This post is dedicated to my dear Amanda.

Amanda Khoo Yin Yen!

If you're reading this, you better call me now.

Why do I have to find out everything through Facebook omg I'm so blur man. No wonder you said we had to go out soon. I didn't know it meant such big news! If I knew, I would have ditched everything aside and demanded for an emergency meet up. And now, I seriously demand that we go out this moment. Lol.

Hahahah.

My my..You're so grown up now. *dabs tears* Hahahah.

P.S Tomorrow's my last day at work, finally. Yay! No more washing carsI'm gonna be a penganggur again. Anybody who has any high pay/chillaxing job, contact me. :)

What a weekend.

Crazy weekend, to be precise.

On Saturday night, we had to be at Cineleisure at 10.30pm to set everything up eg. safety mats, carpet, tables and chairs for the judges, VIPs and media.

Then halfway during the set up, the Rainbows arrived. The Rainbows are an all-boys team from Thailand who is superbly, fantastically geng chow! They came here not to compete but to be our guest performers. FYI, they are an all-gay team.

After setting up which ended around 1 something a.m, we had to run through our routine because we would also be performing the next day. So, it was really tiring for all of us. The practice only ended around 3a.m which caused us to arrive home at 3-ish. As if that wasn't enough, we had to reach Cineleisure the next day at 8.30 a.m. The initial plan was to be there by 7.30 a.m. Crazyness! Thank God they switched it to 8.30. Heh..

If you were not there at the event, it sucks to be you. heh jk. let me give you a snippet of what happened.

Among the celebrities there were Amber Chia, Belinda C, and er... if you consider the So You Think You Can Dance finalists celebrities as well, Brancy and Dennis were there too.

There were quite a lot of drama happening behind the scene because a few cried due to some reasons. While many may address me as a drama queen, let me clarify first that I'm definitely not one. Sad to say I was one of the 'few' who cried. In public. Which isn't a pretty sight. Omg, someone just shoot me lar.

It was because while we were warming up our stunts an hour before the performance, I injured myself. Well, what can I say. Shit happens. I just didn't expect it to befall me on that particular moment, 59 minutes or so before our performance.

So, I was overwhelmed with two emotions at the same time. Firstly, I was obviously in pain. My last toe swelled up almost instantly it looked like a tiny brinjal. [Do not ask why a brinjal, couldn't think of any other comparison.] Secondly, I was afraid I will not be able to perform because of the pain that was so intense I was doubting myself so much. I think it was more of the latter though. Then the tears literally just trickled down non-stop and my captain was asking me if I am sure I could still perform while I was just nodding and sobbing like an idiot. Gosh.

The St.John people came to my rescue by spraying some cold spray on the wounded spot and bandaged it so tight until I think they caused me to feel more pain than before. Despite the pain, the show must still go on. Thank God the performance went on smoothly.

Anyway, here are a few pictures snapped by our very own CHARM's professional photographer, Kelvin.

Overall, the whole event was a success. Everyone was being so supportive especially towards the Thailand team. The crowd was just yelling like crazy each time they made a movement. Hahaha. A huge thanks to my bunch of friends, (WernSern, ShanYong, Darimi, Ah Long, Chew) for coming over to show your support. =)

P.S: I wanna thank God for His healing power because I've stopped limping. Yay!

P.P.S: The guy from gua.com.my who did the coverage for this event is uber cute!!

P.P.P.S: This is my 100th post! *joy*

Edit: Here's the video you've been longing to watch, Nat. Teehee.

Rojak?

There's just too many funny incidents at my workplace I cannot possibly list them all here.

But what's weird today is that another Bangla worker (yup, there are THAT many Bangla workers) asked me this before I clocked out from work.

This meaning :
Kak, balik ar? (Now there are 2 things I don't understand. First of all, isn't it obvious I'm going home since I'm clocking out? Secondly, I have no idea why on earth he adressed me as a KAK)

*Nods head and smiles*

Papa Chinese?

I was all HUH??

Papa you Chinese?

Then I nodded again, this time with a fake smile because I felt quite annoyed.


DO I NOT LOOK LIKE A CHINESE TO YOU?!?


