Then after some clicking… I FOUND MY PHOTO ON THE WEBSITE!!!

I’m like, OMFG. I’ve left the school, and my photo is still there?!?!?!?! (My photo had been on the old layout too, albeit a small one. It’s not there anymore but here’s the link to my blog post about it.) OK, I know that there are plenty of photos of former student who have left the school long ago. But WTH is my photo doing there? And it’s a terrible angle no less!!

My photo on Sri KDU's website! Gasp! Click the photo to get to the webpage.

The photo was taken during the 3-way conference 2 years ago. That’s Danil and his mother talking to me, obviously about Danil’s low results. Hahaha. Thank goodness he got an A in Physics SPM. At least, I think he did. Didn’t you, Danil?

By the way, in a strange coincidence, I know the lady in red, in the top banner of the same page. She’s Joanne Wong, principal of Joyclub Dance Academy.

Boys are cheats and liars, they’re such a big disgrace. They will tell you anything to get to second base… ball, baseball he thinks he’s gonna score. If you let him go all the way then you are a hor… ticulture studies flowers, geologist studies rocks. The only thing a guy wants from you is a place to put his cock… roaches, beetles, butterflies and bugs. Nothing makes him happier than a giant pair of jug… glers and acrobats, a dancing bear named Chuck. All guys really want to do is - forget it, no such luck.

Source: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0302640/quotes

I BOUGHT MY 1 TB EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE!!!

The price had fallen so I grabbed it quickly!

Oh, were you expecting something juicy and scandalous? Sorry to ruin your expectations. I’m still not going to do a striptease. And Danil, I told you, you gotta go skinny-dipping on your own.

Already I can hear mixed responses - cries of dismay, shouts of welcome, screams of horror. Thank you, thank you. I’ll take them all positively.

Cries of dismay probably from my students - those who feel betrayed. “You left… and now you rejoin AFTER our SPM?!?!?!?!!?!” I’m sorry… I love you all but I had to do what I had to do. I didn’t even think I was going to come back to Sri KDU.

Shouts of welcome from my former colleagues - yes, I love you all too! I look forward to having tea breaks with you again. Hahaha. Except I won’t have time, actually.

Screams of horror from well-meaning friends and colleagues - “WTH are you doing back here? Go away, you!” I love you all too.

In case you’re wondering, no, I didn’t reapply for the job. I was asked to come back. It’s nice being headhunted. Hehehe.

So why did I come back, after leaving in the first place? It’s a symbiotic relationship. They need a teacher, and I like having a fixed income. Truth be told, yes, I am worried about the state of the economy next year, and having fixed income will allow me to breathe more easily.

However, this time, I’m only working part-time though. Because of that, my schedule will be packed so I won’t have time for those tea breaks I look forward to Still, it’s kind of in my favour because I have time off for my outside work You know. Like websites, and dancing, and stuff.

I’ll miss the waking up at 10am, and the constant checking-for-updates on Facebook, but I look forward to coming back to Sri KDU nonetheless.

I know you all miss me. Well, I’m back!!!

Oh, by the way, I made an appearance during the Performance & Awards Nite last Friday. Ee Ping wanted me to be there but I couldn’t stay because I had something else to do that night.

Ee Ping and I

I took lots of random photos though I thought the event was very well done, and the booklet was really good this year.

Performance & Awards Nite 2008 - Album The First

Performance & Awards Nite 2008 - Album The Second

Congratulations to all the award winners!! You are a most deserving bunch. And to all the nominees, you are also all winners. Nomination in itself is an honour.

On Monday which was a public holiday, I went to Gua Tempurung with my sister, her friend Nathalee, and Nathalee’s husband Stephen. Gua Tempurung is a cave in Gopeng, Perak. We wanted to try basic caving, and there were guided cave tours with 4 different levels of difficulty. We of course took the most difficult level, which was supposed to be “strenuous” and would take up to 3.5 hours to complete.

Me, my sister, Nathalee and Stephen at Gua Tempurung

The tour was… OK. It got very boring and monotonous towards the end. But there’s a lot of things wrong with the way it was conducted.

