Saturday, March 28, 2009

I am NOT free. -part ONE-

You know what I said about being free during school holidays in my last post?

Forget it.

I have yet to have a day of complete rest, minus the first day of the holidays where I was still adjusting to my new-found (and short-lived) freedom.

Last Sunday, the second day of the holiday, at 5AM, I had to wake up. My mum and I were going on a 4-day bus trip to Kota Kinabalu. It was her school trip, and the package only cost $150 per person, so who could resist?

Well, I thought I could stand sitting for 7 hours in a bus, with my MP4 player and book by my side. But the fact that the actual journey lasted almost 10 hours was pretty much, a turnoff. And I only knew that after we arrived.

So, feeling exhausted from the long journey, aching butt and all, we carried our luggage to the dorm. Yes, dorm. $150, remember? Thank God the room had aircons. But the bed sheets, they have this weird smell. And we would have opened the windows if only we could. Our first destination was One Borneo, the new big shopping centre.

Here's the funny part. We arrived at around 5PM, and we decided that we should get enough rest by 7. But because of the condition of the room, my mum and I decided to go out early, around 6.30, and turns out most of the others were already waiting for the bus as well. Haha, I'm sure most of us just couldn't wait to go shopping huh?

I don't really feel like talking about the shopping part, nothing interesting there. Okay, so my mum decided to buy some bed sheets for the night. LOL. We would have bought blankets as well, but we didn't want anyone else to notice how uncomfortable we actually feel in the room.

Haha.

We definitely dreaded the time we had to go back to the dorm. Well, at least I did. T___T That night, we slept with the new bed sheets, without blankets. At least my mum has her long night dress to cover her up, where as I who usually sleep in knee-length shorts, definitely had a hard time sleeping. I don't think I slept at all in fact.

Day 2

School visit to Likas Technical Secondary School.

Bla. Bla.

This part is boring. I was just there as the HOD's daughter and I know nothing about vocational education. In fact, I almost fell asleep a few times during the lecture, which I'm sure was partly due to the sleepless night.

Then, comes refreshment times. I didn't have any appetite (shockiiing), so I just thought I could just drink. With only the usual choices of hot drinks available, which is milk tea and milk coffee, I decided to grab tea. I'm no coffee drinker, hate coffee. But at that time, I couldn't differentiate which is which because they had the same colour, and there was no labeling,

Only after I poured it did I realise I just took coffee, and I thought, what the heck, lets just drink it! And ohlala, the power of coffee seeped into me. Haha.

After the visit, we went back to the dorm for a short while to let the teachers change out of their formal attires, and headed to one of the ports. We travelled to Manukan Island by speed boat (and damn, was it SPEEDY!)

The sea was really blue and clear! I took quite a lot of photos of the sea. I don't know, the blue-ness was just so...awesome.

Here's a few of the better photos:









There were alot of activities at the resort; flyfish, paramotor, gliding, scuba-diving, etc. Haha, I don't exactly remember the names, point is, they were mostly extreme water sports. So while the more adventurous ones joined the activities, what did the rest of us do? Why, we eat, of course!
At about 3PM, we went back to KK, and at night, the usual shopping, this time at Centrepoint.

*skip*

Another sleepless night. But this time we bought a jacket and pair of thick socks each, as well as sweat pants for myself, which I wore that night to sleep. Well, at least I felt more comfortable. But the fact that there was no blanket for me to tug still makes me feels so...helpless. XD

Day 3

On the third day, we travelled to a place that no tourist to Kota Kinabalu should miss, and that is Mount Kinabalu!


Taken from the roadside as we went up the mountains. Apparently, whatever is visible in this picture is still not the peak!

We stopped over at Nabalu Town, and there was a long row of souvenir stalls. The t-shirts they sold were very cool! And the sellers, they really like to give discounts. When we ask, "how much is this shirt?" They answer, "this is $40, but I can give you $25 if you like." Even before my mum starts bargaining, they just say it. But they were really friendly and helpful. I bought heaps of tshirts and keychains.

Nabalu Town: The many, many things that they sell

After that, we went to Poring Hot Springs. Over there, they have the hot springs, canopy walk and a butterfly farm! I wanted to go to the butterfly farm and so we did! There were so many pretty butterflies, but I only have a few good pictures. You can't get too close without scaring them away, unfortunately.








Where's the butterfly in this picture? Hint: The brown leaves are its wings. XD


Same butterfly, different angle

There were also pretty flowers that I wish I could grow in my garden! Basically my attempts at macro photography, and one of the times I wish I had an SLR camera!









And then, we went back to KK.

Sorry I could make a much better sentence than that.

Haha.

Night, shopping. Sleep (tried to).

Day 4

At 7.30AM, Brunei! Here I come! Well, for another 10 more hours, at least. I really didn't like the stopovers. I wish we could just go straight hooome. But no, they just had to stop at some market, and then at Limbang, and with all the traffic jams at the immigration posts, argh. I tried to sleep, hoping that the lack of sleep I've been having since the past few days would help. But no, I was surprisingly wide awake. I munch on my Cottage Fries and Fruit Pluses only to realise we're still hours away from Brunei.

When I did manage to sleep, voices of other people who were still awake won't let me. Even though my MP4 was on full blast, I could still hear the voices of other people.

We finally arrived home at 8PM. Almost 12-hour journey. Unfortunately, I couldn't rest just yet.

Why?

The exchange students arrived that night as well.

