ok, it's been a long time since my last post. but i've been real busy. i just started my IB and just finished my first mock exams.

what took me aback though is that ever since i started college, i've met so many people. and more than a handful of these people hurt themselves one way or another. the cutting the burning the hitting. and the thoughts of suicide.

now if i were to be a complete cynic, i would say that half of these people are just needing the attention, hence the vocalization of their problems to the world. but there are so many that don't say anything that it makes my gut wrench.

imagine one of your closest friends being totally fine one day but then not answering your calls for awhile. the next time, you see a fresh scar on his/her arm. or a week later you see new scabs in a line across.

and it might be their own choice, or peer pressure or stress or family problems, but most of them don't talk about it. all my life, every time i see a problem like this, i've just thought to myself. 'people who cut are just stupid, why would you inflict pain on yourself.' and granted, i might still think that sometimes, but somewhere in the back of my head, i know that most of them actually want the pain.

now i don't know why exactly they do it, or want it. but i think, (and really it's just an opinion) that they feel a need to hurt themselves because they need an excuse to cry, hate life and feel sorry for themselves. some people i've noticed even though have a pretty shit life, don't think they can complain about it. they've numbed themselves to accepting the shit that is. and by cutting, it gives them a form of physical pain they can curse at. and while they're hurting, they can look at themselves and see, 'yeah, i'm in pain, oh poor me. i hate whats happening to me, it hurts.'

if you look at that line again, anyone in a crappy situation would be able to say that.

my boyfriend dumped me :'yeah, i'm in pain, oh poor me. i hate whats happening to me, it hurts.'

my parents got a divorce :'yeah, i'm in pain, oh poor me. i hate whats happening to me, it hurts.'

basically everything is on the emotional level. people who hurt don't want that. they need a physical pain to be able to say it. and i really feel for them, every time someone i know has a problem, i try so hard to get them out of it. i feel they just need an outlet. they need to know there's a place where life isn't so shit after all. and the only thing people outside of them can do is help them find that place.

hmm, just something to think about. and ugh, the title looks like an essay title. geez, the work is getting to me. not.

x

ok, wednesday was a chill morning. billy elliott was at 2pm. so we watched MAD MEN season 3 first 2 episodes. muaha. love that show. anyways, then we went to times square.

billy elliott was AMAZING. i LOVED it. whahahahahh!!! it was soo GOOD. spectacular! the dancing the songs! OMG!! whahaha!

ok, moment over. it's a really good musical. then we went for dinner at a restaurant called wd-50. to be honest when i heard about this place, i thought it was gonna be all posh and high end. turns out it's in a dingy place with a mosquito net as a door. but the inside was quite nice. so it was totally out of place in a dingy alley. so we sat down and we both got the tasting menu, and i had the wine pairing caz aunty iris couldn't. hehe. it was 11 courses!! 11 courses excluding coffee!! and almost each course came with a glass of wine! so it was about 8 different wines!! OMG. the food, the food was, well, different. it was good, but really weird. it started out kinda normal, so it was like 'oh, this is great! why do people call it crazy?' hmm, then it got crazier and crazier. it went from snapper with ginger and eggplant (normal), to foie gras with passionfruit (huh?), to striped bass with 'dirty' grapes and cocoa powder (ooohkay..!) and went all the way to vanilla ice cream with raspberry pebbles and balsamic vinegar (what?!!)!

but it was good! we were so stuffed by the end of it, we couldn't even order coffee. thank god we took a cab home. OMG. good dinner. but i kinda feel bad. it was kinda way too expensive. but what an awesome dinner. sigh.

now it's in the morning, and we're gonna go to the doctor's today. i get to meet a 4 months young baby. heehee.

x

the queen and the revolving.

ok, so, today: julie and julia. OMG. longest movie ever, korean lunch. OMG. best side dishes ever, then we had little bit of chill time before the wrap party for 'just wright'. a movie coming out next year i think, starring queen latifah and mehcad brooks.

which to be honest, as usual, i didn't feel like going. so sleepy! i swear, if i could retire now, i would. but of course i went anyway. despite of course feeling completely knackered and drowsy as hell.