Speaking of which, there was one time when my friend lied to another friend of ours saying that I'm actually Vietnamese and I own the Vietnamese Kitchen at Taipan. And that 'genius' friend actually bought that joke! Omg.


Somebody please help me look more Chinese-y. I thought my small sepet eyes can already prove that I'm a 100% Chinese. [No offense to any Vietnamese reading this.]

Of Banglas and English and Malay.

Hey, sorry for the lack of updates. Haven't got the mood/too lazy/whatever you wanna call it. Yeah, kick me around and I'll still be that lazy.

Anyways, something funny happened at work yesterday.

A Bangla worker came into the office looking for something quite urgently.

Nak cari apa? (At this point, I do not know whether to converse with him in Malay or English because they can speak and understand both languages but with very poor command of both)

Paint shield, was his reply.

Not bad, not bad, I thought to myself. Good, can understand English. I continued to ask him back, 'What's a paint shield?' with a totally blank look on my face.

Then he started replying back in Malay, bla bla bla kalau tumpah boleh cuci.. The rest I couldn't really catch what was he saying even when I've tried straining my ears.

It suddenly hit me that maybe he wanted a bottle of thinner or something. 'Ohhh, thinner is it?'
I asked back suddenly feeling quite happy I finally knew what he wanted, searching aimlessly for a bottle of thinner without waiting for his reply.

He suddenly grabbed a red looking stick and said 'Ahhh, ini ini.'

I looked up only to see him holding a red PENCIL triumphantly. -_-

It's now or never.

Cheh. Title sounds so important. I find myself so good at giving titles I should get an award for it.
Anyway, what I really meant was my many months ago trip in China. Gonna write it off once and for all.

Give you 10 bucks if you can guess what we're sipping.

Can't guess? Give up?

It's diluted chrysanthemum tea! (yuck) Too late. I told you the answer so the 10 bucks reward is gone.

The itinerary after that horrible tasting tea session was much much better. We travelled to a place called the XiTang water village which was indeed an eye-opener for urban people.

See what I mean? How often do you see a red, three-wheeled vehicle here?

My momma can also pose okay. Can yo momma pose like that?

I love the fact that we never fail to take a family picture almost everywhere we went.

The grandfather at the background was fishing for rubbish with the net. Yes, those are vegetables at the corner.

Even with the help of the 'ah pak' to keep the river rubbish-free, it's still not really clean though. Let me rephrase that. It's dirty, yet the villagers wash their clothes there. I kid you not.

Tom Cruise was here before for the shooting of MI3! OMG!!! *bimbo tone*

An upclose photo of the motorized bicycle I was talking about previously. I think I can now conclude that red is the all time favourite colour of the people of China.

We bought this sticky thing made out of maltose, I think. It's extremely sweet. You'll love it if you have a sweet tooth.

China's Venice? Lol. Whatever. The man is staring as if he hasn't seen leng luis syok sendiri-ing before. Hahaha.

A random China toddler who is so cute can die.

Just to show how narrow the lane is.

This is how they make that maltose thing. Super elastic! I think this requires quite a lot of energy man. Cos that dude sure looked like he was using a lot of strength.

The labrador (or is it a golden retriever?) is there to welcome people to rent the room his master is renting out. I'm not joking.

I see many Fiona's.

Up next was lunch.
The highlight of the meal was supposedly the hairy crab we had. The tour guide kept promoting non-stop saying how we should try it because they cook the crab in a really mouth-watering style.

The turn out? Nothing to shout about.
Worse still, we got conned. Because my dad paid 60 freakin Yuan for this crab. That's almost equivalent to Rm30. Don't let the picture fool you, the crab is probably only the size of my palm. I think we paid just to see how hairy it is lor seriously.

After the meal, we travelled back to where our journey began, Shanghai. On the way back, we captured this picture of the ferris wheel which is surprisingly kinda huge! It looks and definitely is larger than the Eye On Malaysia. And the Eye On Malaysia doesn't even belong to us. Pfft.

After that, we went to one of the Soong's sister's burial ground. There are 3 Soong sisters altogether and all of them made a mark in the history of China just by marrying some famous dude. The one we visited was the second in the family if I'm not mistaken. She's the wife of Dr. Sun Yat Sen. She requested to be buried alongside her parents before she died because apparently she disobeyed her father when her dad forbidded her to marry Sun Yat Sen so this was her way to pay her respects. Reason being the famous historian was a very close friend to her father. When the tour guide explained this to us, I still cannot imagine how could she have fallen in love with a man who's about the same age as your father.

