A tribute...

... To the two most important people in my life

Words are only words. Words can only say so much. Not a single word, nor long-winded essays overflowing with thousands of words can fully express our gratitude for all the things you've done ever since we learnt how to breathe.

We are capable of loving others, all because of how you've shown your love and care towards each other, towards us and towards those whom we call friends. Giving us a reason to believe in the greatness of life itself.

Twenty-six years ago today, you've devoted your lives to each other and to this family. Twenty-six years and three children later, we are all happy and healthy, and living in a loving home.

Dearest Mom and Dad, Happy 26th Anniversary!

From your three mischievious angels.

Discovering Zhuhai (珠海) & Macau (澳門)

Initially, our travel plan (or lack of) was to walk around and explore Shenzhen at our own leisure. And of course, hitching the subway to Lao Jie (literally translates as Old Street) for shopping.

Yes, you read that right. Shopping. Don't say you didn't see this coming. Women. It's in our blood.

Back to the subject.

My dad had this friend who recommended a one-day tour to this small city called 珠海 (Zhūhǎi) and a little bit of 中山 (Zhōngshān). And at the end of the day, this tour ends with a ferry tour around Macau Island (澳門), the Vegas of the East. You board the ferry for RMB80 (approx. RM40) and then it'll ferry you AROUND Macau Island just for you to catch a glimpse of it. You won't get to get off at Macau cuz you'll need a visa for that.

People fight to get on the boat FIRST, to get the best seats. One half of the trip, you see the crowd concentrated at the left side of the ferry cuz Macau's on the left side. When the ferry does a U-turn back to the port, the crowd almost instantly shifts toward the right side. Witnessing the whole scenario was really entertaining and hilarious. Just thank God the ferry didn't topple over with the unequally scattered crowd. This is what I would call a TRUE kiasuism spirit. Now that alone can be a whole other post.

Meet my new friend, Donkey. He grinds soyabean and rice for a living.

Oh, and people would just fight to take photographs of themselves posing with some Macau landmark in the background to make it look as if they have already been to Macau. When the closest one can get is approximately 25-30 feet from the shore. The ferry actually rent out binoculars to passengers so you can peep admire the island up close.

That was the dessert of the day. You know. The ultimate, sweet and most hoo-haah event of the whole tour. Everyone in our tour bus was just so excited waiting for this part of the trip even before sunrise.

I, on the other hand, very much prefered the earlier part of the day.

At Zhuhai (珠海), we didn't exactly tour around the city but we were taken to a few places with historic significance. And also, to places where there are people promoting and selling stuff as always. Always the most uninteresting part of the whole tour thing. They always bring you to the most expensive places in town, promoting products you probably haven't heard of and selling them at prices you wouldn't even dare look at.

First off, a typical old and BIG ancient traditional Chinese rich family house. Like the ones where you normally see on TV shows, except that this is real.

This is the frontyard of the house.

Apparently the big tree you see in this picture *points upwards* lived for hundreds of years. Just look at the compound man.. this family's filthy rich.

This house belongs to the Chen family (Hope I got this right), which is the family of a former senator of Zhuhai. He was quite a prominent figure as he encouraged and tradings and businesses with the Americans, which ultimately contributed to the immensed growth and development of Zhuhai as a city.

The verandah at the back of the house leading to the back garden. Old. Neat.

This senator guy had two wives; the first one was a Chinese while the second one was an American-Hawaiian called Julia. Wanna take a wild guess how many children this Senator had in total? Not six, not eleven, not fourteen, but 19 children in total.

How about guessing how many did each of the wife gave birth to? The first wife had three children. Which means Julia, the second wife, bore the Senator SIXTEEN children - Twelve girls and four boys to be exact. One heck of a strong lady, ya think? They actually posted up a family tree in the main hall. Her kids had names like Melanie, Aurora, Henry, James, etc. Very least expected, especially coming from a family living in the older Chinese era.

Personal living room? Personal entertainment centre? Personal hangout?

Each bedroom in this house is connected to a personal living room. Big family. Two master bedrooms and estimately another 20 bedrooms (for the kids and guests) with personal hangout space each..

My imagination tells me this is a really humongous single-storey house.

Nevertheless, we didn't get to see the ENTIRE house cuz being in tour group means you have to abide by their rules. They speak, you listen. Even if they're speaking through their noses and you simply can't make out what they're saying. They say "let's move on", means we move on. They say eat, we eat.

