Enough of readings! Please! I'll go buta!

Have been either writing academic blog posts or reading until my eyes bled.
Such a wonderful weekend ei? :(

Have been poladroid-ing some Bali pictures when I got stuck on my assignments. They are just so pretty - makes me feel so proud of being a tech-savvy generation :) My parents wouldn't even know what are Polaroids in print form, let alone the digital ones. Hehe!

Last week was seriously a dreadful study week - 3 different assignments to do. The most nerve-wrecking and most burdening for me is my IPD Individual Presentation that adds up to 15% of my marks. =\ Basically we have to read 2 different readings to then summarize and present in powerpoint form during tutorial. Sounds simply? Well, it sure was not! Even my power-drink, Red Bull couldn't keep me awake during the first reading.

Other assignments were group work so it kind of lifted the burden a little bit. But then again, because it was our first assignment of the semester, it added a whole lot more of unnecessary stress as we  wouldn't want to mess up a good start of the assignment stream. Semester 2 of year one is real tough, I dare not seek for a preview over the next two years of my degree course.

I miss Bali already. In fact, the moment I entered the airport at Ngurah, the missing started right away.

Nonetheless, I have Pangkor with the cuzzies in October to look forward to! Which is actually at a purrrfect time even though I will have to skip the Friday class and replace it on another day because at the midst of stressing over assignments, I get to go to the beach and chill! Woots! 

Partying on the stage at Sky Garden, Bali. I dragged Mr.V up. Hehe ;D

Damn, the kuai los there are so tall and beautiful. Hmmph -___-

This post is full of crap. All my brain juice went to the academic blog that i have only bout 10% for my own personal blog. =\ Tsk tsk. Alright, gonna Glee myself up now to recharge before the next home work!

I.need.to.recover.from.writing.or.reading.

P/s: Follow me over at Twitter! I am getting the hang of it there already! Whee!

See you! :D

Its Not Even The First Month Yo!

Hey folks,

This coming week will drain the juice outta me for sure.
One group assignment, one individual presentation, one group discussion presentation and a weekly academic blog post for IDM. Gahh! It's not even 30days of the second semester and I'm already dying.

When I think about it, thank goodness I didn't continue my job application over at TPC. Although I love the job scope there, it is draining to have to work with active kids whole 8 hours every Saturday and Sunday for at least a year because of the company bond. And the pay is not worth the extra experience - which is why I got another job. A more flexible job with better pay, suitable for my studying schedule and  other youthful activities. (Haha, 'youthful' activities) Best of all, I get to work with JessG and I won't feel as though I am the only alien at the work place.

So, I'll be right back after this week!

In the mean time, do pay more visits to my Tumblr or newly activated, Twitter account!

-Because during boring classes like IPD and IDM, I have the Mac to update once in a while. ;)

P/s: My Twitter account is secured. So if you do wish to follow, feel free to send me a message!

Bye-bye Paradise City, Boohoo : Day 5

Before departure at the airport :(

Every morning throughout the week over at Bali, our clocks have been failing on us. I didn't bring my phone along because I am terrified if I lose it there and Mr.V just brought an old basic functioned phone so it would be less painful if lost; hence the screwed up time and alarm settings. When we set the alarm to be at 7am, it will automatically switch itself to 7pm. So, it never rings in the morning and we were always late for breakfast. -___-

Thank goodness we are more responsible than we thought we were, we packed our luggage the night before just in case - and it did help so so much! So, no matter if you are leaving back home in the afternoon or evening, just pack the stuff that you won't be using the next day into your luggage. You will then have time to do other stuff and chill the next day with no worries of last minute packing. :)

Overall, Bali is a really nice place to head to with a bunch of friends. You have the temples and nature to visit in the mornings, the beach to chill and play at in the afternoons/ evenings, and also the night clubs with cheap cheap alcohol to dance the nights away! I certainly have enjoyed myself there when I reminisce back at those days. Mr.V and I are already planning to head there again next year, no doubt! My advice for you people who are interested in going places but with a 'student' budget like me (haha!) is to get the tickets one year ahead during the Matta Fair. That would save you peeps plenty of money! My MAS ticket including tax and etc. cost Rm400 with return flight. So plan! plan! plan! six months ahead! and you will have an awesome trip waiting ahead of you.

