Simply Felicious

Listening to: Too Lost in You - Sugababes

Currently Reading: Tower of Silence - Sarah Rayne (sooo interesting but TOOO scary, I only open this in the day)

Okay so it’s 230 am and I completed a prac report half an hour ago but I’m still online because I can’t sleep. Why? Because I took some tea around 930 at night to stay awake at least till midnight to finish the assignment and now, its waaay past midnight, assignment is finished and…I’m still awake. Talk about your Lipton having oomph, more like "Lipton, ade oooooo-sampai next pagi-ooomph!"

Highlight of the day: the 10 of us trooping down to the Botanical Gardens to have a picnic. It was a day of good food, good company & at least 2 pics to capture each moment. Let’s see what we can dig up. Oh, and click on the pics to see them enlarged.

All the arrivals (first to lastish - Doro,Nish,Miranda,Aruna,Priscilla and Nurul). In the last one, Pris (who wasn’t the earliest mind you) taps her watch asking where the rest of us were.

They soon came. Enter Kay, Amanda & Kiki - making ten. So it was time to get to the highlight and make the ‘pig’ part of picnic a reality. Krispy Kremes, Mash taters, lemon cake,choc fudge,peanut butter cookies, muffins, chips, Pringles, dip,cookies,oh and did I mention cookies, and oh yeah, cookies…OH and mooncakes at 10dollars a pop!

Oh and I suppose there was the whole nature part although we weren’t really to consumed with that =D

Oh and of course, after the food was ravaged, more pics..

Oh and some creepy guy behind the bushes was taking a photo of us (shrug) so we did him a favour and took a pic of him for the police mug shots in case they were needed.

We took more pics until we realised that since one of us had to be holding the camera at any one time, all of us couldn’t be in the photo. So we asked this kind CUTE old gentleman who was sitting with his wife on the park bench to help us out.

Being old and not very tech savvy, this was the result - to which he profusely apologised.

But he offered to do it again (what a sweetie!!) and this time hit the jackpot.

We left soon after that to go back to our multiple deadlines but I know for a fact that my life would be so different if I had not met these people. Hugs always…and sorry for the mundane entry =S

Have a great weekend guys…..hugs & chocolate kisses

Listening to: Lips of an Angel - Hinder (okay I admit, it’s a bit sleazy but I like this song)

Currently Reading: The Last Secret of the Temple - Paul Sussman

Friday. Finally.

Plus it’s the end of term 3 and the advent of a two week ‘holiday’. Yeah, more like ‘we give you two weeks to get your butts into action and get started on all the work we’ve given you over the duration of the term.’ *scoffs* I have an assignment due next week, two major papers due the next week and a poster the first week we get back; holiday my ass @$$

But till that, I will take this one day off. We went for lunch today and then attended an Genetics Honours information session for third year students (but which we crashed ‘cuz we’re kiasu like that) and OMG, I never knew just how sexy some geneticists are!!

Now this isn’t me having gone crazy because I’ve been stuck in a lab for awhile,  some of these guys were, seeee-riously smokin!! Shoulder length brown hair, intense eyes, charisma- and this isn’t just one guy I’m describing here, these are just some of their good features! And the whole intelligence thing was the frosting on the already highly fattening cake — damn! *shudders*

Moving on.

Plonked myself down in front of the computer today and updated myself on what’s been happening around the world. I miss my Astro mannn — I miss my HBO and MTV and STAR and CNN and my Jeff Corwin Experience shows…

Besides the more serious news (e.g. Montreal shooting, E.coli poisoning and hurricane Helene) here are some of the more unusual ones I came across.

