::mindless blabber::

decided to document my journey towards getting used to the life down in penang… it is not every day that i get to be some where else besides KL.. it could be dubbed as the mis-adventures of a KL gal or sex in the island… hahahah malaysian version of sex in the city…

so anyway my life in penang for the 2nd day… woke up at about 10am by my dad who called me and asked “woi still sleeping ah???” well not now since u woke me up… i hate ppl ask me whtr i was still sleeping… if i was, i wont be picking up the phone… duh… anyway he said he would be down at my place in 1/2 hours time… well hmm there is this habit that my dad is so used to and that is if he said he would be there in 1/2 hour it means he would be there in 1 hour instead and i was right abt that.

he came at about 11.30am and i was starving by that time.. felt that i could eat a horse. anyway when to the shops near BJ complex and it was crowded since it is a saturday. decided to eat at the vegetarian restaurant that i had been eyeing since last sunday when i came down to penang to look for a place to stay. luckily they serve vegetarian by the dishes. so we ordered chill vegetarian chicken, tomyom asam fish, sambal kangkung and tofu in claypot. i absolutely love the chicken and asam fish… so nice and the portions are so big and the waitress kept mentioning it is the smallest portion. back in KL the portion that they are serving would be the big or medium portions… joy! gonna be coming back to the restaurant every weekend… heheheh i am a big fan of eating vegetarian stuff but i do like meat once in a while.

so our lunch was great and then it was the slow drive back to my place and then my parents was gettiing emotional and teary. well i wasnt that emotional coz i was actually glad to be by my own coz i was always alone anyway. i was not alone physically but i have always felt alone mentally. even when i am with my family back in KL, i was never truly there… i wasnt there and my mind would always wonder away. my parents hugged me tightly and told me to take care of myself (as though i never did for all these years)

then i walked by to my room and sat there for a while silently and suddenly realized that i am all alone. housemates were out all day and i had the entire apartment all to myself. it felt good to have my own privacy which is very lacking when i am back home in kl. solitude and peace would be a rare luxury back home. i never had time for myself. i was always doing something for someone or need to be there for someone or it would just be something for anyone else but me. now i am all by myself for myself and it felt good to actually start to think for me..

i started to unpack and start sorting my stuff. i like organizing stuff and making things look nice and neat. yupe i am a self confessed neat freak. all my close frens said so. i remembered once i went on a company trip to china with my close fren, baljit and we shared a room. the room has 2 beds and u can actually know which bed is whose. mine would be the neat one with my bad and clothes nicely folded and all. baljit’s would be the messy kind with clothes here and there. i end up picking her clothes and folding them nicely until she asked me to stop doing that… hahahaha.. even my desk at previous work is so neat and organized so that i know where my things are… guess it is one good trait that i gotten from my mom. she is super super organized. more organized than i am… she color codes everything on her desk and she labels stuff… i am not that bad yet…

then i was cleaning the room’s floor with bleach and finally all my stuff is neatly stacked and hanged… by the time i was done, it was already 11pm. took a nice bath and went to check on my emails and stuff and went to bed at abt 1am..

and that was my 2nd day folks…

at last i am in penang… a bit of back posting becoz i did not have the right mindset and time to write this post earlier when i was in penang for the 1st day. referring to my previous post on expect the unexpected… i was not expecting a call from Encik Ahmad from shell on the same day i was leaving to penang.

he called at about 9.30am and asked whether i would be interested to work with shell but not under the graduate scheme. it would be a contractual term for 2 years as support staff for the HR department in cyberjaya. i was not expecting this call at all. i was so surprised that i just dont know what to think. i was ready to drop everything and move to penang and now this offer?? well… thinking with mind instead of my emotions, i gave it a thought for 10 mins and decided that it wasnt worth the shot. why?? becoz it is only under contract and is not under the graduate scheme which is more lucrative. also i have sign the offer letter with dell and there is now way of turning back on my decision… if only shell would have called earlier…

but i think my new job in dell would be better becoz it is an IT MNC and if i were to move anywhere within DELL, it would still be under IT and that is what i am really into and interested in.