1. To start the tour, there is a required a minimum of 8 people, but that morning, what they did was they lumped all the participants who signed up for the toughest level in one big group of 40+. And the number of tour guides for this group was…. ONE. And this one guide never even did a head count before going into the cave; and throughout the caving tour, he never checked to see if everyone had arrived at the next checkpoint before moving onto the next, or before explaining something (especially how to do a particular activity). Oftentimes the four of us were a little left behind (because we were taking photos or something). Although we caught up easily enough, I couldn’t help thinking if anyone got injured, the guide wouldn’t even know, and it would be difficult to call for help.
2. They did not properly inform us what we should and shouldn’t bring/wear. My sister had looked up on the Gua Tempurung website which said we should wear hiking boots. We didn’t have boots, so my sister and I wore sports shoes. However, Nat and Stephen wore strapped sandals. When we bought the tickets, they asked at the counter if the sandals were acceptable, and the reply was, “Yes, in fact that is better.” My sis and I were quite pissed off about that. I mean, we knew the tour was going to involve some water activities, but if we had known that those sandals were preferred, we’d have worn that instead. As a result, our shoes kept filling with sand and stones. By the end of the tour, I had to walk on tiptoe because the sand and stones hurt my feet.
3. 5 minutes before we started the tour, one of the attendants said that we should not bring our wallets etc, and we should leave behind expensive cameras. Stephen had brought his DSLR camera. We had a quick discussion, and then just as the tour group started going in, we quickly requested to go to our cars to put our things down, but he said the tour was already starting, and said in BM, “I already told you not to bring those things earlier!” Yeah, 5 minutes before. Shouldn’t they have given us time to put things aside then? The four of us were silly enough to bring backpacks thinking we’d need water etc. None of the other participants brought anything else except a flashlight and some brought cameras.
4. After we finished the tour, my sister and I filled up the guestbook, but it seemed that they preferred the guestbook to be filled in by foreigners because the attendant in charge of the book pointedly asked Stephen to fill it up, since he was a Mat Salleh. Yeah, we locals are just second-class citizens, right?

Anyway, as for the tour itself, the “strenuous activities” consisted of: wading through water, crawling through water, belly-crawling through water (we four skipped that one. We found that there was a way to walk around it, hahahahahaha), and one slide down a muddy slope. Nothing very stressful - for me, at least. I brought my waterproof Olympus camera and my sister took photos to her heart’s content.

I did have one fall in the cave, because my torchlight gave out as I was wading through the underground river, so I tripped and fell onto the rocks. No serious injuries, but I had a lot of bruises on my legs and arms because of that.

The tour took 4.5 hours for our group to complete because the group was too bg. By the end of the third hour, we were already actually getting bored. There was only so many photos we could take - all we could see was a dark background everytime we snapped because the flash couldn’t illuminate everything! So we compensated by having lots of stupid poses.

My photos and Nathalee’s photos are on Facebook.

Oh… and I couldn’t resist. This photo screamed to be made into an ad. By the way, this Hercules bag has been with me since I was in Form 4 (1995)… so it’s been more than 10 years!! It’s very sturdy and it’s also waterproof. I love it not only because of that, but because no one else seems to have this bag, so no one could ever pick it up and pretend it’s theirs. In fact, no one would want to - it’s not a cool bag! Back in school when everyone was carrying branded stuff like Nike or Reebok or something, I happily carried this bag because I could see it a mile away, and if I left it anywhere unattended, no one could claim it as theirs. If anyone tried to make off with it, I could point and shout, “That’s mine!!!!”

Self-made advertisement for the Hercules bag, starring yours truly!!! :D

No Video Log tonight. I couldn’t sleep until 6am in the morning, and couldn’t sleep in because I had to go for a dance class at 10.45am. I managed to stay wide awake and managed to pump in lots of energy in class, and finally decided to take a nap at about 4pm. And after that I had to peel myself out of bed for dinner. I’m looking pretty awful right now, so if I made a video log, I’d probably scare away not only future blog readers, but all my current ones too.

Anyway, if you want me to do a sexy striptease, the best you’re going to get is by superimposing my face onto the body of someone else doing a striptease. If you want ME to do the real thing, all I can say is… Dream on!!!

Well, if you really want an authentic one of me, here’s the closest you’re gonna get.

Sexy striptease

By the way, this photo was taken during the Jubilation Workshop in September. I did not take this photo on purpose for this blog entry!!

