Corny Songs I Used To Like

1. Dying Inside To Hold You – Timmy Thomas Why I Found It So Hot: The beat was groovy. I used to wait for the song to be aired over the radio so that I could record it on my blank tape of song compilations.

Why I Changed My Mind: Some songs are not meant for too many repeated listenings. This was one of them.

2. A Shoulder To Cry On – Tommy Page Why I Found It So Hot: Man, I used to like, no, really dig into this guy who looked a little like Elvis. I even have thrilling dreams chatting him up on a radio call-in program… hee! I didn’t quite like the tune but any song that shot my heart throb to stardom is automatically my favourite song.

Why I Changed My Mind: The more mature my tastes in music got, the cornier poor Tommy appeared to be. I woke up from my crush pretty quick and have mostly dreamless nights ever since.

My bezzie, my shoulder to cry on…

3. More Than Words – Extreme Why I Found It So Hot: Aaah, the ultimate chick magnet back in those days. In every school society buffet I’ve been in, they would always have this band of students playing their guitars and belting out this song. It seemed to be the hippest song in town.

Why I Changed My Mind: It got overplayed by all the aspiring Ah Bengs in schools. ‘Nuff said :P

4. Stranded in the Middle of Nowhere – Modern Talking Why I Found It So Hot: When I first heard it, it sounded very mesmerising.

Why I Changed My Mind: After about three times of hearing it, the breathy voice started to gyrate on my nerves. Bleh bleh.

Corny Songs I Still Like

1. The Diary – Neil Sedaka Why It’s Still Hot To Me: Who could resist the soulful tune of a boy who longs to glimpse into his object of interest’s diary? It’s just so awwwwww….

2. All Out of Love – Air Supply Why It’s Still Hot To Me: It’s one of few songs that I could sing with such gusto and still sound half decent in it. My evergreen karaoke signature song :D

3. Grow Old With You – Adam Sandler Why It’s Still Hot To Me: Cutesy song from one of my favourite movies ever – The Wedding Singer. Adam Sandler sounds so endearing in this. No girl in her right mind would cold heartedly reject someone (who is as endearing as Sandler) who croons that he wants to grow old with her. Mmmmmm…

Now, what’s on your list of corny songs? Do share ‘cos I’m dying inside to know you :P :P

I don’t know whether I’m being biased but I feel that sms-es that do not contain do not contain smileys or hehe’s or …’s are usually rather impersonal.

Before the electronic messaging age where pen and paper rule and reign, girls would normally be the ones to dot their i’s with heart shapes. But nowadays, contrary to what some people may think, it is not a girl thing to make full use of emoticons.

If I have to choose between an sms with smileys (tastefully peppered, of course. There is such a thing as overdoing a good thing!) and the one without, the one with the emoticons would warm my heart more. Written communication is tough enough to do, why not use a smiley or two to convey the emotions that accompany those lovely words?

Compare this:

Got my message? Wah, you drive me up the wall.

with this:

Got my message? Wah, you drive me up the wall :P

With just a :P, you would have diffused a possible heated argument. The :P conveys a host of friendly feelings. Of course, if the recipient has no clue what an emoticon is used for – which is a rare thing in this day and age – then it won’t work lor.

Also, another case in point, I received an sms recently from someone whom I thought was stoic and lacked a sense of humour. This sms was special… because it had a :P… hee. And just like that, the stoic image I had of him crumbled to dust and the first thought that came to mind was, “Hey, he’s human after all! He feels!”

Yep, never underestimate the power of emoticons.

;)

What a weekend. Started with a spa and culminating with a wedding dinner in KL which ended late. I am soo like a zombie now.

Had a very pleasant afternoon yesterday with my folks and rellies. As usual, my parents are my most supportive and loudest champions. And they would brag about their kids to rellies at any opportune moment.

“I used to teach my Ariel how to drive, but now her skills has far superceeded mine. She has a good sense of direction, too,” bragged dad to whomever who bothered to listen in the van.