so back to my journey to my new place. i arrived at bayan lepas and at my new place at about 7pm. dump my stuff at the room and then made some small talk with my new housemates… the girl is sammi and she is cute, tiny, timid girl. and the guy is keong and he looked like a older brother to me (but apparently he is only brother’s age)

after that me and my parents decided to go to Giant (hypermart) to buy some stuff like a table, mattress and some basic stuff like pails and all. after that i “belanja” my parents dinner and it was already 10.30pm. we got lose again on the way to look for a hotel for my parents to stay a night. they settled for hotel seri malaysia which was RM100 pernite… damn cheap and comes with complimentary breakfast for two..

so when back to the new place and my parents dump me there and said would be coming in the morning to take me for breakfast/brunch. so at last i was all alone in the room and it was kindof messy. i cant stand messiness so decided to do some unpacking and organising in the middle of the night. end up fixing up the table and just fixing up my pc and there i went online that nite itself..

check my mails and all and slept at 3am. that was my first day in penang…

just a few more hours and i would be leaving KL to penang. seems like time passed so fast and i am starting a new page in my life in a new place, meeting new people and working in a new environment. it would be scary for some people but for me, it is a sign that i can finally sit down by my self and think thru stuff that has been goin on in my life.

i had the privilege of that kind of peace of mind to do some serious thinking back 3 years ago when i moved out and stayed by myself when i was still working in the law firm. looking back i think i did pretty much most of the things that i had planned to do. i quit my job at the law firm, went back to studies and to get my degree, get experience of working in an IT environment and getting a boyfriend. pretty much covered all that in the short period of 4 years.

now it is time for me to really think and analyse what i want in 5 years time. when “some” people asked me to invest my time, money and energy on something, i am a bit of a skeptic becoz at the moment i do not know and have yet to plan what i want to achieve in my life. as far as i know in my long term plan is that i want to have my own place to stay and work at a place that i like and do the things that i am passionate about. i wished to retire early with plenty of money (by the age of 40 at least) and be doing things that i love to do like cooking, reading, writing and travelling.

so just looking at these past few months of 2006, it has been an eventful months and i am sure better things are about to happen in the coming months. it started miserably at the beginning of the year and now things just got better. i know things are goin to happen and i just do not know what to expect yet. maybe anticipation on these things is the best approach in life.

so KL i shall miss you and to all the people that i know and they know me, i am gonna miss you guys as well… but sometimes things in life is inevitable and change is inevitable but change is good. till i write again from Penang…

yes people i was finally in the land of penang. i meant the sunny island of penang i went to the island yesterday to look for a place to stay. was supposed to leave KL at 6am but with much delay caused by my mom/dad/sis we left at 7.45am instead… my dad went to toilet twice so that he wont have to do any big call of nature on the way coz he is the driver.

so we were off to penang and we made several stops for toilet, breakfast, petrol and toilet again… yes i counted the number of times we stopped. my dad nearly felt asleep and i think he missed a few warnings that there is a speed trap ahead the highway. his theory is that they just put the sign that there is a speed trap so that people would slow down.. well kindof makes sense becoz why would anyone put a warning sign that there is a trap if the intention of the trap is to actually “trap” someone doing the wrong thing. it would be like putting a signboard on a house notifying robbers that the house has an alarm system. my dad just make weird sense sometimes..

so we reach bayan lepas, penang at about 1pm and it was really humid and hot. we went looking at where my workplace would be. search high and low and we just couldnt find it. stopped and asked a guard and she pointed to teh right direction. dell looks like a factory from outside. on the sides of the road, there was some bus stand signs. was wondering if public transport would ever reach here and my mom insist that i go and ask the guard who is guarding dell’s main gate. i went and ask and that guard is a nepalase and spoke very little english. i asked one thing and he gave answer to a different thing.. gave up and went back to the car. my mom still insist and i told her to ask herself. same thing happened to her. (that is for not trusting me lar…) then my dad (the big kepoh/busybody) went to ask the guard at the front main gate.. same thing happened to him too.

