nekomatta

Friday, January 02, 2009

So much for finishing the second half of the other post on time! Before you talk to me about procrastination, I'll have you know it's one of those resolutions that I've made obscene amount of times over and over again and failed just as much to keep. Mind you, I've also been plagued with this ridiculous flu for the past week or so. Although, visiting the karaoke booth two days in a row with a sore throat wasn't the greatest idea ever. Hey, at least I got to be Barry White for a day after that, how cool was that?

Still, while 2008 wasn't the best, it certainly wasn't the worst either. I had good memorable moments with (in no particular order) Chicago, pole, Proximity, more pole, Korea, swing and last but not least Australia. 2008 was the year of dance! Hopefully it'll stay that way through 2009 :p

2009 kicked off with a blast--we had Leng drunk sky high into the land of scarred livers and embarrassing YouTube-able moments. We ab-salute you Leng! :) Also, bonus points to myself for not doing a merlion after a few shots of that smashing Ukrainian vodka Terry had brought. Nasty, nasty stuff. I can't imagine sitting in the distillery for it--I would've passed out from the fumes.

Here are the remaining pictures from 2008, namely shots from Hobart and the funky stuff up till New Year's Eve.

Happy 2009 everyone! :D

Graduation, Hobart

Given the weird circumstances I was in right before the trip to Australia, I thought living on-campus in Hobart with my sis in one of the residential apartments was quite the ironic trip back down university memory lane:



The day before sis' big day, we headed off to Fish 349 to grab dinner.



It was quite a wait for the food but no matter, sis and I scanned the room for possible means to entertain ourselves while the folks sat about patiently. Lo and behold... they had color pencils and blank sheets to well, color.

Our kiasu spirits kicked in, and this was our subject of the day:


The unsuspecting fish

Our objective? To join the ranks of artists, who were quite possibly in the age range of oh... 3 to 9, up onto Fish 349's coveted wall of fame:



After minutes of furious scribbling and minor trash talking (naturally, my fish is better) we have the sexy SEAN FISH...



and the IM FISH:



And the two fishies together, just so I don't seem bias and such for peddling my own (heh heh):



My fish is way hotter.

Sis was supposed to go back in a week to check if they posted any of our fishes and had gleefully proclaimed hers to be on top. That and she threatened to torch the place if none of the fishes (or just mine) had made it to the board.

The big day finally arrives! "Pre-event" shots with the sis before she dons her gown and cam whores the whole campus:






Someone is soooo working the camera.




What happens when we finally QC the pictures that we took.

And off to the campus we went! Here's a pic of sis with the folks in UTas' School of Pharmacy's tiny waiting hall:


Everyone looking as pleased as a punch!


Magic doors to the underground dungeon of a computer lab.


Sis with dad.


Sis with mom.


Sex0ring the Confucius statue by the courtyard, lol.

I don't remember taking that many pictures when I graduated, so I'll cut it short and show you my favorite pic of sis on campus--here she is literally going "Hyuk! Screw you dispensing lab!" in front of the lab :p



No graduation ceremony pictures... everyone was moving way too fast for my camera to catch :p On the plus side, we went and drowned ourselves in cherries the next day:



And the folks posing with the camera with the bounty of cherries that we nabbed off the trees:



The best cherries are in the trees with the most worms! We perfected the art of tilting those slightly-out-of-reach branches into grasp without disturbing any of the worms lest they start falling into my hair T_T

After that we headed drove around mindlessly sight-seeing (it's all mountains and the coast, I swear) and bumped into the Pancake Train:




Of course, it's not actually a train train!

Sis and I were piggies once again:


Sis with her scallop pancake dish. She ended up eating half of mine instead.


My super sexy combination of bacon, apple and a truckload of maple syrup. Needless to say, mine was much better, bwahaha.

The last day (for dad and I anyway) in Hobart: we drove over to Salamanca in the morning and meandered through the morning market. No pictures because I was too busy shopping, sorry! :p

Christmas cookies, swing

It's Christmas! We baked cookies at Aizat's till the wee morning (and yes, bad photography because all images were taken using his cellphone):


So it begins--the Christmas cookie saga!