For those who know me as a gadget geek, among my many electronic possessions is a handycam (Sony DCR-HC85E). Not a new one, mind you. It’s about 4 years old, and it records using mini DV tapes. Yes, the DVD cameras were out back then but I refused to get one because after weighing the pros and cons (I did hours of research just to check out which model to get, too!!) I decided to buy the tape camera instead. I won’t go into why right now (maybe another time), but I have to say that I never regretted buying this videocamera. The HDD cameras are out now, but my mini DV still works fine, so I’m not going to get one just yet. Even though I really, really want to.

ANYWAY, I’ve known eversince I purchased this videocamera that it can double as a webcam, but I never got around to testing that function - mainly because I don’t want people to view me in my underwear.

Haha!! That got your attention, didn’t it?!

OK, I never sit in front of my PC only in my underwear because it’s really too cold to do so. But I normally don’t look my best when I’m in front of my PC because I either look exhausted or really sloppy, and I don’t really want my friends to see me like that. Anyway I don’t really need a webcam because it’s not like I have a boyfriend miles away who totally misses me and wants to see me in my under– I mean, wants to see me.

But just now when I was testing my videocamera prior to a videography job, I remembered that supposed webcam function, and thought, why not? My poor videocamera has been left unused for a long time. I typically use it to record dance parties/events/performances and/or school events, with the latter no longer in existence since I am not working in a school anymore. Tonight’s videography job is an exception (will talk about that another time)… so why not make full use of my videocamera now?

So after coming back from that event, instead of going straight to bed like I should (I was at that event for seven long hours, during which I didn’t get to eat nor sit down. But don’t blame the event organisers. That’s really expected as part of my job as a videographer. I’ve suffered far worse), I rigged my videocamera up to my computer to test it as a webcam. Apparently it works, except the friend I tested it with couldn’t see my webcam, although MSN indicates that it’s able to show my webcam.

And I thought… hey for a change, why not try to put in a VLog? I’ve read about VLogs for ages but never got around to trying to put my own up for a change. For shame - considering that I’m supposed to be some sort of videographer, eh?

But the main reason is I never did is because I’m never really comfortable in front of a videocamera. Oh, I love still cameras and how they make me look, but that’s a snapshot. A moment frozen in time. And they’re totally Photoshoppable. Videocameras however record you talking and moving. They’re editable, I agree - but they’re harder to edit than still photos.

Besides, I don’t have much to say in front of a videocamera. I express myself so much better in the written word. And that’s mainly because there’s a useful button on the keyboard called “Backspace”. The “Delete” button is equally handy, too.

Anyway, here’s my first video log ever. I know it totally sucks, but hey, it’s a start

The logo for the series Heroes

I admit it. I’m a huge fan of Heroes. Actually, I’ve never had a problem admitting that before, so it’s no big deal that I’m admitting it now.

It was my students who got me hooked. I don’t follow TV shows normally, because I just don’t have the time to watch TV. But what happened was, 2 years ago, one of my students in my homeroom, Danil, had most of the episodes of Season 1, and he passed me a copy to watch. Except that I didn’t get around to watching them until MONTHS later during the holidays. I watched it while marking papers, and I got so hooked that I watched them 2-3 episodes in a row every day during my marking. I was so thankful I had all those episodes at one go. I couldn’t have waited for a whole week to pass to watch the next one.

Except that I didn’t have the last few episodes. I had to bug another student, Matthew Pang, for them!!!

Heroes Season 2 was a major disappointment for me though. There were only 11 episodes due to the Hollywood writer’s strike.

I didn’t give up hope though. And when I got hold of Season 3, I watched SIX episodes all in one go!!!

Actually I was supposed to only watch one. I wanted to pace myself, watching one episode a day, but unfortunately the episode endings were too juicy. Plus, my Windows Media Player automatically plays the next episode, and I couldn’t bring myself to press the Stop button. I was doing work on my laptop while watching the show on my other PC, and during the entire six hours… I didn’t even move from the spot to use the washroom. My @$$ was aching after that.

I can’t believe I did that! There went my resolution to be in bed by midnight. I only peeled myself off the chair and into my bed at 3.30am. The only reason I stopped was because I didn’t have the following episodes after episode six.

Oh, and here’s something to make you die-hard Heroes fans jealous. MILO VENTIMIGLIA HAS THE SAME BIRTHDATE AS ME!!!! Well, he’s actually born 2 years earlier than I was. But we have the same birthday!!! Finally someone famous (besides Kevin Bacon) to share my birthday! Check out the date for yourself here.