1. West Virginia, USA. A real-live evil stepmother has just been arrested for abusing her six step-kids; she used to force them to gorge on their food and drink and then eat their own vomit beat their feet with boards, forced them to stand for long hours by tying them with ropes and hooks…apparently this supremo biatch has been going at it since 1997, she abused all 6 kids (ranging from 11-16 now) but only a few of them are willing to testify against her. And this woman has been sentenced for 2 to 6 years in prison. 2 to 6 years…that’s it? This woman will definitely star in these kids’ nightmares for years to come, she’s probably pre-booked them for years and years in therapy, not even mentioning the heavy physical, emotional and mental trauma they are bound to endure. She has severely abused her power as their guardian and for these six children, she has destroyed the sanctity of their maternal experience. Lastly, no one, least of all 6 innocents, deserve this kind of torture. I say, beat this woman’s feet with her own boards, place her in a straitjacket, lock her up and throw away the key.

2. NYC college kids are becoming real brats; either that, or they’re keeping them that way. You know how when you move away and have the whole college experience and learn for the first time how to cook your own meals and not poison yourself (the two are hard to get right simultaneously first time around), you learn the painful lesson of not mixing coloureds with whites when doing your laundry and you learn to share everything! Bathrooms, gossip, hair curlers, the TV, the cooking appliances, common space, private space… Apparently some of our college mates in the US (of course!) seem to live a little differently.

"On a number of campuses, students are able to hire personal maids to clean and do their laundry. They pay moving crews to pack and transport their stuff — plasma TVs and other high-end electronics included. And they’re living large in housing that looks like anything but a dorm," reported CNN.

OMG!!! Personal maids!! Plasma TVs!! Designer furniture, saloons and soon, a Starbucks for Bob’s sake!Some of them can even hire limos to take them to classes so that they arrive in style! I am running out of exclamation marks, here. Now it’s not as though I envy them their pleasure, I’m sure I’ll wish for a private chaffeur the next time I’m sprinting (barely) from one end of campus to another and trying to gobble down a sandwich and maneuver my shoulder bag at the same time. It’s not that though. It’s the whole college screwing-it-up-first-and- then-succeeding independence. And privilege is not even a factor. It’s all about the stuff you learn while living in a community, even if just for a year. You learn compromise and respect and camraderie and about the real world. The real life; and even if you were born with a golden spoon in your mouth, it doesn’t mean that you never have to grow up enough to learn to take it out of your mouth to learn to feed yourself.

3. And I saved the best for last. Elton John is looking to cross over to a new musical genre - hip-hop.  O_o No comment.

Have a great weekend everyone!!

Okay so I’m jumping on the bandwagon here… all the below is just from ticking (or not ticking) the 25 boxes with personality trait type things … wish all tests and evalutaions were this straightforward. My 5 cents are in maroon and italicised…

Felicia’s Five Factor Personality Profile

Extroversion: You have high extroversion. You are outgoing and engaging, with both strangers and friends. You truly enjoy being with people and bring energy (mostly coffee induced) into any  situation. Enthusiastic and fun, you’re the first to say "let’s go!" Conscientiousness: You have high conscientiousness. Intelligent and reliable, you tend to succeed in  life. Most things in your life are organized and planned well. But you borderline on being a total  perfectionist (gee thanks, now even the Net agrees with Kristen =P) Agreeableness: You have high agreeableness. You are easy to get along with, and you value harmony highly. Helpful and generous, you are willing to compromise with almost anyone. (note,almost) You give people the benefit of the doubt and don’t mind giving someone a second chance. Neuroticism: You have low neuroticism(hah,u should see me during exams!) You are very emotionally stable and mentally together. Only the greatest setbacks upset you, and you bounce back quickly. Overall, you are typically calm and relaxed - making others feel secure. Openness to experience: Your openness to new experiences is high.  (except when it comes to bungee jumping, tatooing, marijuana or exercise) In life, you tend to be an early adopter of all new things and ideas. You’ll try almost anything interesting, and you’re constantly pushing your own limits. A great connoisseir of art and beauty, you can find the positive side of almost anything.

          Take the 5 Factor Personality Test and jump on the bandwagon

Overall, not too bad… I dunno about the whole new experiences thing though…they made me sound a little bit too neurotic about that when in fact they say my overall neuroticism level is low .. hmm, conflicting much?