We dressed up:





And danced the night away:


The Christmas swing--Aizat, Dania and Ummi

Post Christmas and we were still baking (only because we were trying to finish up leftover ingredients before Aizat took off for Chile!). We had a killer brownie (aptly tagged "Sin" in the Facebook albums) and a resurrected apple lemon crumble:


The two chefs; third "chef" playing photographer.

As for the NYE pictures... well, let's just say whatever happened in Darby Park, stays in Darby Park! <3 to the extended family :)

Labels: family, food, friends, swing, travel

Friday, December 26, 2008

Ah, December. The month of holidays... and traveling!

The folks and I went over to Australia for sis' graduation! She is now an official (and legit) drug pusher.


Sis graduating from the School of Pharmacy.

I have to say, flying Air Asia X was the most uncomfortable and torturous experience I've ever had. You think flying 14 hours in Northwest was uncomfortable? Compared to eight hours of Air Asia X, the 14 hours was a luxurious decadence with satin sheets and a butler on call with a bottle of champagne.

Also, since I really only take pictures of food while traveling... you will have to understand and bear with the lack of landscape images throughout this post. I tried, I really did.

Anyway! We stopped by Melbourne before we took off for Hobart, Tassie. We shopped, we ate, we walked, shopped some more and ate till or arteries gave way to the greasy bacon. Since I love pancakes so much the first place we ate at was the Pancake Parlour:


Pancake Parlour!


Family shot: they had this interesting (albeit dirty) mirror up front...


Mom and sis peddling the pancakes.


My pancake: blueberry, of course!


The IT pancake. Lock and load, baby.





Then we got up bright and obscenely early the next morning at 6:30 (you read that right!) to head off to Sovereign Hill, Ballarat to look for gold.


Cam whoring in the AM, before we passed out on the way to Ballarat.

Being the piggie that I am, I slept most of the way there (way too early to be up and it was raining!) but we managed to ninja some shots of the quaint Ballarat roads:









And we finally reach Sovereign Hill! Sovereign Hill is really an open air museum of sorts that shows off Ballarat in its gold rush days.


The miniature Sovereign Hill.


I think I was looking for gold... sorta.


Sis and dad posing with a bright red buggy.


It was damp and rainy, so we had to cuddle by the fireplace to stay warm... outdoors.

The mining/panning areas:





The trip set us back so much, sis and I had to start panning for gold...


Panning for gold, hey ho!

which was pretty much an epic fail. I got dirt, and more dirt. The folks tried their hands at it too:



Sis and I also took a tour into the mines:



After we had enough of hard work, we went over to the "town" to kick back and relax:






Sis bringing in some modern hip hand gestures to Sovereign Hill's old fashioned backdrop.

We also went to visit the theater, checked out some accommodation and dropped by the doctors':










Sis and I hogging the couch in the waiting rooms waiting for the rain to simmer down


Mom and Dad taking their turn


The doctor's tools :|



We also went to see how lollies were made at the confectionery shop:


The candy shop--don't get me started on the candy man...

And went to see the making of a solid gold bar (all $125,000 of it straight from its sexy liquid form), blacksmithing anyone?



Somewhere between the stops, we went for lunch. But I was too hungry to be bothered with the pictures (hey, always a first! :p). Our final stop at Sovereign Hill was the candle making barn:






Three guesses as to what these also look like. Hmm.

We hopped onto a city tour the next morning. Again, I had to wake up at the same obscene time of 6:30. My body was about to collapse. I had to drag my dead-weight self out of bed screaming and kicking. Sorry, minimal pictures. Doing more than sitting and/or sleeping in a moving vehicle makes me spontaneously combust and throw up.

We stopped by the botanical gardens...



as well as the shrine of remembrance, which had a fantastic view of the city:



Finally we got dropped off at the Queen Victoria market place for lunch and then took a nice stroll back to the hotel. Where we saw graffiti...



more buildings (this is some sort of government building, I forgot which one, zoinks!)...



and St. Paul's Cathedral in all its gothic revival glam (I hope this is the right building :p). Our tour guide said there was a sister building in Sydney but of course, the one in Melbourne is bigger... or so the people in Melbourne would like to believe. People from Sydney reading this are welcome to dispute the matter.



We came back to Melbourne and I headed off for Blues 101 at the Bendigo Hotel with Kay! Unfortunately, my camera chose to splutter and run out of batteries before we could cam whore the event :( Nevertheless, KL Swing! was at Melbourne representin'!