Imagine your father introducing you to his friend and then you get all flirty and start sending winks and flicking your hair. Eeew. Surely there are many other better looking man around right! Even MY masseur is much better looking. Muahahah.

The flirtatious one in the family.

So after listening to the promiscuous story, night arrived and it was time for dinner.

Dined on a floating restaurant. =) The exterior looked good. Interior wasn't that bad also.

Then, we went back to Shanghai Bund once AGAIN. Waste of time? Well, not really.
Cos you get to see all the mushy couples snogging each other
Cos this time we went on the gigantic ship which looked so much like the China's Titanic version. Okay, maybe a little exaggerated but you get the drift.

It was seriously very cold that particular night. The coldest night while we were there. I definitely wasn't being a wimp okay because the tour guide herself was shivering throughout the entire night.
The Oriental Pearl Tower looks so so so good at night. <3>

That happening spot only got me interested just because there were so many ang mohs there. Me likey.

Yes, that's S.H.E right above our heads.

Beautiful litted Christmas tree..but it got ruined by the girl in the picture.

So happening. Got pub some more with music blaring in the background. As predictable as it may be, yup, we didn't enter. And no, I'm not complaining.

So that whole happening visit didn't turn out to be as happening as I made it sound. So yeah. Heheh.

Passed by this stage which was solely set up for the countdown to usher in the New Year. We left a day before the New Year so we missed out on this. Or else we would be there ushering in 2008 with the Chinese going 'San..Er...Yi...Xing Nian Kuai Le!!!' Wo hui jiang hua yi okay. Bu yao wan-wan.

After that, it was back to the hotel. We only got to shut our eyes for 2 hours or so then it was time to get to the airport.

HAHAH. I can't believe I FINALLY managed to finish blogging about this trip. It seemed like a never-ending story.

For those who can't get enough of the trip, you can even watch an exclusive video featuring who else but, me. Please dial 1800-I-Cant-Get-Enough-Of-Florence for the limited videotape.

More lame jokes.

Got this from an e-mail sent by mom. Enjoy!

Customer: Waiter, do you serve pigs?
Waiter: Please sit down sir, we serve everyone.

Lady: Is this my train?
Station Master: No, it belongs to the Railway Company.
Lady: Don't try to be funny. I mean to ask if I can take this train to New Delhi.
Station Master: No Madam, I'm afraid it's too heavy.

Cheer Mania.

This week is totally jam-packed with cheerleading.

Plus I'm working. It's exhausting, yet worth it.

I just did a performance at Sunway Convention Centre. Finally saw how Tan Sri Jeffrey Cheah looks like real live.. that filthy rich man. The event was themed Samba Nite, so it was really cool. The setting was amazing but too bad I didn't bring my camera along.

I'm supposed to be at Cineleisure setting up and getting ready for tomorrow's roadshow but Dad won't allow cos it's super late at night. I hope my cheer buddies will understand. Friends who know me well should know my parents are like the most stringent parents ever. I'm turning 20 this year man, gimme a break. Sigh. Then again, I am sure many of you who have the freedom to go out at whatever time you like will say that they're doing this for my own good. Easy for you to say. Put yourself in my shoe and you'll know what it's like. Double sigh.

I shall go taste the J.Co donuts everybody has been talking about since forever. Yeah shut up, I'm outdated I know.

Time to put on more weight. Hah. Goodnight all!!

If only entries can expire.

Then this would definitely be an expired one since CNY has passed by for quite some time already.

I'll let the pictures do the talking since pictures paint a thousand words bla bla bla because I'm not really in the mood to blog but still don't wanna leave my blog rotting without any updates.

CNY Eve
This record player got my siblings and I jumping on our feets, squealing while clapping our hands like 3 year olds excited. It's antique! How can you not feel a slight tad of excitement?!
Even my dad was smiling like an idiot a small boy reminiscing his childhood. That's my uncle in the singlet. See, both of them slouches. It's no wonder why I slouch too. =(
My itchy hands wanted to touch it but then chickened out because everybody knows I'm such a spoiler. Hahah. I spoil things quite easily whenever I put my hands on something.
The whole collection of vinyl records stacked neatly.