but it was ok, it was free booze. but only vodka and beer. which both did i have. since my aunt iris couldn't drink, i took it upon myself to try and enjoy her share too. queen latifah was there, i'm pretty sure she waved at me too. it was dark you see. and she wouldn't dare accidently miss out somebody who could possibly have worked with her. and her leading male fella, mehcad brooks. so it was pretty cool.

then finally, here comes the torture. we were on the subway. and i SERIOUSLY needed the loo. you know, just caz i like the architecture and design, not for anything else or anything. but apparently, new yorkers don't believe in the process of homeostasis and osmoregulation. especially in subway station. so OMG. we had to stop at one of the stops and i had to go into dunkin doughnuts. ok, embarassing story of the day over.

ooh, some bouncer stopped me on the way out of the club at the party. he went like: 'where do ya think you're goin?' apparently, we're not supposed to bring our drink out. which totally doesn't make sense, i wasn't using a glass or anything, it was a bottle, and they should be thankful that i'm disposing of it for them. silly man. so naturally, he, like every single person who has even slightly crossed me, has been blacklisted.

now i'm at home, going to bed.

next episode on 'ramblings of a bottle', an interesting view of billy elliot, and the harsh and absolutely refined critique of the WD-50.

five years ago, it was my time to go for walkabout with magic man. the way my sister did. but naturally, i didn't. it was postponed.

until now.

my walkabout however, is not in the wilderness of australia. it's in NEW YORK. nice.

so the plane flight was lovely like all plane flights always are, smelling of recycled air, eating vaccum packed food, and unable to strech much. and landing in lovely new york of 30 degrees.

spent the evening settling in and helping my aunt with her kitchen. it's the evening of day two now.

we watched julie and julia today. hmm. it was a tad bit too long i think. and not enough of food. i would recommend you watch it at home, curled up, comfy and eating stuff. no offence to people who worked on it of course.

then we had a nice korean lunch with my aunts friend. it was pretty good. love korean side dishes. the lotus, the kimchii, the seaweed. yumm.

we then ran some errands and came home. leaving in about an hour for a wrap party. dunno what i'm gonna wear. lols.

x

is actually a play. written by henrik ibsen. it's not very stimulating to read i suppose. much better to watch it. which i did. awesome.

the fact that harry lloyd played a major role was totally not a reason for it. ;)

anyways. it was truly amazing in the sense that the theatre it was showing at was a dingy lil place in east london. it was those kinda places where people wore leggings and berets and snapped their fingers while they drink coffee and 'read' and 'write'. ok maybe not berets, but you get what i mean.

so magical. also, i spoke to harry after the show. >.< best day of my life.

xoxoxox <333

actually materialized.

i know these blog entries are frequenting trips to london, but i'm sure thats pretty much better than telling you about the 'lovely' grass and compost that makes up cambridge.

so,

yawn, the dawn breaks over the horizon and the sound of it awakens the girl (in a very cute new york shirt) to a day of excitement, culture, indulgence and a lot of walking.

london, here we come. again.

so the whole family drove down to high barnet to take a tube into the city. because frankly, it takes forever to get in by car and parking is ridiculous. first stop is the obscure and arcane borough market. i say that because nobody really knew what it was. the websites and all other information were not consistent and totally ambiguous.

but lo and behold! it was AMAZING. the FOOODD. oh the food.

and you know what was even more brilliant? it was directly beneath the trains.

omg. it was like a fairy tale. except no fairies. i always imagined myself pitifully having an apartment next to the trains or sth, and when it went past, the whole place will shake with the booming thunderous claps of metal and motion. i say pitifully, but in truth, i would LOVE it.

anywhoo, we had lunch there, by purchasing various mouthwatering foods. and walloped it all up.

the paella was bleah but everything else was gorgeous! i had a sizzling german sausage in a crispy baguette. mmmmm. the dressed crab was mmmmlicious too. my sister made a mistake by eating a toasted cheese sandwich. i use the term 'toasted' rather loosely. it was totally and completely deep-fried in OIL. lols. i should say more just to annoy her. hohohoho she felt 'guilty' the rest of the day.

after the delightfully sinful lunch, we decided to walk off the excess 'guilt' towards tate modern. for those who don't know, which i must admit, was me about a week ago, it's a museum. or a gallery of sorts. like, lots of old paintings and stuff. hmm. anyways, we took the route along the river thames.