Part two, the Hobart edition will be coming soon! :)

Labels: family, travel

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

I'm trolling Geni...

and I've discovered only my sis and I together with my fourth uncle's kids don't share the "Tan" family naming convention. You could say we're the oddities of the family tree... or we're just in the cool kids club ;)

That and I'm the only eldest child who isn't married yet on my dad's side X_X But that's probably not a bad thing, considering my dad is the youngest of the lot :P

Labels: family, madness

Thursday, December 27, 2007

I gave up on the Youth Malaysia JScript... I'd have to re-write my CSS to accomodate their "bare" styling so that the dog ear doesn't look like an unwanted reject of a pixelated gif from 1997. What, you think I'm going to keep restyling my img tag for every id I make? Hell, no.

Onto the fun stuff--another session of picture whoring! I still need to nab pictures from Chris... although, I think they're all living in cold fear of unwanted pictures ending up on Facebook; case and point YEES who's really not selective at all with the pictures she put up :P.

Pictures are from the Christmas-y break we had: from overdosing on ribs at our first work "party", excessive estrogen at the Korean BBQ place, getting Yen pissed drunk (remake of 2 Fast 2 Furious on the LDP in attempt to get the nearest gas station) to caroling at DK Cafe <3 and bouncing shiruken-shaped carrots off the walls at Ninja Jones!

Labels: birthday, family, food, friends

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

The funeral is done. The body is in the ground.

It's a strange culture we Chinese people have. It's perfectly "okay" to watch a man take his last breath on the hospital bed. "Okay" to watch the skin on his face turn translucent as you watch his chest struggle to rise and fall one last time. Nothing "wrong" with watching his heart rate painfully dwindle and finally flatline. It's still not "taboo" to look at his casket, to see if it's been positioned properly before they start heaving dirt over it. But it's completely forbidden to watch my grandfather's casket being carried in and out of the funeral wagon (whether it's from the house or to the burial spot) and lowered into the ground.

To be honest, these past three months has been extremely exhausting. These past three days escalated everything up ten-fold; crying was acceptable together with the sleepy wake of legitimate reasons to unleash everybody's personal vengeful demons. Every moral virtue frowned upon (almost all, but not quite) reared its ugly head only to be defended and amended with reasons of grief and consolation.

This morning, as we did the funeral march to a garbled, cacophonous tone of "Amazing Grace" and the relatives' grieving wails for the dearly departed (with my aunts setting the pace), my eyes were strangely dry.

I could feel the tears well up... even compelled to explode given the somber situation I was in. But just as quickly, with a small bite on my lip and a look to the ground on my left--the tears, the urge and the reason went away.

I am strong. I have to be. And I can't cry these tears anymore.

On a side note, I am pretty glad the funeral is over and done with. He is in peace and everyone can take their nosy, cotton-picking fingers out of the big family drama pot and get on with their lives.

Cold-hearted bitch? Well, all the high-strung bickering was more than what I wanted to hear. My mom's family tree carries with itself deep, dark, twisted secrets which I caught hushed whispers of during the big family lunch gathering today. Considering I don't speak Hokkien all too brilliantly (i.e. the relatives don't bother talking to me and quiz my parents instead while I flash my pearly whites periodically, it's both a curse and blessing really) I still end up asking my parents what on Mother Nature's green earth were they whispering about.

The interest of the day came in the form of an old, buried story from a long, long time ago, regarding "stolen" inheritance from my great-grandfather which got swindled away by another family member... just means that my recently departed grandfather didn't get squat but his brother (who isn't really his brother, but is my mom's grandfather's daughter's son... go figure O.o) manipulated the situation at that time and inherited the millions in land property from my great-grandfather. In essence, everything went to the grandson.

Sigh, the old cobwebs tangled with resentment that runs deep.

I suppose drama is a genetic trait that runs in the family, down to my generation; my genes are laced with a superior essence of drama compacted and refined through the generations.

Just. Great.

Finally, a little dark humor amidst the depressing, lonesome mood I've set: I found this in my cousin's place and since it would be excessively awkward to carry a camera to a funeral, my grainy phone cam caught:


New packing too.

I'll leave it open to interpretation.