Errr… the last bit of that sentence was a gross fabrication but if I were to compare my navigation skills to dad, he wasn’t really lying lar.

PG, who was driving under my directions soon found out how bad I was when it comes to directions. Let me emphasize that at any point in time we were not lost yesterday. We just took errr… longer routes to get to our eventual destination.

And when my folks and I asked him for the best way to get to my colleague’s wedding dinner at a hotel in KL, we couldn’t even agree on the name of the hotel.

“I think it’s Marriott,” said I.

“Eh, not Holiday Villa meh?” dad interjected.

“Holiday Villa is in Subang lar. I believe it’s Concorde,” mom said confidently.

To be safe, PG gave me directions on how to drive to both Marriott AND Concorde and where to park. He even gave an accurate estimate of the parking charges of the hotels. And made sure that I got to the right hotel safely. Heh heh.

Turns out that my mom was right. She actually read the wedding invite and the location map while I merely oooohed and aaaahed over the classy design without bothering to read the name of hotel.

Anyway, the hotel food was so-so but my bro and I loved the way the whole event went. Classy, simple and tasteful. No karaoke singers, thank God.

So that was how my busy weekend went. I think I need another weekend to recuperate from that weekend. Zzzzzzzz….

After a most relaxing spa session, I went for the second appointment at church yesterday – The Apprentice. Basically, every participant was not informed of the nature of the game. We were just told that it was something like The Apprentice lar. So, I was just expecting an afternoon of fun, completing some tasks with my team members.

But the minute that it was announced that the game was structured so that we can learn to be better Apprentices of Christ, I developed a sinking feeling in my stomach. Visions of me evangelising to total strangers and sharing my testimony that afternoon made my knees quake. Sure, I’ve shared the Good News to strangers before but I’ve always been told in advance and have ample time to prepare my heart and mind for it.

And so, like the first son in the parable in Matthew 21:28-31, I gave a bunch of excuses to Esther (my team leader) that I wasn’t prepared for this and I most probably wouldn’t do a good job at it, bla, bla, bla. But the minute the game started, my competitive side took over and I perked up. By darn, we are gonna make it to the top 3 teams of this game!

The rules of the game is very much like The Apprentice. Each team was given a sum of RM10k (fake currency, of course) on which we have to spend on getting permission to use our cars, handphones to make calls to find the answers to some of our tasks, and to get our new tasks when the previous ones have been successfully completed. If your team is the first to complete a task and is the first to reach the next station to get your next task, you would only pay RM500 for that new task. The second team would need to pay RM700. The third pays RM900 and so on.

The winning team is the one who successfully completes all the task at the most minimal cost.

We were all divided into 12 teams (after the 12 disciples of Jesus) with 3 members in each team. Esther was gung-ho about the disciples’ names that start with J (ahem, I suspect it’s because her sweetheart’s name starts with a J mar… hehe!). But I chose Luke despite her protests and so, Luke it was.

And thus, the game organisers had us all racing all over PJ to collect our next assignments. Thank God for Esther’s psycho speedy driving which always got The Lukers to the destination fast – always the first three to reach the stations. The first task was to call 6 people and get at least 3 to come for our Christmas musical. Fine, that was rather easy to do. The second task was to share our testimony to at least 3 people in a nearby hill. Each person must share to at least one other person. Now, this was the part that had me quaking in my knees. But this was also the part that The Lukers enjoyed the most. God led us to people who really wanted to know more about the Christian life and about the power of Christ in our lives.

I got to know this auntie who had kind eyes and nicely listened to my 3-sentence testimony. Her English was not that good but she opened up and asked for prayers for her son who was a drug addict. I was amazed that she was so open to a total stranger and my heart went out to her and her son. It reminded me that sharing the gospel is not merely by words alone, but more so compassion in action.