it just kept reminding me of the doctor who episode where he drained the river to drown the aliens conspiring to take over the world. i say it in a voice thick with irony. here i am remembering a hero who destroyed a plan of conquering the human race and yet i get this story from a machine which is part of a family of other machines that plan to overtake the human race. hmmm.

anyways, tate modern. we weren't allowed to take any pictures inside so all i got was this.

the entrance. LOLS.

but that was our adventure part 1. coming up next will be the non-stop lamentation of the poor tea-house we went to in regent's park and our wonderful dinner.

next, after shopping, on to the show! oh the show! well sure it was hilarious. but i have a secret crush on john hopkins now. thank you very much. it really was funny though. i would recommend anyone to go watch it. my sister was the one who brought us. she watched the new york version and thought i would like it. boy was she right.

its basically about a guy on the run from the police because a woman was murdered in his apartment. he didn't do it, a secret syndicate plotting to destroy the country did it. and they're after a secret she was hiding. now this guy is going all over the place stopping it from happening while on the run. i know it's confusing when i put it in writing. but it is hilarious.

there are only a cast of four. these four. so the switching of characters is a riot. it literally bills the cast as 'man' because they play almost every single person. check it out, www.love39steps.com

anywho, next day. we spent the entire sunday 'gardening'. it basically involves my older sister repotting broccolies and carrots and blahs while i sit and watch my one single sunflower. progress on these test plants shall be reprted soon.

x

well, it was actually camden first. then the 39 steps.

anyways, camden, situated in the northern part of london, well-knowned for it's markets, liberal attitude and associations with popular culture, ROCKS.

omg, the amazing amazing things that i saw! eeeeeepppp!!! omg! i swear i have to go back there. after i like, rob a bank or something. caz i want it all.

omg the wonderful wondeful things! i had limited time. and cash. but look! look at what we found!

the cute little sailor dress.

the vintage mcdonalds uniform shirt.

the vintage OWL necklace from the bric a brac stalls.

the chiffon dress.

the gorgeous 'tinkerbell' dress with lace and mesh from the wendy shop. this is the one! this the shop i want to go back to with more money!!

oooh, i want to go back again now. i could spend hours and days there. now i'm on a lookout. wendy dresses and leather notebooks. the 2 things i missed out on. yumm.

a malaysian delicacy.

i have this dream to one day run my own kitchen. yumm.

anyways, to do that, i have to perfect as many dishes as possible. and seeing that i'm in obscure village cambridge, malaysian delicacies are way way rare. today, i tried to do a kuih lapis. kuih means cake/pastry/pudding. lapis means layers.

that's what it's supposed to look like. i haven't taken a picture of mine, but i'm afraid it doesn't look as perfect. i sorta went a little stingy on the colouring. felt too guilty.

anyways, if anyone is interested, the recipe thus far.

250ml coconut milk
screwpine/pandan leaves (usually 1, but its for flavour so it's up to you)
200g sugar
1/2 cup water
190g rice flour
20g cornstarch/tapioca flour
pinch of salt
food colouring (optional)

1. boil the coconut milk with the knotted leaves and sugar or until sugar dissolves.

2. mix the two flours with the water in a large bowl.

3. add in the coconut milk mixture to the flour and the pinch of salt.

4. stir until smooth, and then strain it to get rid of the leaves and lumps.

5. seperate the mixture into two bowls.

6. add colouring to one of the bowls. instead of colouring, which personally i absolutely detest, you can take the extra time to blend/mill the screwpine/pandan leaves with a teaspoon or so of water, and then strain it through a sift to get a green colour.

7. anyways, whatever way you choose to do it, you will end up with one bowl of white mixture, and one bowl of coloured mixture.

8. now put a baking tin/aluminium tin onto a steamer. or anything that works. i used some cake foil thing. improvising baby! and heat it up for 3 minutes.

9. if you're not using an electric steamer, like if you were boiling water and putting the baking tin on a stand over the boiling water, make sure the water is constantly at boiling temperature. otherwise the steam wouldn't come.