And besides, I don't think that the family would actually open up the entire house for tourists. I wouldn't do that even if my dad was Elvis Presley. I mean, a family home is something sacred.. where we have privacy.. where we share joy and pain.. where family share bitter and sweet memories. A home should always be kept sacred.

We did visit a few other places after this. There was the Zhuhai Aquarium, which all five of us (my family) basically walk once through by ourselves, not following the Aquarium's tour guide. It was pretty short. Nothing much to see. Didn't snap any photos. Didn't see any of my kin, Flowerhorn.

Then there was this other park we visited, which we had taken some photos. But I don't have it in hardcopies yet. The film roll which contains those pics has not been used up until the end. And my mom's adamant to get it used up and not waste the entire film for the 14 pictures we have in there. Sigh. She's got a point.

So what do I do for the rest of the film? I have 22 pictures to snap! Snap what?

I guess that's it for Zhuhai. For now.

Shenzhen's Window of the World (世界之窗)

As most of you know, I was in Shenzhen for this year's Chinese New Year. It has become sort of a tradition in my family that we would go somewhere for Chinese New Year holiday cuz we don't balik kampung on a contrary to most Chinese families. It's difficult to get tickets back to Sibu, anyway. We usually go overseas, such as Hong Kong (for 2005). If we ran out of ideas or there're no more flights, then Genting would be it *haha*.

This year, my dad was already in Shenzhen for several weeks already. And my parents knew how to navigate around Shenzhen. So, thought it would be a great idea that we flew up to join him there, although I really missed the 'lui yan kai' a.k.a. Ladies' Street in Mong Kok, Hong Kong. This whole long street was jam-packed with stalls with good stuff at cheap prices. Six days we were there last year, every single day we went shopping. Anyway...

Aren't the flowers pretty? Couldn't resist snapping a pic of it.

On Chor Yee (Jan 30), we went to the Window of the World (世界之窗, pronounced as shìjièzhīchuāng). Easy to go there, just take the subway all the way to the west terminal. The place was EXTREMELY crowded. People coming from all over Shenzhen and some here from outstation on holiday. Pure madness. Better not lose sight of your family/friend. All the more when you're in a foreign country. I mean, just look at the crowd. Siao eh.

And this was just the evening crowd.. morning crowd was double of this size.

Ya-lah, the whole of China population get one week holiday for Chinese New Year. What do you expect? If this park was empty, then something is wrong.

Anyway, 世界之窗 is a theme park where you can see miniatures of famous tourist attractions from all over the world. Egypt's pyramids, Holland's windmills, USA's Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, India's Taj Mahal, Cambodia's Angkor Wat, Paris' Eiffel Tower, etc. Sometimes, you may be able to catch the traditional dance performances - Thai, Indonesian and Malaysian - especially when there are lesser people (don't know if that's possible in a country with 1.3 billion population).

The Japanese Garden

You may even come across miniatures of medieval kingdoms. Too bad the buildings aren't lifesize. I would be interested in seeing how medieval houses and castles looked like. And it would be fascinating to learn the lifestyle. Aahhh. Don't know why but I'm very intrigued by medieval stuff, ancient Egyptian practices, ancient China, Roman and Greek empires.. They make very interesting subjects.

Only wished there were more of that in our school History books, instead of economics and Parameswara and his Pokok Melaka. Heehee.

A little European medieval kingdom. Can see Eiffel Tower sticking out up there?

Being myself who loves beautiful art and carvings (inherited this love from my mom), I was quickly pulled towards the walls and pillars with really cun engravings and carvings.

I can only appreciate the art, but man... I wouldn't be able to make a dime if I were to survive on selling my artwork. I wouldn't even call them art in the first place! :P

The Incredible Three in front of the pillars. What's with my brother..

These pillars would be one of the first things you would notice when you enter the theme park, besides the statues of five influential men in history. The one at the utmost left is the statue of Ramses II, the longest reigning Pharoah in the ancient Egypt. The fourth from left is supposedly of King David, the famous little boy shepherd who killed Goliath with just one stone and eventually became one of the greatest kings of Israel. The utmost right is, I think, the ancient Greek statue of Venus de Milo, depicting the goddess of love and beauty.

I'm not so sure of the other two.. maybe Genghis Khan and a Buddhist goddess? Just a wild guess. Can't really make them out. But they all have something in common. They are all, with the exception of the Genghis Khan lookalike, not decent.