Labels: family

Saturday, June 17, 2006

I've never walked into a hospital feeling so detached from the world I had long ago made my playground. I sit on a swing which is now rusty and dangling precariously by a decrepit chain while looking around just to realize the slide is bent and broken and the see-saw splintered into a grotesque mass. Suspended in a heavy shroud of desolation, all I can do is sit on my swing and watch the dying leaves eddy about on the naked concrete. I had come prepared too; all decked out in white, evil red eyes, long black flowy hair... the very makings of my own J-Horror flick. I was the Angel of Death lost in her own complications and at war with her emotions.

So lost in my thoughts, as I was walking down the stairs, I slipped and gracefully landed on my ass a few stair steps later. Despite my right arm taking most of the impact, my right ass cheek (and my pride) now sported a nasty, stinging bruise. Bruised ass cheek, broken wing... same thing.

One delicate step at a time, I made my way to the elevators and bleakly watched the floor numbers light up on the shiny metallic control panel.

I watched my despondent features disappear as the heavy doors slid open, beckoning me into a dimly lit hallway which walls were coated with a fallaciously bright and calm layer of fresh green paint. My nostrils were overpowered by the sterile scent of death that lingered patiently around every corner of the floor.

Have you ever cried so much, or tried to hold your tears in so bad your face hurts? Don't laugh.

For every tear you attempt to keep pooled at your eyes, but would traitorously leave a warm trickle across your cheek every once so often, there are a few muscles in your face that scream in protest to force the expression. Multiply that by a frequency of once every one minute.

Yeah.

To be extremely honest, I didn't really know my grandfather THAT well.

But just when you thought you could cry no more tears, you walk yourself into the hospital accommodation of four hospital beds in one cramped room with all its occupants just waiting to die, the composure you've valiantly fought to keep just shatters. Walking up to my grandfather, standing at the corner of his tiny bed... I stood there unmoving, unsure of what to do.

Will he fall apart if I touch him? Does he even remember who I am? I just saw him a few weeks ago.

And then he held out a shaky, wrinkled, fragile hand towards me.

And the tears came.

Together with the twisted knots in my chest and that one shaky, uneven, suffocated breath.

My grandfather sits there, holding my hand not realizing that the cancer and the dangerously slow but steady internal bleeding is killing him softly.

Several pulled facial muscles later, I joined my cousins in the waiting hall while my parents, aunts and uncles "talked" downstairs. I looked at my cousins. If they're not pacing about restlessly, they sit there quietly with red eyes and dried tear-streaked cheeks zoning out. We are all so different in every way possible but today, sitting on the chairs well worn in by previous occupants praying, hoping and crying past desperation for their loved ones, we are all unified as one big family with one heart-wrenching concern.

It is true though that sitting together, we are all kited into the gloomy web of forlorn despair we've spun and we ultimately feed off each other's depression causing an intensely emotionally charged atmosphere.

Emotionally hanging by a gossamer thread of hope and with nothing else to do, I gazed past the nurses' station, past the long row of files which held vitals of who would die and who would live, past the murky white window frame and into... an abyssal, obsidian tunnel of nothingness.
The lucky ones on this floor get to go home with their loved ones through the two big doors at the entrance downstairs. The unlucky ones (subjective, really) get fearlessly spirited away in the middle of the night out the window into a different time and place. In a sense, the hospital is the exchange terminal. Life is brought into the world here and cruelly enough, life is taken back a mere tower away.

It was awhile before the "adults" came back up. Listening to them talk had transformed me into the seven year old sitting on plastic chairs years ago while looking at my first aunt sleeping peacefully in the casket in front of me. Whispering furiously to my cousin, I could only ask why our aunt was sleeping there unmoving. Yes, it didn't really hit home that she was not waking up anymore.

It did a few minutes later when I saw my mom and other aunts start to cry. At least, my seven year old brain finally grasped that something was very wrong.

Transported back into the present, I'm not sure if I should be inspired by the adult practicality or a little shocked. They were talking about funeral arrangements. Technically, he is going to die but for crying out loud the man is still alive on his bed and they were already disputing about how much his casket would cost.

My mom and second aunt stayed behind.

I came home with my dad.

On the way home, my dad darted a glance at me sideways while I looked out the window at nothing in particular. He reached over and gave me a solid pat on my head saying, "Be strong."

And I cried to myself.

Labels: family