9. so after that 3 minutes, pour half a cup of the white mixture into the tin. if it doesn't cover the surface, pour a little more. it sould be about only a few mm thick.

10. cover for 5 minutes or until it sets. (sets like a piece of jelly)

11. then pour in the same amount of the coloured mixture and cover until it sets too.

12. keep doing this alternating layers thing. after the last layer sets, steam somemore for 15 minutes. opening the cover halfway to let steam excape.

13. then it's done! but, this is a kind of 'kuih' that has to be served cool. so let it cool down before serving. otherwise it will be mushy.

remember this isn't perfect yet. there will be modifications.

yumm!

finally decided to resist the temptation to number my blog posts.

i have just finished this piece of work. tadah. yet again. it's soft pastel and tinted charcoal.

x

we went strawberry picking yesterday. again, whee. we got there late so most of the good ones were gone, but we got a basketful anyway. yumm, will be making honey glazed strawberry tart later.

my sister recently got this dress for me. tadah!

it's a purple toga dress, paired with gladiator sandals, a vintage looking stretch belt, my trusty bag and other odd vintage looking accesories.

gladiator sandals from new look.

belt from new look.

accesories, can't remember.

muaha. this is an egg shaped dress. i swore when i saw it i would never be able to wear it. but i did!! whee.

from the back

egg dress -- banana republic
hoodie -- mango
boots -- can't remember.
bag -- Ark

with colour blocking!!

see, i've always had an underlying fascination with the lakers' outfit uniform. it was the yellow and the purple.

now colour blocking is in! the clashing colours! the bright 'OMG, what are you wearing??!!' is in baby!

awesome shoes for spring/summer 09.

louis vuitton. tribal is totally in this season. loving the feathers and beads. posh knows it.

christian dior. what a heel.

more louis vuitton esq 'omg, i want those' shoes.

today's the strawberry fair. yippee.

funnily enough, it has nothing to do with strawberries. the name is a little misleading. it's a music fair! and arts and crafts! and entertainment in general! whoo.

will post up what i see there. first time going to one. it'll be interesting. but surprise surprise, it's gonna rain today. it's like murphy's law.

what is the point of long daylight hours when most of the hours are dark?

there's an art show coming up. to enter i need to submit 3 original pieces. so, i'm gonna post some up here, and whichever looks nicest shall make it. these are the ones done in pencil. help?

jared leto.

or

keira knightley.

or

dougie poynter.

or

urs buhler.

sucks.

well, actually it's fine. it's just filled with courseworks and projects and extended essays.

i'm actually currently slacking off at the moment. supposed to be completing my math coursework and by completing i mean starting. in my defense, i'll put in a clearer way:

i'm supposed to be investigating patterns in the intersections of parabolas and the lines y=x and y=2x. and then prove my conjectures and include other types of polynomials.

you see my predicament. you see how i came to be blogging. another more plausible reason is that the school computer doesn't allow many other sites.

i also have to 'complete' my extended essay. it is sort of a 4000 word essay on any choice of subject then topic. it's practically like doing a phd. we need supervisors and research on a particular question and all that.

i have chosen art as my subject. No Idea what topic or question i'm investigating into. any suggestions?

right, i think i'm beginning to get leery looks from people now. ta.

weather conditions: sunny 18c
interesting foods: carrots.

not me. the musical.

i've just got back from london. underground and all.

les miz was quite stirring. poignant almost. we didn't get the best jean valjean i think. he started off a little shaky and his 'bring him home' didn't touch me as much as it should have.

eponine was amazing though, 'on my own' practically killed me. and when she died. T.T in marius's arms! T.T

can't stand cosette or marius. never did.

enjolras is the one i fell in love with. oh enjolras! T.T i hear the people sing! red! the flag you waved last before your death! black! my vision when you died!

well, my vision was pretty much blurry throughout the rest of the musical after that.

x
liz

location: still in cambridge

weather conditions: sunny (wow)

school starts on 20th. sucks.

my family and i have been looking for a house. it is apparently a good time to buy. we've seen 10 different houses and i think we've found one. except dad's not very fond of it for various reasons. and when i say various i mean feng shui.

i have also started reading an economics related book. i now know

1. why soft drinks come in cylindrical cans and yet milk comes in rectangular boxes.
2. why petrol caps are not consistently only on one side of the car.
and
3. why DVD cases are larger than VCD/CD cases even though the disc is the same size.
etc.

list of things i've learnt in the past week about feng shui:
1. the front door must not directly face something sharp.
2. the land must not be irregularly shaped.
3. the house must not face a road junction.
etc.

i can go on endlessly, but american idol just came on.

liz xo

Location: Cambridge, England

Weather conditions: Raining

It’s like I never left KL.

