i'm only able to start the planning and booking a week ago. To make it worse, during that week, my dad was determined to crash my phone (and my sanity) by bombarding me with calls 24-7 to check on the status.

As the result of that, my mood wasnt that pleasant the whole of last week (ok, BAD is the word), when i phone-chit chating with my sister about it, she was laughing her head off as she knows my dad is capable of pussyfooting around when it comes to money spending decision.

It was then a million dollar question crossed my mind: Am i expecting too much from my dad?

Of course i know well that my dad tends to hesitate endlessly before he finally makes a last minute decision. In fact it's already a norm in my family that situation like this happens, whether its buying a new house or a new car, my dad will do his routine of pacing around up and down, in and out before he finally decide. Most of the time, we all felt those consequences, and yes, we grumble, complain, slam doors to vent the frustration, but still, we go through the situation together as a family.

Its funny that we see our parents as someone who is bigger than ourselves as they are the one we always look up to. As we growing up inch by inch over the years, the parent figure was engraved so deeply in our heart to an extent that we perceived them as Giant who SHOULD and WILL always know more and better than us.

When i was young, i keep thinking that one day when i'm finally an adult, i shall be mature enough to have my own child, and i'll be able to take good care of them, just like my mom. So i spent my teenage days counting fingers, waiting for the moment of transformation to come. In short, i was under the illusion that one day there will be an enlightment in a form of sudden ray of thunder or lightnings which able to make this ugly caterpillar to spread her wings and fly.

But the truth is THE MOMENT never comes. In fact, there is no clear demarcation or delinearation which says that you are now an adult and no more child. At the age of 26, when i'm doing all the things an adult does, working, paying loans and bills, buying cars.... it finally occured to me that there is no such thing call "adult thinking" or "adult Modus Operandi" for a person to function as an adult, and there is no one specific changing point whereby things suddenly fall into its place and life become easy.

Of course i'm getting 'wiser' over the years of learning and experience, but when it comes to taking up new responsibilities and to say that i'm my own woman, it doesnt matter whether its 16 or 26, there will still be fears and struggles inside of me. If being adult means keeping ourselves healthy, being financially independent, servicing my car regularly... well, that is no big deal. But if being adult means to become like my mother, who is the epitome of patience momly figure, thats spells I.M.P.O.S.S.I.B.L.E. In fact at my current age, my mom had already conceived her first child. And i asked myself, if i am in my mom's shoes, will i be able to raise up my sister to the woman she is today?

I dont think there is a need for me to repeat the word.

Its indeed a lesson i've learnt today, to never forget that my parents are human being too. There are times when they dont know, and they are capable of feeling hurt just like us.

And a note to myself, being an adult means doing things which i should do and may not be really prepared to do. But its fine as long as i'm taking responsability for my actions, and moreover my life. yes, it’s frightening but am sure its exciting as well.

Medical Anatomy

With my frequent ranting and bitching about my job, i guess its no more secret that i'm currently managing a team in developing a Semantic cum visualisation technology based teaching and learning software for medical anatomy.

A few days ago, my team members and I were in our weekly technical meeting, discussing on the User interface of the software system. As you all know, the best way of brain storming is always through our Master Google. So everyone bring their laptop into the meeting room and surfing for ideas.

Whats in our mind is something like this:

Everyone was professional (FINALLY!!), generously and actively contributing their inputs. All i heard was words of sophisticated and tongue twisting IT jargon, of which 80% i failed to appreciate. But when I stood back and looked at my team, a sense of proudness engulfed me, finally.... my kids have grown up.

Until one of my team member accidently found something interesting on the internet and started to scream at 100 decibel: "holy shit.... this is so cute, come look at this!". Everyone rushed to her side to take a peek at her screen and within seconds, the professional group of software engineers had turn back to a bunch of kids.

In the middle of " ooo... so cute." " kawaiii." ....., I heard the last bit of proudness in me shattered into pieces.

Anyway, this is what they are so excited about: Anatomy of cute toys and stuffed animals by Jason Freeny (moistproduction.com)

Gummy bears and baloon dogs (click to enlarge)

There's even anatomy for Lego!

Seriously, i think medical students will find learning anatomy is fun if they have these compare to the dull and boring human skeletal model we had in our secondary school's old dark biology laboratory.

Anyway, you can buy those online if you are interested. Pretty neat for a wall paper.

A skirt

I've discovered something new yesterday.

Human eyes are easily accustomed to the things we see everyday.

