From the monthly archives: January 2009

Family Meets

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This Chinese New Year has been fun just hanging out with the family. This is going to be another Chinese New Year post and hey we still have another 13 days left to go. Meeting up with my cousins whom i barely see most of the time was great. I would like confess a small thing. When I was a kid I barely hung out much with the rest of my family members. I suppose you can almost make the assumption that i was an antisocial family person lol. That was me as a kid. I didn’t really know how to yack with others I suppose. Then I grew up and enjoyed social company. :P

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Anyway cousins came over yesterday and it was a ball of fun. One of the aunts made homemade yee sang. That’s a first for me.. i think. You usually have yee sang followed by a huge gloriously too heavy meal. But this batch was made so that we could just toss it in the air and have fun as a big gathering. :)

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The yee sang is now being prepared. 

 

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The yee sang is now nearly completed

 

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Take a look at the two mountain peaks of yee sang. haha.. I’m serious those were two huge platters of yee sang. 

 

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Now everyone gather round and get ready to poke pok poke and mix mix mix.

 

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Just look at all the hands.

After all that I realised that I was so busy taking pictures that I wasn’t in the fun… I demanded that my sister joined me while i took a shot of my hand in it. My brother commented that i was sad.. Am not!

The good thing about Chinese New Year, while it is not my favourite time of the year it does have it’s perks. Mainly the catching up and collection of ang paos :P Don’t deny it! If you are a chinese and you happen to be not married yet. You are still going around happily collecting ang paos. The more reds you see the happier you get.. complete opposite of anger hehe. According to my mom she says that if you open your ang paos too early or too fast you get less later on…. Yeah right! The first two days are the hardcore period of collecting. So all those of you who are complaining of being single and or unmarried out there.. don’t! You’re still entitled to collection. And don’t deny you do ask your friends how goes the ang pao collecting phase lol. Here’s grandma giving out ang paos to everyone in the family.. almost everyone la.   

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The sister jumping in joy and actually i wanted a shot of Unc Tony with his two twin sons. The three of them were dressed in a mickey mouse theme. Hahaha so cute.  

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Then the time comes for everyone to say bye bye. Even after saying bye you don’t really say bye cause in the end we’ll end up just going outside the house to do more yacking before anyone can get in the car. Hehehe.  

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That was fun hehhee. All the cousins in a bunch.

Chinese New Year 2009

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Want to wish everyone a Happy Year of the Ox this 2009. I stayed true to one of my resolutions so far.. See for the past couple of years I haven’t been around with my family during Chinese New Year. I spent it elsewhere, down in Penang. Felt a bit odd cause well not my family members and all, even worse I couldn’t speak Hokkien. Not meaning it wasn’t great, just wasn’t with the family. This year though I decided to stay on for the first 2 days of CNY, which is the important part. Besides I haven’t seen some of my cousins for a while.  Coming in first is the Chinese New Year reunion dinner. It’s just a simple dinner with the immediate family members and it was great food. :)  

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Immediate family all here. It’s a tradition that we have to take a picture of the family when we have our reunion dinner. And every single year I don’t bother to dress up for the occassion. Lol i just want to relax and chill.

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This was the delicious food I smelt on the way down from the stairs. 

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First we all dug into the Yee Sang which is probably my 4th Yee Sand in two weeks now. According to tradition when you mix the yee sang, you have to bring your chopstick really really high. Throwing the yee sang high means you have more prosperity. Okkkk…. :)

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And of course in between you’ll get yee sang all over the place and also you’ll get into a chopstick fight. Like how i did with my mom. lol

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Glorious fresh steamed fish.

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Pork with mayonnaise and pineapple. Not a fan of the pineapple but still nice. 

 

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Broccoli with my favourite abalone. Ok I think that’s enough for food. 