Which led us to the fourth task, which is to see a need and meet it. The third task was very simple – just filling up some blanks in a form. The fourth task had us combing the streets for beggars whom we can give some hot food to but the MPPJ has done a good job in cleaning up the streets and no beggars were to be found. So, I helped an old lady to cross the street and she was amused at our eagerness to help her. I felt rather embarrassed at the real motivation behind our eagerness to help but the good thing about this task is it has trained us to be on the lookout to see how we can help the people around us. That was what Jesus did and so should we, as His Apprentices.

One team did a lovely thing. They went to a Home for the needy and asked what their needs were. They were given a list of items that the Home direly needs but have no funds for. Basic stuff like garlic, oyster sauce, potatoes were lacking. The team took the list and bought what they could afford which amounted to over RM150. And they promised to visit the Home during Christmas to sing carols and play with the handicapped children residing there.

Another team bought some hardworking cobblers some soya bean drinks. At first they were met with suspicion but after a while, the cobblers accepted the drinks and they were speechless with gratitude. No stranger has ever treated them so nicely before, with no strings attached.

It’s sad but our society has become such a place where kindness from strangers are often viewed with distrust and are normally rejected. Kids are trained not to speak to strangers and adults believe that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Crooks have used kindness to lure unsuspecting victims into their trap. So yeah, some of us did encounter difficulties in getting people to accept our kind favours.

And some teams were more interested in connecting with the people that they did not manage to finish the other tasks. But it was alright, because the intention of the game is not to win the gifts that were given to the first three winning teams, but to capture the heart and passion that Christ has for the world.

At the end of the day, J-son (the head organiser for this game) said that he hoped that The Apprentice has managed to instill some good things in us. In making us come out of our comfort zone and from being pre-occupied with our own needs and wants to actually noticing the needs of those around us, we would understand the heart of God and be His hands in loving and helping the needies around us. To share the reason behind the hope that we have to those who have lost hope.

It was a great and meaningful day despite the initial apprehension. I was glad that Esther made me do it.

Oh and by the way, The Lukers got third place. I got a Coolcat Wallet… hee!

A Wallet Made For Me??! Waah…

We celebrated Amanda and Nancy’s bdays yesterday. Nancy was already anticipating in agony sheer joy the ‘wonderful’ treatment that we normally dish out to birthday people. So much so that she told her colleagues that ’she was going to really get it tonight’. Awwww… you can tell she was so looking forward to it, eh?

Anyway, I assigned the sabo’ portion of the event to my very talented and evil sidekick Rina. She spent the better part of the afternoon dreaming up a unique game for the birthday girls to play. She came up with something called ‘Telepathy’. Good job, girl :)

Basically, Nancy and Amanda were to take turns guessing how each other would react in a given situation. One would stand in front of the other and the gamemaster would say, “Nancy, how would you react when you feel angry towards Lim (her fiance)?” and the cute girl would act out her reactions, leaving Amanda who is standing in front to try to guess and imitate her actions. Sounds simple? Not really, not when the two have not observed each other in most situations in life. But the girls were such good sports and even tolerated having a star-like beauty mark drawn on their faces.

Telepathy is a tough job!

This is a unique tradition that all birthday girls have to go through in our cell. A rite of passage, so to speak.

Anyway, never much of a bystander, I thought the game was too much fun to be played by the birthday gals alone. So everyone had to join in the fun. Bezzie and I paired up, naturally. Wah, this telepathy thingy was so hard to do. I thought she was more expressive than she thought she was and she thought I was more sedate than I normally am. So we all got powder painted on our faces – the punishment for giving incorrect guesses.

Yaay, we all suck at telepathy!

The fun part came when we made Lim and Nancy guess each others’ reactions. These two were hilarious together and overly exagerated their reactions to our merriment. And they even got some of the questions right! It’s really fun ragging them together… hehehe.