My aunt's very old love letter was found hidden in between one of the record. My cousin who found it later returned to her causing her cheeks to flush. Lol.

Out of everything that was there, I could only recognize Elvis, Bee Gees, The Beatles, and er..yeah that's all.

Day One
The first lou sang of the year.

My niece is so so adorable you just feel like pinching her the whole time.

My cousins.

Day Two

Went over to my maternal grandfather's home in Cheras.

Yup, that's about it folks. Take care everybody!

Announcement: Charm will be holding its annual competition, the Charm Cheerleading Championship at Cineleisure Damansara. Come join us for the roadshow on the 1st, 2nd, 8th, 9th, 15th & 16th of March. The competition date is on the 23rd of March. Lend us your support! P.S The guys can check out the hot chicks there as well! =)

Sneaky sneaky.

Here I am sneaking just for the sake of typing this entry at the car workshop I'm working at.

The thrill of sneaking while my boss is out for lunch is oh-so-indescribable. My heart is beating so quickly cos you don't know just when the boss might be back. Heh.

Hahah. I don't have any internet connection in my room because of the zaman kuno computer I'm currently using so I'm outside the office where everybody can walk by and see me.

Just so you know, I finally know what's my position in this workplace. I'm a so-called noob accountant cum receptionist cum tai kar cheh. Why tai kar cheh? Because I actually have to call the debtors up to ask them to clear their debts.

And what do I get as a result? An ordinary pay meant for one person. Idiot! I'm taking the risk of getting death threats okay! I should be getting thrice of what I'm getting now. I feel so exploited! =p

Gotta run. Scared the boss might pop in all of a sudden and cause me a heart attack and worse still, fire me.
Hahahahahah. Ciao! =)

Before my memory fails me.

First of all, I wanna thank God I'm still alive after uploading theeeeeeesssssseeeee many pictures. I'm seriously considering switching to another blog site since Blogspot is being such a bitch when it comes to uploading pictures.

The lazy side of me wanted to finish off blogging about the entire trip in just a post. But looks like there'll be another post to come because I cannot stand uploading anymore pictures. *wipes sweat*

Okay, so my last stop was at Nanjing and the journey continued around the city. I think this is Day Three..or Four. Whatever. Our first stop was at the famous Nanjing Bridge.

To get to the best spot of the bridge, you'll have to enter the building and take a lift up.

This is what it looks like in the building. They sold all these crystal balls and jades but nobody seemed to be interested in buying those.

We were then welcomed with the warmest of the warmest 'hint' despite the cold weather.

China people are so polite. Even when you slip, you have to carefully slip. If you still don't get their 'powderful England', the sign is warning you to watch your steps and be careful so you won't slip. It's amazing how the translation turned out to be. Hahahah.

View from the top of the bridge. It has an interesting history about how the bridge was built and became the country's pride, how much money the Government spent, how long the people took to build it, the length, yada yada. Wikipedia it yourself.

After that, we went to witness this 'si fu' who is hard at work drawing and painting every little detail inside the glass shaped ball.

This is the view of the bridge from the outside.

I like this picture. I think it's me who enhanced the view.

We were waiting for the rest who were still admiring the intricate masterpiece(s) of the earlier mentioned 'si fu'. Even I can make the rocks look beautiful. Mwahahah..

After that, we headed to see the tallest Buddha statue at I-forgot-where.

At the bottom of the hill.

The statue is situated at the peak of the mountain so we resorted to using another mode of transportation instead of killing our legs. No pictures of the statue since it's not my belief.

Dinner time arrived soon after and then we went for a walk down the streets.
We got ourselves this! I love eating it plus it's cheap!
We took a picture of our bedroom everytime we entered a new hotel/motel. Every room we stayed is in the range of the mediocre category if I were to rate it.

Next morning, we travelled to Wuxi (or was it Hangzhou?) and were welcomed with the gorgeous sights of nature.

Took a boat ride around the lake. I think we're in Wuxi. I remember seeing 'Wuxi Lake' in our itinerary.

That's the tour guide in red who followed and showed us around for the entire 8 days.