You see, my parent somehow love being host parents, and this time, they got two female japanese students. One major problem, they were not so good in English, and I am expected to be a translator. And my japanese language have been rusty for quite a few years already.


And this part of my not-so-free holiday shall be continued in the next post!

Saturday, March 21, 2009

We are FREEE~

Okay, I've actually planned on posting this since so many days ago already. I'm going to set aside my love for crime and medical drama, and talk about Ayu <3 I ordered a few of her stuff a few weeks ago with the help of someone (I'm not sure if I can reveal the name here XD) and I finally got two of them!

Asia Tour 2008 ~10th Anniversary~ Live in Taipei

Rule/Sparkle CD Jacket C

I ordered the Hong Kong version of Asia Tour 2008, so it's like, three times cheaper than the Japan Version. But Rule/Sparkle is the Japan version so I had to dig into my wallet to find $21 for one audio cd. Haha, but it's worth it, the one I bought is a first press, and the first press bonus is,

*dumdumduuum*:

An Ayumi drawing on the CD, done by Toriyama Akira, mangaka of Dragon Ball!! Okay sure, only "otaku"s or probably Dragon Ball lovers get the significance of this. When I was a kid, Dragon Ball ruled my life. And now, to have a drawing of my currently beloved singer by him is awesome!

And the reason for this drawing is because Ayu's latest song is used as the theme song of the live action Dragon ball movie, Dragon Ball Evolution. It's already out, by the way, though I'm not sure if I want to watch it because from the trailer, so many things are so wrong with it and I don't want that movie to tamper with the image of my childhood love.

And just for the heck, lets show what's inside the AT08 box!

There's two DVD boxes, with 3 DVDs in total, and there's also the photo booklet with all the concert pictures and lyrics in it. <3

As a conclusion, here is my very far-away-from-completion Ayu collection!


Ta-Daaa!

..Okay, yes, so there's like, only five that I have. But that's pretty good for someone who barely buys anything original and downloads all the time. :P

(Please take note, the arrangement is merely for the purposes of picture-taking, haha) And yes, that is Vagabond that you see hiding behind GUILTY. I just used my manga-filled book shelf for the...um, best lighting? Haha.

Now, all I have to do is wait for my copy of NEXT LEVEL, Ayu's 10th studio album, to arrive.

There you go, an Ayu-filled post. I haven't talked about her for such a long time, you know. I would brag about my DVD collection too if they weren't ALL bootlegs. So yeah, haha.

Friday, March 20, 2009

Hi. Is Holiday Here. You Have Fun?

School holidays are here!

Okay, I'm going to skip the part of how grateful I am for the school holidays because I've mentioned the same thing over and over again every time it's the school holidays. So lets just talk about what I've been doing.

Being the drama addict I am, I bought Maou (Devil King). It stars Ikuta Toma <333 and Ohno Satoshi. And yes, I bought it because of Ikuta Toma. Yes, I buy dramas based on who's starring in it, but who doesn't right? You would want to watch your lovely pretty favourite actor on screen, despite how lame the storyline may be. But Maou, whoa.

I think you could say it's more of a "masculine" series. It's about a lawyer plotting revenge against a detective for the death of his brother many years ago. So it has all these dramatic moments with the dramatic music.

And the ending... oh *&^%.

I'm so depressed because of the ending. I think the level of depression that is currently in me is almost equivalent to how I felt when I watched the ending for the third season of Bones.

Like, "WHYYY? WHY DOES IT HAVE TO BE THIS WAYYY??!!" \(>o<)/

And now I want to watch According to Jim but frickin' player won't play it. I can only watch it in my sister's room. Boo.

See, how very sad my life is? To only talk about fictional people.

Sunday, March 08, 2009

Down the rabbit hole, Alice?

Scratch the emo post.

Just now I was on Wiki, wiki-ing some random pages, and then landed on Tim Burton's. Guess what? There's an Alice in Wonderland in production *___* Set to release in 2010, boo. And Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter 8D I bet this movie is going to need special effects, and assuming Tim Burton is going to achieve the same thing like with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, woohoo!

I was disappointed when I found out the movie Alice didn't seem to follow through. Alice is based on the darker version of Alice in Wonderland game, and it looked really promising, but Sarah Michelle Gellar dropped the role. She would've looked good for it, since she looks quite alike with the American McGee's Alice. I wonder how's the progress. You know, probably Christina Ricci would look as good.

So, I love Alice in Wonderland, okay. Especially the poem of the Walrus and the Carpenter. Since I saw there were roles for the Red Queen, White Queen, etc, I'm guessing it's going to follow the Through the Looking Glass storyline? Unless they're going to mash it up with the Alice in Wonderland storyline the way Disney did. Hmm, 2010. Sounds too far away.

Thursday, March 05, 2009

...iz crapz feelz.

The journey from the class to the Physics lab is a very long walk. It feels so long especially when you're walking alone. And I always walk alone. :( Not that I mind being alone, but it just makes you think about a lot of stuff. It makes you talk to yourself about all the things that happens. Honestly, sometimes I just feel like dropping my bags and files to the floor and lie down right there and scream my heart out, and then continue walking while thinking no one else would notice that.

I actually have no idea why I'm feeling so miserable. Or at least why I somehow try to make myself sound miserable. It probably because it's that time of the month. Annoying, isn't it? And now I can't stop the image of me stabbing something/someone, for some odd reason. Other times, I kind of wish I could just shoot my brain out to just stop thinking about frustrating stuff.

I need my pillow. *weep*