When Another World Beneath You Exist In Blue: Day 4

Hey folks,

Sorry for the delay as I have so much to deal with for myself this entire past week. Here I have the pictures and video of the scuba diving session at Legian Beach, Bali on day 4! I was a tad bit disappointed with the quality and how the pictures were captured because hello! we paid for it and what we got was lousy capturing skills pictures. Pfft. I don't really mind the quality as it is, at the end of the day, just an ordinary camera in a plastic box but the way the guy captured the pictures was pretty bad. In most pictures, we had fishes as our heads. -____-

Tanjung Sari Dive

This place is not exactly a beach to laze about on the sand because other than playing water sports, there is nothing else you can do there. We girls chose to go scuba diving rather than the usual jet-skiing and banana boating because we thought Bali would be a good place to try diving out. And it was a bit cheaper than what you would pay for in Malaysia. We paid Rm 133 for the whole package per person.

First off, a little briefing session from an old skinny half nude man. -___-

This sign is for 'OK, everything is fine'. 

  

We can't show the thumbs up for a good sign because thumbs up means 'take us up'. I had a hard time trying not to show the thumbs up sign to the camera because I didn't want to get out of the water so soon but my brain kept informing itself that thumbs up is 'good'. Beh, there were a couple of times the instructor thought I was playing a fool with the whole thumbs up sign that when I really wanted to get up to rest, he didn't let me and kept pulling me down. I could have died as The Girl Who Cried 'Thumbs Up' Underwater. -___-

Soaking myself in the water before diving. Here, I almost got squashed between two boats. We 'parked' our boat at a spot among the other floating boats around there and while I was adjusting my tank in the water, another boat came towards my direction. Luckily the guys helped by pushing the boat away, or else the company would have to pay 1.5million Rupiah to my family. Wtf - My life would then only cost Rm547.50.

 Clip up your fringe when diving! Fishes thought it was their new found home! -___-
Stupid fishies. You can see one heading there already.

See what I mean by bad capturing skills? 

Fish headed.

(See, the thumbs up sign. Told ya!)

The fishes weren't that pretty because all around was just that few same colored fishes. We were given some bread to feed the fishes but after a while I couldn't be bothered about the fishes. I was busy hanging  on to a huge coral for my life as the current was quite strong that day. And also, I got stung a couple of times by the coral, not to forget the scratches on the knees because hanging on for your life is that important and hard. Corals are boo-hoos! :(

After getting changed and settled, we had lunch over at their mini cafe. Lunch was free because we scuba-dived and we also were given free flows of any drinks from the counter. The food was just on an average scale but I enjoyed the free flow of drinks after tasting salt water for almost half and hour underwater.

Coke by the beach is so awesome when accompanied by the breeze :) I love Bali's concept of using glass bottles rather than Aluminum cans for drinks. More eco-friendly and also, it looks nicer and feels better when held.

Some enjoyed reading because it was so breezy there.

After rounding up the diving experience, we head out to eat the all famous Babi Guling! Basically, they roast the whole pig until everything, inside and out of the pig, is hard and crunchy. I didn't have much of the babi guling meal because I can't stand eating without knowing what part of the pig it was. So I just stole a few pieces of certified pig skin and meats from Mr.V who ate almost everything on the plate including the lungs, intestines and erm clotted blood?

Can you tell what's what? I sure can't! That's why I didn't have a plate to myself.

We were actually looking forward to Warung Ibu Oka - apparently it is the best place to have Babi Guling.

But the driver said that Ibu Ella is the sister warung of Ibu Oka. Not that great though at Ibu Ella, can someone go to Ibu Oka and tell me how it is there? :)

 Another must try meal at Bali - Bebek @ Ubud!

I enjoyed this meal a lot! I was supposed to share a plate with Mr.V but I kinda ate the whole duck myself. =\ In my defense, he ate Babi Guling and I didn't have anything for lunch! The duck meal was pretty expensive for such a small dish; it costs Rm29 without any drinks per duck. I guess we paid for the chilly atmosphere as well since we had a cozy chalet-like dining hut. 

Faye's manicure result from the Kuta beach manicurist.

After bebek, we headed over to the small shops along the road in Ubud. The stuffs there at Ubud were supposedly sold at much cheaper prices compared to Kuta (the place we were staying at) because Ubud isn't exactly filled with tourists and hotels so you would pretty much assume that they would charge less right? Wrong! It was wayyyyy more expensive than in Kuta! And the people there were so rude when you try to ask for a discount. Pfft. When you tell them that you bought that item at Kuta for a cheaper price (which was so true!), they would tell you 'Then you should have bought it at Kuta and not from my shop." Wah liao wei!