Not that it would really make any difference in my life though …

Milo Ventimiglia

Now, no one ever calls my house phone to look for me, because they usually call my handphone directly. I don’t think any of my friends besides my school friends (yeah, my phone number has stayed the same since then!) have my house phone number, and even so they probably don’t remember it. But considering how it has rung in succession to my handphone, it had to be for me. I had just stepped out of the shower, and so I picked it up.

True enough, it wasn’t an important call at all. It was someone from Citibank trying to tell me about the latest promotions on my credit card, and when I checked my handphone later, both missed calls were from Citibank. Actually I can’t really verify that because one number was completely unlisted and another number was private (+60000), but hey, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that theses calls were all from the same person.

The caller asked for 3-5 minutes of my time to which I curtly replied that it was a bad time and asked him to call back tomorrow. Well, that’s if I want to pick up.

I find it so annoyingly stupid. I mean, if someone doesn’t pick up her handphone, it means she’s indisposed right now, right? Well, most of the time anyway. I’m not referring to those who leave their handphones at home or in the car, or those who couldn’t hear the phones ringing inside their giant handbags. Actually, maybe that statement covers them too. If they are not picking up, it means they aren’t free. So wth do you need to call my house phone for? I’m not picking up because I’m not free!!!! It’s not even important!!! (To me anyway).

I wanted to tell him off and ask him if he was stupid or just plain dumb. But I didn’t. That’s because I’m too nice and I don’t use offensive language like that. So I just resort to ranting on my blog.

When I grow up
I wanna see the world
Drive nice cars
I wanna have boobies Groupies

Haha!!! I think I’m not the only one though. Many people have made the same mistake that I did!!!

For you die-hard PCD fans, here’s the complete lyrics and the video:

Boys call you sexy (What’s up, sexy)
And you don’t care what they say
See, every time you turn around
They screamin’ your name

[Verse 1]
Now I’ve got a confession
When I was young I wanted attention
And I promised myself that I’d do anything
Anything at all for the boys to notice me

[Bridge]
But I ain’t complaining
We all wanna be famous
So go ahead and say what you wanna say
You know what it’s like to be nameless
Want them to know what your name is
‘Cause see when I was younger I would say

[Chorus]
When I grow up
I wanna be famous
I wanna be a star
I wanna be in movies

When I grow up
I wanna see the world
Drive nice cars
I wanna have Groupies

When I grow up
Be on TV
People know me
Be on magazines

When I grow up
Fresh and clean
Number one chick when I step out on the scene

[Hook x2]
But be careful what you wish for
‘Cause you just might get it
But you just might get it
But You just might get it

[Verse 2]
They used to tell me I was silly
Until I popped up on the TV
I always wanted to be a superstar
And knew that singing songs would get me this far

[Bridge]
But I ain’t complaining
We all wanna be famous
So go ahead and say what you wanna say
You know what it’s like to be nameless
Want them to know what your name is
‘Cause see, when I was younger I would say

[Chorus]
When I grow up
I wanna be famous
I wanna be a star
I wanna be in movies

When I grow up
I wanna see the world
Drive nice cars
I wanna have Groupies

When I grow up
Be on TV
People know me
Be on magazines

When I grow up
Fresh and clean
Number one chick when I step out on the scene

[Hook x2]
Be careful what you wish for
‘Cause you just might get it
You just might get it
You just might get it

[Verse]
I see them staring at me
Oh I’m a trendsetter
Yes this is true ’cause what I do, no one can do it better
You can talk about me
‘Cause I’m a hot topic
I see you watching me, watching me, and I know you want it

[Chorus]
When I grow up
I wanna be famous
I wanna be a star
I wanna be in movies

[Chorus]
When I grow up
I wanna be famous
I wanna be a star
I wanna be in movies

When I grow up
I wanna see the world
Drive nice cars
I wanna have Groupies

When I grow up
Be on TV
People know me
Be on magazines

When I grow up
Fresh and clean
Number one chick when I step out on the scene

[Hook x2]
Be careful what you wish for
‘Cause you just might get it
You just might get it
You just might get it

[Chorus]
When I grow up
I wanna be famous
I wanna be a star
I wanna be in movies

When I grow up
I wanna see the world
Drive nice cars
I wanna have Groupies

When I grow up
Be on TV
People know me
Be on magazines

When I grow up
Fresh and clean
Number one chick when I step out on the scene

[Hook x2]
Be careful what you wish for
‘Cause you just might get it
You just might get it
You just might get it