Plus 1

Today, I am a year older.

Yesterday, I had spent the whole day with my friends doing what I used to love - hanging out, watching movie, shopping and talking about anything and everything. It was fun as I haven't met this friend ever since I came back here. Yet deep down I realized that I don't love the outing like I used to. I felt slightly detached with the whole environment as though I no longer belong there. Perhaps I don't. Perhaps I am now ready to move on with my life, and take on a new step.

I want to say goodbye to the old me and embrace this new person that I want to be. However, I've been conditioned for far too long already that I immediately step into the same old pattern each day. It's a continuous battle day in day out that you almost believe you can't step out of that mold.

The sombreness aside, I truly believe that birthdays are here to remind you of the wonderful and caring people that you have around you. They may not always be visible, but during this important event of your life, they'll take the time to show you they remember and they care.

To all my wonderful and dear friends, thank you for the gift of your friendship.

Yuuuuhuuuu......!!!

Anybody home???

July had been a bad, bad, stressful month. August didn't start any better but hopefully Ramadhan will slow things down a bit.

And I just realized that I have anger management issues. Hmmm....My bosses are tiptoeing around me right now errr.... I feel quite guilty now.

Life is yet to be in the order that I want.

Plus I'm on caffeine withdrawal mode now. That could be the reason for all the angst right now :P

Oh, have I mentioned that I miss you? Yes. You. :)

In case I don't see ya, (for the next few days, weeks or months, :p), good afternoon, good evening, and good night!

When change is a constant thing

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another. ~Anatole France


The past two months had been a month of change. Too many of them that I am almost numb to them and not knowing how to react anymore. Alhamdulillah though, most of that changes had turn out to be great ones, with one or two on the low ends. Work, personal, family and friends have gone through some really major changes far awaaay from what i expected when I first came back.

I am happy and there are joy in my life; unexpected joy which I thought I had lost it once. Yet I can't help to still be wary, knowing how easy it had been to lose it.


When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves. ~Victor Frankl


I had regressed on my own effort to change. Alas, I had allowed myself to flow with the tide and now it had become much harder to swim against it. I need strength, of will and determination to continue this tough fight...against my own self.


I miss blogging, but the time and mood have not allowed me to do so.
I owe Ms B a post as well, which hopefully I can do so soon.

Of sisterhood and team

Owen: Good work today, Grey, We're a good team.

Meredith: You know, we're not a team. Cristina and I are a team. I watch you today, watch Teddy, and Mark. You were jealous. It took a long time to make Cristina happy, and she is finally happy. If you mess with that, I will turn on you. That's a team.


Is this post going somewhere?

A recent email from a very close friend reminded me of the strong sisterhood bond we had back in our Uni days. If any guy messed with any of us, people will sooo know about it, coz the whole girls unit would have snubbed him bad.

You mess with any of us, we will turn on you. That's a team.

"Pain and heartache exist when you care too much about life" - hunny, 2010

Kau doktor hatiku

Don't you ever wish there is such thing as a "heart" doctor?

I do. Ever since I realize that I don't really have total control of what is in my heart, I wish there is a person that I can go to - with tools, charts and antibiotics to make my heart as good as new.

I wish the person could scan my heart, show me what's it made of, then cut out all the bad feelings that I have. After that, he/she can give me "antibiotics" and exercise regime to make sure the problematic parts won't appear again.

Wouldn't this world be much better place if such person do exist?


We had one before, longgg before our times. Unfortunately, we were not among the chosen ones to receive his consultations directly.

Fillers

I just realized I haven't posted any entry for March yet. So, here's one.

Yep, that's about it :P


Oh, and yes, the "chess game" is not over yet. A tough game is still ensuing. And everyone seems to be cheering the opponent now.

I'm starting to question - why am I still continuing this game? Right now, I feel like handing the "King" to my bosses or the judges and just let them decide what they want to do with it.

I have this strong inner work ethics that pushed me to always strive to do the right thing and to do it right - even if it means compromising on timeline and cost (fortunately, where I work, I have the luxury to do this hehe). That's why I always think of myself as a Consultant rather than a Project Manager. But there is only so much that you can do and advise. At the end of the day, you can give the other person the sandwich, but you cannot force them to eat it.

Checkmate???

I have until Thursday to think of my next move that will determine whether is this just another check or is it already checkmate.

And I thought I had already killed their Queen.

Sigghhhhh


And the 'chess' match between my team and the no-sense vendor team continues....

Do you know what you have and don't have in your car?

After tonight, I know that I have enough tools in my car to take out the car battery (though not my own unfortunately :p), but not enough to jump-start another car.

I know that I don't have a torch-light in my car.

I don't know whether I can use the AAM services if I want to jump-start another car using my own car. (need the AAM services to bring the cable and do it for me that is :p)

I know that I need to find the tongkat that will keep my bonnet upright. It was kinda embarassing not being able to answer that just now :p (I'm blaming it on the dark and the panicky situation though. Plus, it's not like I make it a habit to poke my head under there :p).

I realized that there are still some good samaritans out there in KL willing to help some damsels in distress.

And above all, we learned tonight that a loss that we are facing can actually be a blessing in disguise. And we learned that a loss becomes trivial and almost meaningless when you had to focus on bigger issues in life.

i.e.

Loss of shoes, you can still go home.
Loss of 'car battery', you are stuck in rut.

A purrrfect holiday :)

Holiday's over. Sigghhh....

It had been good to go back to my parents place and be pampered by them. It's somehow hard to be the efficient, think-on-your-feet corporate superwoman at home with your parents when they cook your favourite food, scold you when you eat with your left hand (I tend to do that when I'm using the spoon to eat :p) and drive you to town to take you shopping. Yep, to them I'm still their little girl who still needs to be taken care of. But it is wonderful to be able to just let go, not having to be in control for just a few days. Going back to the parents' place is like going into my very own sanctuary. I can feel the stress and work-related worries leaving me the closer that I get to home.