Right after walking about in Ubud, we headed straight back to the hotel to get a clean bath. Later in the night, Mr.V and I walked around Kuta to do a little shopping/one-on-one dating/sight-seeing before we pack up and leave the next morning. I only wish we had more time to shop and pay more visits to the beach - that is my only regret.

'Spread the love, even underwater.'

Follow me @ my tumblr! You would probably see more pictures there than here.

Before the hype, something a little personal will do

Hey folks,

I know you are keen on reading about Day 4 @ Bali in the next post. But I have not gotten the chance to meet up with Mun for the burnt CD containing our underwater pictures and video so I figured that I will wait for it to come to then only write the post filled with related pictures.

But today, it's gonna get a little bit more of personal words rather than wet and wild diving post.

The only few people I can tell you bold enough to slap facts to my face besides MamaGoose are Mr.V and Trace. Whether these facts are music to my ears or not, it will come out just so I become aware of it to the later make changes if I am capable. And because I wasn't born with street smart, situational leader genes in me, I had to pick it off scraps I fall on even until today. Which by the way, hurts so damn much because every fall just gets more of the burning sensation than previous ones. But whether it is a blessing in disguise or not, I've learn everything through the hard way. And the feeling just sucks and pulls you down after a while.

Just a few hours ago, Mr.V just told me that I am the kind that's vulnerable when it comes to relationships in general. Yes, I do seek for mutual feelings and support from friendships and relationships but isn't that how it should be? Or at least, how I thought it was suppose to be. Maybe I just constantly keep taking the wrong turns, or maybe I am just that bad of a luck.

There are so many of my gray moments that only Mr.V and Trace knows about, that fragile part of me that most people can't seem to find. One of that gray moments just recently happened; I don't know if it broke Mr.V's heart to encounter that situation of mine but what happened was a combination of build up emotions from different days. Only he could witness that emo-bomb of mine and still able to withstand it. Besides Trace of course.

At times like these when I'm releasing my unheard inner voice onto small buttons of letters, I appreciate people like these more than ever. And then, I realized, maybe I am not such of a bad luck after all. Hey, maybe I just need a switch?


So, like many people once told me: When you feel that something is knocking from within the chest, let it out in words. It saves saliva but yet releases the same amount of sorrow.

- And it indeed made the sorrow less painful to bear with.

Feet Sinking Into Warm, Soft Sand: Day 3

Good day folks!

I am supposedly reading one of my assigned readings for Media Literacy class on Monday, but to heck with it! Right after scrolling through the pages online, I could vomit a combination of words that spells b-o-r-i-n-g. Semester 2 in Uni is tough man, no joke. And deadly boring. I told myself on that Monday morning to pay full attention during lectures to start off my semester 2 with full seriousness and effort, but I slept off halfway through Dr.Vijaya's class. Everyone else did as well!

What could be better than reading my assigned reading? A post about the third, most exciting day in Bali! It's all about the beaches baby. ;)

We kept the third day free to wake up a bit later around noon after the late night partying just for the beach and some tiny bit of shopping. We stayed at Kuta, the hippest city in Bali so every night was a clubbing night. And its not just one club a night, it was club hopping per night. Shots there were as cheap as Rm2 and beers were slightly more expensive (about Rm10). But we had our own party in the room before heading out so it kinda saved us some money on seeing stars?

Cool fact: Slippers, shorts and pajamas in clubs ARE prohibited. So, there it is! Our first time clubbing in jerseys, shorts and flip flops. I am going to miss that a lot here. :(

Since the beach was just a 10 minutes walk down from our hotel, we took a stroll down instead of calling a cab. You can reach anywhere faster on foot than on wheels because traffic there was packed! Locals were renting motorbikes out pretty cheap and you don't need license there to drive them because well, no police were around. The guys were pretty tempted to rent one just for the fun of it but like I said, traffic is horrendous and to be able to survive on the road in Bali, you really gotta have survival skills. Think Penang's traffic is mad? Try Bali.

Even though the walk to the beach was supposedly 10 minutes, I think we took about an hour to reach there. We practically made a stop at every store we pass by even though all stores sold about the same items. But we didn't shop much though, our bags were heavy enough carrying towels, clothes and a big bottle of Malibu which was a total waste of effort because we didn't open it.