Now i’ll move on to a short video of my nephew who is just so cute. You know little kids when they see things thet look at everything with such awe and with bid dowey eyes. Even if they have seen it for the first time they are still amazed. What’s even cuter is when a kid sees himself in the mirror or on the screen. My lil nephew here just kept on saying … wow! Hahaha. Ignore the voices in the video and just watched the kid. lol

That was my reunion day and here begins the Chinese New Year celebration. :)

Black Must Haves

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It’s been a while since I did a girly post. I would like to confess that I actually come from a family of shoppaholics. I have been fortunately or unfortunately, whichever way you would like to view it, raised by parents who love to shop. On one hand great but on another that’s just bad because then i keep having more and more stuff, to the point i don’t know where to keep them. This is related how? Well, I just want to share on the three must haves that any girl would need. Since I started going for castings again, I always get this from the casting agents. Come dressed smart casual. I never understood that. To be frank I always thought I had reasonable sense in fashion. It wasn’t only till recently, I realised I don’t! Shame on me. Most of the clothes I have are those funky types which are great for a one time wear and never for another time. I didn’t have basic stuff in my wadrobe, making it hard to dress myself well.  So anyways lets share a lil 101 on what I’ve learnt. The 3 must haves in every girls closet. Black is always classic, stylish, elegant, sleek and you can never go wrong with it. It’s great for any mood, time or date. Reason I’m stating all the following apparels as black is because that is basic. Always make sure you have at least one good slip on skirt. 

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Then make sure you have at least one if not two good Lil black dress. You’ve heard of the book and no this is not made up.

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You have to love Zara for their simplicity in clothes. These two dresses are under the label Zara Basic and man are they basic. I love them :) You can’t go wrong at all. They weren’t terribly pricey either. Just shy over a 100 ringgit. Not too bad for a dress you can keep all the time and never have it out of fashion.

 

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Every girl should have a lil black dress. You will never know when you may need it.  Finally, always check on the list that there must be a pair of black pumps. I just love saying that. Pumps. Or as how the ‘inspector Clouseau’ in the Pink would say. Puuummps. Bwahaahha. cracks me up. Ahemm, yes all girls need a pair of good looking black puumps. And I just had to show.. cause I’m so proud of these two black beauties.

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I got this from Zara at a wonderful markdown. Used to be around RM300 plus but when I got it was only at RM139. ooooohhh Happppyyy!! And I can’t wait to wear this baby. Ahh

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This pair I got from Topshop. I can’t recall the price. My reasons for getting these two is because of the closed toe part of the shoe. See I share most of my shoes with my mom. And all her high heels are either open toe or strappy or wedges. Her pumps from her working days are too small and the minute I pop my feet into them I’m in ouch land. 

Only thing I didn’t manage to get a lesson on was buying a top. But as long as you the bottom covered – as in covering you up or settled, hehe – then it’s easier to figure out the top half of your wadrobe. 

Happy Endings

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After a few days from watching Underworld 3. The story of the movie still seems to stick with. A chord was struck, if a movie effects me or makes me think about it a lot. I suppose the reason why it has resonated within me a bit is because of the tragic love story between the two leads, Lucian and Sonja. It was very much like Romeo and Juliet if you think about it, only difference is that one of them sees the love of his life die in front of his eyes. Later when i got home I went scouting around for things on the making of the movie and I came across a fan fiction. It was how after the 6 centuries that Lucian and Sonja had been apart from the day of her murder. They were reunited again in the afterlife. You can read that short story here. Why do some of us need that resolution of the happy ending?

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I just had to make one of the two of them together. :P

The last time a movie left me with this helpless awkward feeling was the film Atonement starring James McAvoy and Keira Knightley. I saw that two years ago, and even now that story is still embedded in my head somewhere. The story of how one couple never got to be together because of one little girl’s jealousy over her elder sister who loved the boys he had a crush on. Plot was like so “Fledgling writer Briony Tallis, as a 13-year-old, irrevocably changes the course of several lives when she accuses her older sister Cecilia’s lover, Robbie of a crime he did not commit.” Because of the false accussation Robbie was sent to the military and Cecilia became a nurse. They never saw each other again after their one night of passion. Briony never got to apologise for it either despite her regrets, for she never had the courage. Instead she wrote of how they met again… in her book. In that sense they are immortally together forever…  

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As the tagline of Atonement goes “You can only imagine the truth”. Maybe in the case of these tragic love stories yeah… Why is it that we feel for movies like these?  My thoughts on this is because, in life already there is harsh realities. Not everything in the world will be fair. Not everything in the world can be put to right. There will be broken homes and broken lives. Granted Atonement and Underworld 3 are far from the reality of everyday life. Maybe it is because that brokenness is mirrored to some parts which are relevant to our world and that’s why there is that sense of unresolved longing. Yes I’m psychoanalysing myself.. fun… :P   I have a theory that it is because in movies or rather Disney movies, you will always see that there is a happy ending for every story. Everyone lives happily ever after. People can argue that Disney’s ever afters are a propaganda of some sort. Think of it whatever you will. Makes you question is the phrase “Happily Ever After” just invented for you. I’ll ellaborate on this on another post. 