Nancy peering to see if Lim guessed her reactions right

All in all we had great fun showing our heartfelt appreciation to the birthday girls. Happy birthday, you two! *Hugs*

A chat with a dear old colleague of mine reminded me of the simple, sunny and cheerful person that he was. And he has not changed one iota in that respect. He talked about the rough patches in his life the same way as he talked about his awesome New Zealand vacation. The way he looked at problems and tackled them ~ everything is taken in stride with a dose of realism and heavily peppered with optimism.

TigerPrawn Drunken Chicken, you are such an inspiration, you know that?

When you take a bird’s eye view on things, seemingly mammoth problems are reduced into pieces of cake.

I must confess that I do gripe about the things that are not right about my country. About corruption, the injustice I see, the inefficiencies, the ‘tidak apa’ attitude, and so on and so forth. When you can’t think of anything else to say to a fellow Malaysian, these are all hot topics for conversation. Even though it’s over-talked, over-analysed and over-everything, for those few moments that you gripe about the warts of the country and the government, you feel a temporary bond with that Malaysian(s). That you have a common ground and a common ‘enemy’.

But for all the warts of my country and the bad image that some of its citizens portray, there are still a few good souls that quietly serve behind the scenes, untainted by the lure of corruption. Just because the good deeds were not reported doesn’t mean that they did not happen. And to these few good people, they wouldn’t consider it to be anything out of the ordinary. They were just doing their jobs.

An example that is close to heart happened to my brother. He was walking home one day and just before he was about to turn into the road where our house was, a boy who looked like a gangster came up to him asking for money.

My bro: I’m sorry, I don’t have much with me now.
Gangster-like boy: Oh, where do you live then? Maybe we can get the money from your house. Also, I think I may need a place to stay. I’m hiding from some people.

When my brother heard that, he didn’t know quite what to do. He certainly didn’t want to lead this gangster boy to our home and endanger the rest of the family members. But if he doesn’t comply to the boy’s wishes, what would be the consequence of that? Also, he felt sorry for the boy who looked dirty, scared and hungry.

Thankfully, a patrol car pulled over and two plainclothes policeman came out to query the two boys. They have received prior complaints from various residents nearby about suspicious characters lurking around the area and have been patrolling the residential area regularly. So when they spotted my brother and the boy talking, they smelled a rat and decided to query them.

They allowed my brother to walk on home and they asked the other boy to follow them to the police station for further questioning since he couldn’t produce his identity card for their inspection.

When my brother related the incident to us, we were amazed at the good timing of the sequence of events. God’s timing was perfect and He sent a few good men to my brother’s rescue. But how could He have sent anyone if they have not availed themselves? If they had just decided to be lax and just roam around the neighbourhood without observing much? Or just decide to take a break instead?

Yes, my country is not perfect. But for the good people that strive to do their best and give their all for it, I salute you. You unsung heroes are what makes our nation shine. May you no longer go unnoticed and unappreciated.

Recently, due to the persuasive skills of a salesgirl in Jaya Jusco, I decided to try out a new coffee brand ~ P-erl Cafe with Kacip Fatimah (need to put a dash because it’s a banned word on my site!). It seems that Kacip Fatimah (ginseng specially formulated for women) helps women who have just given birth regain their energy faster. And for other women, it’s just an energising herb.

But Kacip Fatimah has about the same connotation as Tongkat Ali (ginseng formulated for men). Both are notoriously touted as aphrodisiacs.

I wasn’t into all these energising (nor aphrodisiac) thingy but the sample brew tasted good and the salesgirl was so sweet, so I bought a packet. No harm trying, right?

The very next morning I tried it. And discovered that it energised my wits a wee bit too much. Tongue became sassy and sharp. Teased my frens mercilessly. Yikes.

So, I decided to try it out in the afternoon instead. Today, specifically. After a heavy lunch and all, I needed all the energy I can get. The minute I mixed hot water into the brew, the whole office was abuzz. Everyone was sniffing the air and wondering who the coffee culprit was.