Finally, the beach!

Just when we reached at the beach, we had tons of locals shoving things up our faces to buy them. That is the one thing I find pretty annoying at Bali, they follow you almost everywhere and sometimes touch your shoulders as a form of persuasion. I am not a touchy person, especially when strangers do that. So I always run away to Mr.V to hide but of course, they ran with me to Mr.V.

A masseuse trying to get Tim to buy a session from her.  Which in the end, succeeded.

There were many Americans sunbathing there which made me feel less shy about failing 'Operation Skinny: Bali', if you get what I meant. ;) So first off, we started running around the beach to feel the breeze and the sand at our toes. Then off to the sea to dip ourselves in the cold icy water made of sand and huge strong waves. The boys and I went surfing there for an hour because the rent was quite pricey. It was so fun! Now I understand why people pay to surf at Bali, because it is so freaking awesome! And the waves are so much better to surf at. My trainer loves the song 'Waka Waka' by Shakira. I can tell because every time I managed to surf until the shore, he will sing "Samina samina eh eh, Waka waka eh eh". And that was the only line he knew. It would be better to have pictures to show your now, 'amateur surfer-blogger' but my camera ain't waterproof and the rest of the girls were getting Medi Pedi treatments under the tree.

A couple throws of Frisbee was fun too! Because of the large free space we had, we can throw all around all we want. But there were couple of times where we almost hit a couple of heads. :/

The Polka Dot Bikini Girl, Mun.

Lucky for us, the day we chose to go to the beach was the day locals were releasing the baby turtles! Super cute! At first I noticed that there was a big crowd of people at the other side of the beach so I was pestering everyone to follow me to go check it out but nobody moved. So, as my boyfriend, I made Mr.V walked over with me and he was so glad he did because only both of us saw this magnificent releasing. These baby turtles are so smart; when it feels the presence of others around it, it will play dead only to continue 'crawling' (would you call it crawling of flapping?). And by 'the presence of others', I meant seriously stupid tourists who puts their camera 10cm away from the turtle and yet still on the flash mode. Omg, I would play dead too if I was the baby turtle.

Crystal clear water :)

Aww :)

After the beach activities, we just chilled around with some bottles of Coke and Bintang Beer and also took loads of pictures. On the best day to snap tons of pictures, my camera battery decided to die on me. Gahh :( But, we had two other cameras so I guess it was pretty okay then. But! I still would prefer my fully charged camera to be at my hands that time! :(

The girls and one 'sam pat' aunty behind. -___-

We've got big butts and we cannot lie ;)

Mr.V :)

After the beach, we stopped by Hard Rock Hotel just check it out. We were planning on hitting Hoobastank's concert there that night but we decided to stay for the sunset instead of rushing back home to get into the gig. After all, not that much of a big fan of Hoobastank. 

We called it a night after hitting the clubs. ;) 

Next adventure you might want to read about: Scuba diving!

Okay, fine. I am a good girl so I will go and read up on that reading right now. Pfft. 

Sarongs And Quacky Slippers Under The Rain: Day 2

Hey folks,

Day 2 started out with a whole lot of snoozing on the alarm causing us to be late for the so-called 'early headstart to avoid the jam' trip. And to make matters worst, it had to rain on the day when we planned to do some sight seeing and visiting at the temples. Pfft.

  We made a stop over at a handmade silver jewelery factory. 

They make every piece of jewelery there from scratch! Which is why they were all sold at totally expensive prices. I was eager to get a pair of earrings for MamaGoose because she likes stuffs like these but I could get the similar pair of earrings here for only Rm90 when the best bargained price they could give me was about Rm150. In fact, when it is 100% handmade, there are some defecation in terms of the sizes in each pair. One of the pair will definitely be slightly bigger than the other. So, wanna pay so much for an imbalanced pair of earrings? No thank you.

See that picture of the blue thing in the 2nd box in the 3rd level? It is actually a demo of a ring the workers have molded. Once the molded case has been designed and harden, they will coat it with the silver material and decorate it with little gem stones which will turn out like these rings in the picture below!

Another kind of demo - sorry about the terrible focus guys. My camera needs some time to warm up its focusing skills and the guy was pestering me to give the demo back. Ish.

The end results. 

While Faye was busy bargaining for a better price inside, we decided to run around the factory and snap pictures of ourselves.