I wanted to write more. I had a few things in mind to write about but I just couldn't bear to go sit for long at the computer and type it up. One of these days perhaps, you may get to read what's on my mind ;) So my three days at home was spent eating, sleeping, talking, eating, sleeping, eating, shopping and eating again. The only strenuous activity that I did in the three days is trying to "tackle" my parent's cat.

Early last year, a female cat who often frequented the house had unceremoniously dropped her kitten at my parents' doorsteps. Since then, my parents had been feeding him at the kitchen's yard, which it now had made it his home. However, for some reason, it is very wary of humans. The first time that I saw the cat after I got back from UK, it ran away just from the sight of me. But after the third time that I went back, the cat finally accepted that this new person actually belongs to this place as well. Having said that, it only allowed me to feed him but not to touch him.

This time around, I spent more time with him, feeding him, talking to him that he trust me enough to come and rub his head around my legs. But whenever I bend down to touch him, he'll ran a few steps away and then starts to guling2 while giving me the "seductive" looks. And if I go to him, he'll ran away a few more steps and do the guling2 again. Really!! Macam heroine Hindustan :p

Well, as of tonight, I finally got to stroke him, but only during feeding time. Under sufferance, that's how my mother had described it.

Tomorrow, it's back to dealing with people again. Sigghh...

I am....

...Incoherent (can't blog) ...


...Undefined (don't know what to blog about) ...


...Perplexed (too difficult to explain) ...


...Tired ...


...But....


...I feel a glimmer of happiness ...


I'm loving it


:)

Good week

It has been a good work week this week. Came in Monday to find an email for me to do some "forensic" report on one critical issue facing my project right now. Spent the last 2 nights sleeping at 3am doing the report. Today the report is finally with the CEO.

I realized yesterday evening that I wasn't actually accountable to produce that report, but once I had a good grasp of the subject matter, I find myself enjoying the challenge of structuring a mess into a more comprehensible data. It's akin to playing solitaire, sorting out all the cards until you have all the details and are in control of the stack.

However, this does bring me back to a question that has been plaguing me since I got back - what do I want to do. I thought that I had come to terms to doing project management, but now am not that sure anymore.

Anyhow, it has been a good week, albeit a sleepy one.

In the name of God

A friend recently wrote this for Malaysian Insider on the issue of the usage of Allah by the Christians Herald.

http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/index.php/opinion/ziad-razak/48332-polemik-nama-allah--jangan-gugat-keseimbangan-nasional

Because of his background, the comments that he got are typical of Malaysians that are emotional, short-sighted and political in nature. I've even seen comments on FB that this is the ruling party's conspiracy theory. Gosh, maybe these people are not so different from that grape-eating guy (scary to know there's so many delusional people in Malaysia). At least that guy was polite :p

And another thing that gripe me is the fact that when we have issues internally, we started to compare our country with other countries. For this issue, the role model now is Indonesia (believe it or not!) and the Middle East.

So many people (the Muslims actually) were giving the justifications that the Arab Christians had been and are still using Allah to refer to their God, so why can't the Christians in Malaysia do the same as well. Did it occur to them that perhaps its because of the language factor where Allah meant The God (singular) in Arabic? Hence, the usage of Allah could be the same as our usage of Tuhan. So, in translating God to Arabic will be God = Allah. If we were to translate God into Malay, it will be God = Tuhan. So, if the translation of God into Malay that is what the paper wants, then the right word to be used should be Tuhan, not Allah.

"But look at Indonesia, they use Allah in their Bible, and still Islam is the main religion of the country and they are doing well." One of the commentors pointed this out.

Firstly, how many bombing incidents involving religious extremists have they had again? How many religious war between Islam and Christians have they gone through? Really, do we want to use Indonesia as our role model on this?

Secondly, Indonesia is very strict about the usage of foreign/non-Malay sounding names in the country. Hence, even a Chinese will have to use a Malay name. I saw their problem when one guy on FB shared with us the translation use in the Indonesian bible. The Bible says 'Our LORD God'. To translate this into Malay, it will become 'TUHAN Tuhan kami', which can be confusing I guess, hence they had translated it as 'TUHAN Allah kami'. I guess they can't think of any other alternative for it.

In Malaysia, we had never been strict about translating everything into Malay. Hence, if the paper wanted to maintain using God in the Malay section, or in the Malay-translated bible, no one would have said anything about it.

It is also weird for Christians (and a Catholic some more), to make reference to others rather than to the Pope himself. If truly they (the church that publishes the Herald) believe that Allah is their God, isn't this in contradiction with the Pope, who I'm sure would never use the word Allah in their prayers?

I don't intend to question whether it is right or wrong for them to use kalimah Allah. I'll leave that to the scholars. I'm just questioning why do we want to introduce a new definition when all this while (for centuries even!), we, penduduk tanah Melayu/Malaysia have define it as Tuhan = God, Allah = Muslims's God?

Delusional

I met an interesting, delusional guy just now at the supermarket near my office. I went in to get some snacks to eat before dinner. As I was passing thru the fruits section, I saw this guy grab some grapes from the packed plastic bag and started eating them! I thought at first I was seeing things. And I actually stopped and just stared at him from about 3 feet away. Lo and behold, he did it again. Something inside me insisted that I say something, but before I did, he turned and saw me looking at what he did and said,

"Takpe, yang ni memang diorang (the shop) bagi makan."

I was speechless for a while. Then I said, "Tak, yang ni kena beli dulu."

"Tak, yang ni memang boleh makan." he insisted.

"Baik you tanya orang kedai dulu." I replied and went my way.

Delusional I tell you.