anyway so after exploring the rest of the Bayan Lepas Industrial Zone for a while, we decided to go and look at this place called Bukit Jambul Court which is just next to the Bukit Jambul (BJ) Shopping Complex. the area reminds me of my first home in kepong baru. noisy and crowded.. went thru some security fellas who took down my details and they have security doors and CCTV everywhere. lifts, hallway, corridors..went up to 5th floor where the place of interest was and i called up this guy, Mr Chan. he wasnt at home and apparently he was out in town and he asked me to come back later. that was fine…

so we decided to make a stop at the petrol station for another refill and i went to the 7-11 to look at some notices posted… saw one interesting one and i called the person.. her name is penny and she told me her place is just nearby BJ court. gave me the full address of her place and we went hunting again… we went round and round and passed the Bayan Baru and passed Sg Ara and we still cant find the place. we were about to give up when we asked the malay lady who was selling goreng pisang told us exactly where the place was. fine when we finally nearly arrived we couldnt see the entrance to the place and ask another lady at the makan stall.

finally we found the place and it was quite nice. it was a condominium with swimming pool and it looked much better than the previous place that we went before. nice girl as well and a much brighter and bigger room. i was sold to the place and didnt want to leave.. well not the swimming pool coz it has been a really hot day and i was sweating like crazy that day and i really felt that a nice dip into a nice cold swimming pool would be most delighting.

anyway sad to say i had to leave and go back to that earlier place at BJ court. went up and a small timid looking guy answered the door. showed me the rooms and i wasnt as impressed as the 1st place coz no windows, really tiny winny toilet and room was not even as big as my brother’s room at home. ask some general questions and left ASAP.. pretty much made up my mind where i wanna stay.

well pretty much that was abt it on the subject of room hunting. next my parents insist that i called my fren’s cousin so they can have a look at where they stay and if i was to stay with them for the time being. anyhow called my fren’s cousin and she drives a really nice Nissan Sentra. she runs an economy rice business and food industry is good. so went to her house and all and stayed to watch some tv, have some cold drinks, more toilet trips and inpromptu house tour and we were off the road again to look for some late lunch.

settled for McD’s coz it was too hot to sit outside.had some ice cream (heaven!) and we were off back home. driving home seemed quicker than goin.. it always seem that way in any kind of travelling that i do.

so i think that is abt it… till i move to penang…

on the 29th of March 2006, my aunt passed away peacefully. she had lung cancer at the final stage. i did not managed to see her on the day that she passed but then i saw her abt 2 weeks ago. i did not expect that her condition would become worse from that day onwards.

notably, i would like to just write a short note about her so that i would not forget her. i am not close to her in any particular way but this made me realized that i am not in any way close to any of my immediate family or even my relatives. people may think this is strange but then i think i am only close to one of my cousins.

looking back at what are the images that reminds me of my aunt. i remember during chinese new year me and my family would come and visit her house in maluri, her house was big, spacious, warm and of course with the state of the art home theatre system. her husband is a great fan of these stuffs. she has 4 daughters, one of which is the same age as i was. i used to envy my cousin coz she gets everything (also she was the youngest). my cousin got to learn ballet, piano, got a boyfriend when she was 16, a car, her own room everything a young girl would possibly want.

my aunt was a bubbly, warm and funny woman. i also remember that i love goin to her house to have her famous chocolate chips cookies and dragon cookies during the festive season. she is also a very stylish kind of person. she wears loud clothes that screams for attention.

sad to say that cancer has robbed her of the image of the woman that she used to be. about a year ago, she was diagnosed with cancer and it was the final stage. to add salt to the wounds, there are some family problems that has been ongoing between her and her husband. i do not want to go thru the details becoz i do not want to remember the bad things that goes on in her life but i just want to remember the good things in her life.

she was also a doting grandmother (she has six grandchildren), great wife and a good mother. her passing reminds me that life can sometimes be taken away from u just like that and that i should not take life for granted. it reminds me to appreciate the people that i have in my life, enjoy everyday like it is a new day and try everything out.

it also made me think that if given a chance that i have actually fallen in love with someone then i should love that someone. not that i should just put my emotions away and not venture into it. but i am still afraid that it would burn me in the end. but is it worth it to be burned than to never feel love again? i do not know.. i just do not know…