Except I did.

My stomach has been clenching a lot recently. According to google, I’m either suffering from anxiety attacks or I’m homesick. I have a feeling I’m both.

Everything is as different as I imagine. Perhaps some of you know what it’s like to move. Except It’s worse than moving house you know, a lot of my stuff are still at home, I just won’t be  going back to it for a long long long time. And I’m not just leaving the house, I’m leaving the country, leaving all its perks and conveniences. Or inconveniences that I’ve gotten used to for nearly 18 years.

I’m pretty sure you can imagine how painful and bereaved it is to leave an empty house all packed up after living in it for a loong time. Now imagine leaving it not empty but plastic covered and half your life under those plastics, knowing you will not see it for years.

I know I’m going on a bit about this. I guess I just need somewhere to vent.

Liz

Gonna go mope now, I’ll be back soon with a further whine and gripe. Sorry.

p.s. No delicious food account today. Or for a long time probably. Not in Malaysia anymore. Unless you want to count in the yucky airplane food. Which was so yucky it must be described as yuckylicious-nauseainducing-splatibopping-food. New word of the day!

today's entry is short. just to tell you what I ate. yumm.

it was a big Sunday breakfast: bacon, grilled teriyaki eel with rice, durians.

lunch was on a relative. a goodbye lunch: jellyfish, deep-fried eel, fried rice, grilled duck ham wrap with crackers, fried la mian, fried wan tan.

dinner was on a different set of relatives: rice with braised pork, lala (clams), asam red snapper, deep fried German pork knuckle, pork intestine with pineapples (i sort of avoided that, but it was a very popular dish around the table), fried minced meat with petai.

liz

weather conditions: hot as ______ (fill in blank with appropriate adjective)

oooh, tomorrow, i get to tell the college that i'm gonna stop school. nice.

Weather conditions: Raining just now, but by the time I was done, it was just windy and wet.

I have just finished Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. Oh, there is school tomorrow.

Tick              tock                  tick                tock

School.

I heard an interesting conversation today. I was replaying an incident that happened some time ago see, and I say, did you know that it’s rude to call a senior up by phone? Apparently if you want to contact her, you have to tell someone just a little older than you who will contact someone just a little older than her and then only reach the senior you’re originally trying to reach. Strange. Of course she could have been trying to cover up her being caught off guard and having to actually answer questions. but what an unjust way of doing so.

Well I’m sorry Miss Prissy pants with something shoved up your arse Senior, but I will now definitely make sure in future to call you straightaway. I find that if anyone wishes to and has the ability to contact someone, one does not have to climb through ones colon or small intestine to reach a persons ear.

I refuse to believe that we are conformist cows who will sit by and pray for an almighty response of which we will fall on our knees and face to revere. We’re not mindless, invertebrates who slug on and on in life just to flop around aimlessly waiting for dismissive direction from psychologically heightened venomous witches like said senior.

Sorry if I’m ranting on a bit. This is clogged up frustration. Such ageism. Also, this isn't the only incident of discrimination, sometimes i think that older people must think we're idiots. Which means I must think that people younger than me are idots. I apologize. I got into trouble see, because she told on me to another senior. Said I was being rude. Didn’t go any further though. Just that. And I can’t contradict something as vague as that. So trouble I got into. That git.

Sigh, "I will diminish, and go into the West and remain Galadriel."

Except,    well,     I’m not Galadriel. And I don’t really like west. And I definitely disagree with anyone feeling a need to ‘diminish’.

Liz

Today I ate: Belaccan bee hoon, bacon, jellybeans, marmite crabs and sea coconut for dessert. Yumm.

Weather conditions: cloudy. It was sunny this morning, but it couldn’t last.