Listening to: Taking a Chance on Love - Rod Stewart

Currently reading: Further Under the Duvet - Marian Keyes

Let me just say that two tests in a week is not pretty. Waking up late on the morning of the test, twenty minutes before my bus is due, is not pretty. Having it rain on you every five minutes while you’re struggling with a flimsy umbrella that leads you around in the wind instead of the under way around, is not pretty. Seeing five rainbows in two days however, now that, is simply beautiful. Somehow it made me remember that no matter what problems you think you have, the thunderstorms, just like tests and everything else, eventually end; that’s just the way it goes.

Last year the poster sale came around to the university and like every eager freshman, I went in search of the perfect poster. After about 40 minutes of browsing through various knockoffs of famous paintings, comic ones about the 50 perfect pick-up lines, traffic signage posters of sexual positions, anatomy posters, bunches and bunches of flowers - I found It. The Perfect One. To me anyway.

It was a maxi black and white poster of a train that had barreled though the wall of a two storey building from the first floor with half the train hanging unto the sidewalk and the other half stuck on the first floor. In huge captions on the left hand top corner were the words "Oh, Shit". The biggest understatement of the century. It happened in Switzerland in the year 1895.

This poster put the biggest smile on my face and I couldn’t help chuckling when I saw it -its raw, albeit dark sense on humor, captured me - this was It. But when I realised that it was $AUD 20, my heart fell. Mind you, this was back in the day when I used to convert everything back into MYR - although it really doesn’t work that way here. My head screamed, "60 ringgit!!! Are you CRAZY??!??" I simply could not afford a poster for twenty dollars, which is roughly the equivalent of about 2.5 lunches in the city.

Hastily I dropped the poster and dragged my stingy self back to campus. But that poster wouldn’t leave me, I thought about it all day and night and told myself that the very next day I would go back and look at it and if I still wanted it, I would get it, 20 dollars or not. You know how when you see something that strikes you and you just know you have to get it, by hook or by crook; beg, borrow or steal type thing, you usually can’t rest until you get it.

So I went back the next day and paid the price for my hesitation, it was gone. And to every subsequent poster sale that I went to for the next year, I never saw it again. I knew I should have striked while iron was stoking hot and yet something made me put that poster down and drag myself away. And from that very day, that was added to my list of regrets.

I didn’t even go to the poster sale they had last week because I knew I wouldn’t find it. This weekend a bunch of us were supposed to go to the Royal Adelaide Show but it ended up not falling through because of the rain. After begging one of my other friends who were going to get me the Supre showbags, I reluctantly settled to go next year.

At night, Nish, who had gone to the Show, walks up to me and hands me a rolled laminated poster. "Here, I got something for you, I think you might like it." And I thought it was probably one of Robbie Williams or Tom Welling or even Wentworth Miller (unlikely, seeing as how she’s as emotionally engaged to Wentworth just as much as I am and would have gotten the poster for herself).

I unrolled the poster and was faced with this.

The ‘Oh, Shit!’ poster in all its 61×91.5cm glory.

Mind you this is more than 1.5 years later but I relive the memory of that poster everytime the poster sale comes along and now, Nish, who wasn’t even supposed to go to the Show but who went spontaneously anyway, indirectly made the spontanenous decision I never made. She found the poster at one of those showbags areas and ended up getting it for me, as a gift. So not only did that incident make me learn the importance of Carpe dium (i.e. seizing the day), I also got it for free =D

And now it’s up on my closet door. A constant reminder of how, even when you think you’ve lost your chance, sometimes, you get a second one. And if something is meant to be yours, it will return to you eventually And I know that it may seem as though I’m making a huge song and dance over a blinking poster, but I’d like to believe that these things can be analogous to bigger and more important things.

Food for thought.

Have a good (hopefully test free) week =) God bless.