Just to let you see how the boat looks like from this angle. Heheh.

Very picturesque.

The view around the lake was breathtaking. Got peacock some more! See what I mean when I said peacocks should replace rats as one of the Chinese zodiac?

Next, we went to the tea plantation to see nothing else but tea.

Our Hangzhou tour guide.

He claims to be the tea expert and his English was the best I've heard since I landed my foot in China.

The people there actually eat the tea leaves. The tea expert said we shouldn't throw it away. Hahah. Right after that I saw my mom sipping the tea and spitting the tea leaves back into the glass because she's not used to eating it. So was I, because I did the same. Hahahah.

I posted quite a lot of solo pictures of her because I don't look good in the ones I posted which has her in it. Geddit?
Pillow stuffed with tea. Apparently, it will give you a better rest at night and you can sleep soundly.

This place was used to shoot for a TVB drama series... If you remember that drama which involved tea plantation, tea workers who plucks tea leaves, the art of frying tea leaves with your bare hands. Ring a bell? Lol. Yeah yeah, that one.

Yep that's right. I'm the owner =p

The next few hours after lunch were practically wasted. The stupid tour gave us plenty of 'free' time to walk around and kill time but there was really nothing much to see. Therefore, we did the usual.

Hahah. Mom joined us this time..and we didn't ask! She literally jumped into the picture.

Ohhh. Who's that? So mysterious. Nyahahaha.

OMG. Guess what is this?? It's smelly tofu! (chow tau foo!) Surprisingly it was quite nice that I wanted more. Heheh.

Mummy waiting anxiously for her I-don't-know-what's-that food. Looks and tastes like popiah. So it's prolly the China edition popiah.

After wasting like 3 hours walking around the same area, we finally went for dinner and then we were brought to watch a show which was the highlight of the night. That place was really awesome because it's supposedly the Song Dynasty era so everything inside there was set up in the olden times!

Even the security guard was dressed up like that. Damn lan ci. *roll eyes*

Can't see much of the background because it's already so dark even though it was only about, what, 7?
This cool old man asked Sarah if she wanted to try to hold that huge stick to pound the soya. Sarah got excited and asked me if I wanted to try as well. I, being the suspicious one, quickly asked her to ask the man if we needed to pay to snap a picture. Then the man said no. Dad laughed when he found out that we asked the man if we needed to pay.

Entered the place to watch the show titled 'The Romance Of The Song Dynasty'.

My older sister kept recording the show using our video cam. She was warned by the guards not to record it. Guess how they warned her??

By shooting laser at her. Hahah. Obediently, She turned off the cam and when she thought they weren't looking, she'll start recording again. And there goes the laser shooting again. Lol. She would ask us to block her from the guard's view but they kept shooting the laser at her like 5 to 6 times. It was so funny.

Some serious head banging swinging action.

China's..showgirls? Heheh.

Some crazy acrobatic position. Yes, she's balancing a girl with her leg stretched beside her ears. Pet pet tak sakit meh?

The show which lasted for about an hour plus was really good. Well, what can I say? I'm easily entertained. Tell me a lame joke and I'd laugh for you anytime.

Anyway, right after the show ended, we went back to that place where all the stalls were lined up with various exhibitions.

Then right, I spotted this particular stall which can weigh you in the most traditional way. So, I got excited this time, went straight ahead and placed my butt on that whatever you call it thing.

The stupid man in red kept talking about my weight in Mandarin which I obviously couldn't intepret. I wasn't listening.

Hahah. She sat on it next. The stupid man in red did the same. She did the same.

Note why I called him stupid. I have an explicable reason. Okay, maybe it wasn't him who was stupid after all because right after my sister got up, he smiled and said '10 yuan' to us. My sister and I exchanged 'wth' looks then paid him reluctantly.

To put it in a nicer way, I was naive. In actual fact, I was stupid.

After getting conned of 10yuan, we went back to our hotel to get our much needed rest.

Before hitting the beds, we gobbled down these cocoons! Remember I told you we can actually eat them? Yeah, we bought a box of those.

It's actually dragon beard candy, idiots. Ngekngekngek. =)

P.S This is by far the longest post I've ever typed. Well, it feels like it.

P.P.S Happy VDay everyone!