I spent my lazy Thursday morning rereading the entire Harry Potter series. Yumm. It is a holiday because the rest of the country’s 17 year olds are stressing about their national exam results, while I was again chillin out at home. Reading harry potter. ^^

Also, I am getting fat. Somehow holidays just seem to connote food. I ate a few bags of crisps, a bar of chocolate, some chicken and a bowl of noodles, all in one morning. Yeah, I’m definitely on my way.

It’s Friday now. I also had a holiday today. Because, you know, I was thinking, Thursday was such a great day, why break the streak. I spent the day watching movies. And I was watching sisterhood of the travelling pants 2 when I caught sight of Lena (Alexis Bledel) wearing exactly the same dress I have! It’s the white one she was wearing while her friends shoved her towards Kostas in Greece. So that was pretty cool, my thrill of the day.

Liz

Today I ate: the other bar of chocolate, some malay bee hoon (sort of asian vermicelli), a few bags of crisps, and nasi lemak (coconut cream rice).

Weather Conditions: too dark to see. but i'm gonna hazard a guess at, um, raining. shhh, yes, i can hear it. rain.

First of all I’d like to mention that passé as it is, I still watch American idol, and Ricky Braddy was ROBBED.

And then comes the blog.

The rest of my classmates from college are at ‘orientation camp’ in a forest in the middle of nowhere while I’m chillin out stuck ;) at home. I think I got the better end of the deal.

Anyways, we got our biology assessment results back and I actually got the highest! I was pretty surprised myself, as I didn’t do great to say the least.  Now I’m really confused as to what I wanna do with my life. I was narrowing it down so well! Now comes a potential candidate for ‘which course will it be anyway’.

See long story is, my good ol’ mum has somehow derived from my 17 years of saying ‘can I buy these shoes?’ that I have untapped potential to excel in PPE. Which I’m not even sure what it is. Something to do with economics and politics. But I always fancied something to do with art, even though it’s preeeeettty risky. So now I’m confused. Because apparently, I don’t suck at bio as much as I thought.

Ok, wow I’m done. No word of the day today, can’t be bothered to go to dictionary.com, just had a huge Thai dinner and am struggling to stay awake. At 9 o’ clock.

*grunts* and plonks fat thai food ass on the chair and prod fat thai food finger on the mouse.

liz

Greetings earthlings. @.@

Ah, blog numero dos.

Weather conditions: almost flooding. (Yet again)

I am drinking tea (sounds so pretentious) in my room as the rain pounds so hard against my window I can barely hear the traffic below. That by the way is a pretty big feat, so kudos to rain. Back to the point, I’m drinking tea because it’s the only warm drink I have in my house, aside from coffee. Today, I have decided to draw a portrait of Hugh Jackman, I know it’s really banal but I like drawing pretty people, especially if I know that one day their beauty will decide to fade away no matter how much everyone protests.

Of course being the procrastinator that I am, by today I actually mean by this month.

I ate McDonalds for lunch today. And I was sitting there thinking, why, why am I eating this noxious albeit very yummy junk. I came to the conclusion that people, ceteris paribus, don’t eat McD’s just cause it’s yummy, they, that is we, eat it because it’s      there.    That’s it isn’t it? We’re not attracted by the MSG they put in their food; we’re merely victims of modern life.

We are, in short, simply addicted to simplicity.

Hmm, ah, the sun has set. Guess the portrait isn’t gonna happen today.

liz

Hello all.

My name is liz, and this my first blog. Ever. So for today I have decided to christen my first blog by telling you the weather conditions. I’m in Kuala Lumpur at the moment; the sky is cloudy and gloomy and somehow that always makes me happy. It would probably flood rain a little later.

Anywhoo, just a little something about me to avoid confusion about me. Or my presence rather.

My name’s Liz, short for Elizabeth. This much I know for sure. :P I’m a student, but I’m moving to the UK and there is a pother as to whether I should wait for a new school year, which college I’d be going to etc. Word of the day is pother by the way. Please tell me if I’m using it wrong as I have absolutely no idea what it means. I’m Malaysian but also sort of a permanent resident in England, hence the moving. That’s about it!

Thank you to the one love, for giving this very enthusiastic blurred fell-person :P a chance to support a charity whether in a small way or big.

Liz