HK suspected it was me and turned to look and smile enquiringly at me. I lifted my mug and nodded to her. Everyone else saw that and their curiousity was soon appeased. We all had a good laugh.

The aroma is very distinct because of the ginseng, I guess. So far, no effects both good or bad have been observed as I sip it. It sure tastes great. But I still prefer my Chek Hup leh.

Because of its aphrodisiac connotations, I dared not offer it to my colleagues. Again, have an image to maintain mar.

Good to the last drop.

An excerpt of an email joke in Malay had me in giggles. The translation are in italics:

Murid : Selamat sejahtera cikgu!
Students: Good day to you, teacher!

Cikgu : Sama-sama, duduk! Dengar sini baik-baik. Hari ini cikgu nak uji kamu semua tentang perkataan berlawan. Bila cikgu sebutkan perkataannya, kamu semua mesti menjawab dengan cepat, lawan bagi perkataan-perkataan itu, faham?
Teacher: Same to you. Now sit down and listen up. Today, I will test you on ‘Opposite Words’. When I say something, all of you must give me a quick answer of the opposite of what I say. Understand?

Murid : Faham, cikgu!
Students: We understand, teacher!

Cikgu : Saya tak mahu ada apa-apa gangguan.
Teacher: I don’t want any disturbances.

Murid : (senyap)
Students: (quiet)

Cikgu : Pandai!
Teacher: Clever!

Murid : Bodoh!
Students: Stupid!

Cikgu : Tinggi!
Teacher: Tall!

Murid : Rendah!
Students: Short!

Cikgu : Jauh!
Teacher: Far!

Murid : Dekat!
Students: Near!

Cikgu : Keadilan!
Teacher: Justice! (also the name of a political party)

Murid : UMNO!
Students: UMNO! (Political party) (the opposing coalition party)

Cikgu : Salah!
Teacher: Wrong!

Murid : Betul!
Students: Correct!

Cikgu : Bodoh!
Teacher: Stupid!

Murid : Pandai!
Students: Clever!

Cikgu : Bukan!
Teacher: No!

Murid : Ya!
Students: Yes!

Cikgu : Oh Tuhan!
Teacher: Oh my God!

Murid : Oh Hamba!
Students: Oh my slave!

snip snip

Cikgu : UMNO adalah jawapan yang salah! Kamu semua ditahan tengah hari ini!
Teacher: UMNO is the wrong answer! You are all detained this afternoon!

Murid : UMNO jawapan betul! Dilepaskan tengah malam itu!
Students: UMNO is the right answer! We will be released on midnight!

Cikgu : (Senyap dan mengambil buku-bukunya keluar.)
Teacher: (Silence as she took her books and left the class)

Sebentar kemudian, loceng pun berdering. Murid-murid berasa lega kerana guru yang paling ditakuti oleh mereka telah keluar. Walau bagaimanapun, mereka merasa bangga kerana telah dapat menjawab kesemua soalan cikgu tadi, tetapi esok masih ada
A few moments later, the bell rang. The students were relieved that their most feared teacher has left the class. Nevertheless, they felt proud that they managed to answer all of her questions. But there is always tomorrow…

---

The joke kinda reminded me of what younger brothers normally do to irritate their elder sisters. The majority of my tiffs with my bro always revolves around him repeating every word I say.

Me: Eh, pick up after your own mess.
Bro: Eh, pick up after your own mess.
Me: Oi, are you trying to be funny?
Bro: Oi, are you trying to be funny?
Me: Arrggggh! I’m gonna cane ya!
Bro: (flees from crime scene)

Am I so ever glad that as the years passed, he grew up and decided to stop that irritating habit of his for good. Some things from childhood I do miss occasionally, but this one is definitely not one of them.

Cat lovers get a bad rep, according to my friend Choon.

So, if you are catty (a cat fan, not a horrid & spiteful meanie) and you know it say “Meow! Meow!”