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We all need a happy ending. We all need hope. If not what is there is to live for in life. Just to see it painted as it is. That it is dark and dreary. That can’t be all there is to it. 

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image taken from kurtzdesigns.com

Which is why I’m glad there is a paradise after this life. A paradise which He paid for just so that we imperfect beings can belong to and finally can say we are home. Won’t it be wonderful when the day comes when all is gone, but I can still say hi to my family and friends. There’s more to that truth and that isn’t an imagination. It is real. :)

Bro or Gurl

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There’s a coined phrase which is the stupid ‘Bro before ho’s code”. It’s a silly slang where, brotherhood / sisterhood is stronger than the bond between a couple trying to work make a relationship happen. It’s not a carved in stone rule.. but I thought it’d be a nice thing to start my introduction for this post.  When I was in high school I went for tuitions all over the place. One day, I was just walking into the house of my BM tuition. Just walking mind you and one of the other girls looked at me. She then said to me ‘Hey Lin, do you want to like beat up somebody or something?”…. Huh… I was just walking. Nothing else. That didn’t bother me very much for a number of years, until yesterday. My dad had always mentioned that I walked like a guy. That still didn’t bother me, cause I couldn’t care. I wore girly clothes, I could still be girly at times…  Then yesterday I got a note from my director for mo cap that I had to lessen the machoness in my movements… That got me thinking.  I never bothered that I didn’t have a relaitonship for 5 years, during the period i was in my last years of high school into my college days. Sure some my say that that is the period you get all the relationships and experiment… whatever. Well i was single during that period. So what. But after the “machoness note”, i wondered if the reason why all the guys I’ve been friends with or just knew… always saw me as another bro and never a girl.  It’s a silly thought, but I need to get it off my chest. As young girl growing up, I was never the slim and slender thing that some or most girls are fortunate to be. The mind set I had created for myself was – ok.. I can’t be slim or skinny like some twigs in the magazines (no offense to my friends who are skinny), then I’d rather be muscular. I’m in a reasonable shape now. Can be better but not fantastic as how Mister G would say to me….thanks I feel real encouraged. :P That was mindset number one. Then i had another thought, if i acted like one of the guys – be interested in some stupid computer games, certain sports and maybe a car talk or two – would be a good chance to have a conversation with them. I can say that sure they managed to garner some conversations… Then as the years progressed, I noticed that guys always tell me the guys stuff. I’d be literally treated almost like one of the bros. Some i’m not saying all, I’m just saying to some fo the people I know.  Honestly the whole thing is silly. Because of those things (in my opinion) I’m seen as the sporty girl. Never just a girl. Half the time my guy friends joke that they’ve never seen me in a girly moment. And when i do have a girly moment it’s always bimbo.  It’s just upsetting and it hurts. Cause on one hand i realise the faults here, and I’m pissed off at the times when I here how males are always keen on having a girl thats soft, docile and cutesie wutesie. I’m just fed up! I’d almost think that I’m too tough on the outside for the guy I’m with. You know how in a relationship the guy always wants to protect the girl. In the end I know I will not get that feeling that I can be protected because I’d rather protect myself. I’d almost think the only way i’d get protected is to have a guy who is way taller than me and double my size in terms of muscle mass. The i’d look super small and maybe only then I’d be considered a girl. It’s a very round about thought process I’m having here. And no one would get it. Because no one is in the between. It’s that feeling of neither here nor there. It’s a sucky feeling. Cause you don’t feel you belong. It is said humans feel most uncomfortable when they aren’t in control. That is why there is a need to categorise everything. In naming something, you have a control over it cause not you know how to react to something, deal with it… whatever. I feel like I don’t have that knowledge sometimes…