Next stop, temples, temples and more temples. 

Its not that we are so keen on going into every temple there is in Bali, but since we are already there, why not see Bali as much as we can right? 

And because there were more than 2 temples that we've visited, I didn't bother asking for the names of the temples. I only knew which state they were at because one state practically only has one famous one. And, the names are so long. So, naming the temples according to its state it is!

Temple 1 - Urm, I honestly can't remember which state this is at. HAHA

Break time!

This is where one of the queen's ashes is resting at. In this temple, there wasn't much to look about because everything around us was just plain fields of old looking houses containing the ashes of the royal family members. 

Those who know me well, would know that I personally love taking pictures of flowers. Over at Bali, there weren't much flowers to snap at but whenever something colorful caught my eye, I would just run to it and start snapping away until Mr.V decides to pull me away that is. This purple flower is I think, the best looking one I could find compared to the rest. By the way, the house next to the flower picture is the queen's ashes resting home.

The next temple is more interesting.

Temple at Kintamani

On that day we visited, the temple had some ceremony going on. Which pretty much blew our chances on visiting the other temple - The Mother Temple at Besakih because it was restricted as well. :(

This temple used to be the King's resting place. But ever since the king has passed on, it has become a temple where lots and lots of people go to for praying sessions and what not. To them, this place is the holiest of the most holiest because people over at Indonesia worships their King as though they are God-like.

This is the holy water bathing site - I'm sure its called as something else more 'canggih' and 'wisdom-ish' than what I just referred it as but our tour guide didn't mention the name to us.

Okay, so the deal with this pond is that when the King was living in this palace of his long time ago, water from and unknown source kept flowing out onto this particular area in the palace. And he tried to make changes to stop the water flow but it just wouldn't. As a result, he build a pond so that the water will be collected and made a pathway for the water to pass through smoothly. Now, people rinse themselves in the pond to collect blessings. Well, of course we didn't jump into the pond cause it seemed pretty unhygienic to me (don't get me wrong, I respect the culture there but it doesn't mean I would follow them and dive into the pond.). So, Mr.V just collected a handful to splash over his face while I stood at the side to snap a picture. :)

And this is another pond (people-free) where the 'magic fishes' live.

According to the tour guide, inside this pond lived only two fishes. One gold in color and the other in silver. It is said that whoever stands near the pond and manage to see any of these two fishes is considered really lucky and blessed. Throughout his (the tour guide) visits to this temple since he was a kid until now (he looked 30+), he only saw those fishes 3 times. So, as usual, being typical Chinese, we were standing under the rain to try to catch a view of at least one of the fishes.. to later on buy Toto. HAHA Just kidding, but it would be pretty cool to actually see it. 

P/s: I may not have seen the fish but I saw an outline of a dolphin on the surface of the water (the picture above)! So, isn't it way better than seeing fishes?? ;D

Next stop, kebun kopi. (A mini coffee plantation site)

This is a very mini plantation site where we saw a few plants that grow those little tastes we know of - Vanilla, Pepper, and etc. The people there are really friendly as they gave us some testing cups to try different types of coffee they plant there. Some coffee was delicious and some just weren't my cup of tea (or should I say, coffee ;D ) The Mocha Chocolate and The Original Coffee was both good so I bought a packet each for my family back home to try. And also Bali's famous coffee, The Luwak Coffee. That one is expensive. 

This is known as The Snake-Skinned Fruit - which I obviously didn't dare to touch at all. Serious.

But I made Mr.V feed me just to get a taste of it. It was crunchy like an apple and as sour as a plum but it gives you a weird numb sensation at your tongue after every bite which totally irritated me until I downed a couple of sips of the coffee. 

This little girl caught Mr.V's attention the most while she was running around the kebun. As she was busy stomping puddles of water, Mr.V kept asking me to take pictures of her. I guess he missed his little nephew after seeing her. Awww =)

This is the volcano we visited from afar at Kintamani as well.

We just had a buffet style lunch at a restaurant nearby the volcano. So, we ate all we could and forgo-ed dinner because the buffet was expensive! So, we had to make it worth the money right? ;)

Don't you feel tired already just by reading the whole post? That day was super exhausting for us. But, we still continued with our late night activities which will be up in the next post.

See ya!

P/s: Sorry if any of these information were incorrect, I only took reference from our travel guide that could be bull shitting us from the beginning. But for what's worth, he made things sound pretty cool.