Vision is totally an abstraction. Our brain relates an item with the image captured through our eyes, auto tagged it and stored in our grey matter. so whenever we think of the particular item, our brain will auto retrieve the same image from the database and try to superimpose it with what we currently see.

Some people said its memory (stored in the temporary folder), i called it a perception with inherent bias.

For example,

Jane is the hermit who wears her signature THICK spectacles and hiding behind the cubicles all the time.
John is the fat guy who has a pot belly twice of a 5 months pregnant lady
Jerry is the short hyper guy who jumps while he walks, who laugh while he talks.

So what about Susan?

Well, (i think) in most of my colleague's pre conceived perception, Susan is the one who talks at the speed of light and high desibel when she is excited, sometimes walking around the office in barefoot (because tired of wearing the high heels), always wear dull monochromic suit, very un lady like (hence prefer pants over skirt), even if she is wearing a skirt, is most likely a knee length formal cut black skirt.

Overall she is average lah.

Until yesterday...

When she walked into the office, the boss looking at her with expanded pupils, and started laughing non stop. When he was finally able to catch his breath and gain his composure, he said: "Susan you look like a school girl today."

Throughout the entire day, she received funny stares and comments like "Susan you look young", "Susan you are wearing...."

Whats the fuss is all about!

People getting excited all over because i'm wearing ..... an A line ruffle skirt ..... (-___-)'''

Am totally confused.

Losing faith

I still have hundreds of things in my unfinished tasks list but am too numb to work on it on rainy Friday afternoon. It was pouring like crazy outside. All around me is quiet, everyone was fixing their eyes on computer screen and the entire office felt so cold and tranquil.

Anyway, weather like this always bring out the gloomy side of me.

There is something bothering me like a swarm of fluttering bees in my mind for the past few days. Its about losing faith.

Have a heart to heart talk with a close friend of mine last weekend. She was struggled badly to stay afloat while there are so many different things in her life weighing her down. There was no big dramatic event leading up to this, which made it particularly more difficult to rationalize away. In retrospect, career challenges, financial commitments, peer pressure had outweighs the simple faith she had over the past year or so. I had a bad feeling that she is sinking down fast and the faith which holding her strong all theses while is slowly slipping away.

We used to be fighting for the same course and firmly believed in what we pursuing. In fact we are the witness for each other's faith and its always a silent understanding between us that we will uphold and always be there for each other. It saddened me that since we had departed our ways, i was totally blinded towards her strife and struggles.

Being human, we tend to lose faith easily in many things. It can be faith in a relationship, career, particular interest, religion or even a person. I must admit that i've did it couple of times myself. I lose faith in my first relationship because of the 6 hours unreachable gap between Malaysia and Johannesburg; I lose faith in a friendship because i find myself can never be the perfect person he wants me to be; I lose faith in some big churches because i can only see the four walls and a roof, not the life of the believers.

Frankly its human to err, so as its human to easily lose faith. How many of us are persistent and endurance in our pursue? How many of us are still eagerly pursuing our childhood dreams after years of disappointment/failure? How many of us able to fulfill the vow of loving a person till death do us part? How many of us are still honest in our thoughts/believes and not distracted by other temptations along the way?

I have a friend who switch love target in a matter of days. One day he can boldly declaring his undying love to one, but as soon as he sense a slight signal of 'might be rejected', he will turn 180 degrees and start to look for a new target. I have another friend who finished his bio degree and hooping from one job to another, without staying for more than half a year each. Thinking the next one will be his lucky strike.

Faith sounds ancient and impractical in this age as most of us feel that following the tide as it flows is a much easy way out than battling against the tide.

Honestly I was very much demotivated after the conversation .... until she send me a sms last weekend, telling me that she was strengthen by words from Heb 12:3 "Do not be wearied and lose heart". I opened up the bible and continue to read from there..

7 "Endure hardship as discipline...
11"No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it
12-13 "Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees; And make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way; but let it rather be healed.

My heart silently rejoice when i see the words. It really doesnt matter how hard will it be in this journey of pursuing the faith, what matters is where it leads us to in the end.

Food vs Man

Am extremely busy this week, this is just a filler to fill the void during my absence.

Hangout with my mates last Saturday at One Utama and having a bite at New York Deli. We've ordered some salad and Junkie Beef Burger.

Except that this junkie beef burger is extremely humongous.. (the price as well of course, the burger alone cost RM43)

The waiter told us that anyone who can finish this burger by her/himself (without sharing with anyone that is), can walk away without paying a penny.

Anyone dare to challenge?