Hei, hei, hei.. Hei, hei, hei.. Lima sekawan.

Now, I SOOOO wanna go to these countries and see the REAL thing. Ahh. Anyone wanna come join me? Then we can go find sponsors for our tickets around the world! Heheheh.

The Grand Canyon. Caught my mom by surprise.

This was our second time to this Theme Park. The first was back in 1997, the year Hong Kong was returned to China. There was one thing in common between these two visits to 世界之窗... We totally missed out Paris' Champs-Elysées, America's Niagara Falls and India's Taj Mahal. Again. Aiysehh.. sayang betul!

My sister with the Dutch windmill. All we're missing are a wooden bucket and two pigtails.

Didn't take as many photos as we liked cuz we were more busy trying to get away from the crowd and avoiding nudging people. Plus, we didn't dare take much in case the police (or were they security guards?) were not too happy about it. They can confiscate your camera, you know. Or maybe I'm just being paranoid, thinking up possibilities in my mind. But they look scary. Need to smile more. A lot more.

But don't get me wrong. China is a very beautiful country with tons of interesting historic facts, legends and elements that you would never get bored of exploring. I do love the winter in Shenzhen and Hong Kong... was easy settling to the weather there that when we landed in KLIA, my mom, Enoch and I were already feeling hot and sweaty.

End of Part Two of the Shenzhen Journal.

I miss this, I miss that not.

Today's the day where this Christmas tree - MY Christmas tree - is FINALLY stripped of all her glorious ornaments, sparkling ruffles (can't think of what you call the little long bushy caterpillar-lookalike thingy) and her majestic lights. Muahahahaaa. Into the attic you go.

Usually, we I put the tree away by the second or third week of January. Work is keeping my sister busy. School is keeping my brother "busy". Hence, I get the honour of keeping the tree away (with my mom, of course) cuz I'll be on summer holidays at this time every year. However, this year, I didn't get the tree down at the usual time cuz I'VE BEEN WORKING LAH! Gimme a break. Let me sleep. Leave me alone.

Every once in a while, the imams (from the nearby Mosque) would walk around my neighbourhood, dropping by to visit every Muslim family. They identify Muslim houses by observing their frontyard, i.e. avoiding houses with idols, crosses, small temples or anything that would symbolize religions other than Islam. My family, although Christian, has never practiced hanging up crosses in any part of our house. Religion is, after all, the matter of the heart not actions.

That's probably why the imams always (and I mean ALWAYS) mistook my house for a Muslim's. Even with this Christmas tree shining so brightly from my house in the evening, they still rang the doorbell and shouted "Asalamualaikummm..." with me standing just several feet away from them in my frontyard, looking at them with utter wonder if they couldn't see the Christmas tree in the house. Or... are Muslims setting up Christmas trees in their houses too this season? Heeheehee. Too far-fetched.

After staring at my face for a while, the imams finally figured I was a Chinese. Thank God I still look passable for Chinese... passable since it took them so long to figure me out. I was beginning to wonder if they were gonna ask me, "Are you a Baba Nyonya?". I would have been speechless.

Anyway, they were very nice about their mistake and apologized. But I couldn't help but laugh. At myself. Sigh. Now I'm beginning to miss the tree. Sigh.

These hands in this picture *points to the picture below* are my hands since this morning, right after a visit to the doctor.

Had an appointment with a doctor today for a blood test (I usually need to do one anually). Nurses and doctors have always complained about my invisible veins on my elbows and how they are sooo very, very fine. Thus, the great difficulty of getting enough blood from me. So far, only two person have been able to draw blood from my elbow - a government doctor who took my blood to test for Thalassemia disease, and the Blood Bank supervisor (head of dept.) during my industrial training. And they only needed one try.

Today, I got poked in four different places. Four needle puncture marks. Three plasters. And still, NO blood. I have bring these miserable hands to go back there in two weeks' time for another try. ARGH!!

I hate needles!!

For life.

Reporting from Shenzhen (v1.2)

Well, I could actually blog from here.. I can't and I won't cuz I can't even view my own blog.. BUT I can log into blogger.com.. BUT even if I could view my blog, it wouldn't be interesting if I wrote about my day because there'll be no pictures to accompany the post. And if you know me very well, I'm not the type to write super long entries. I rather post pictures cuz a picture's worth a thousand words. Plus, it's so much easier to elaborate from pictures. Heeheehee. Spoken like a true lazy person. Bleh.

I'll blog more about my days in Shenzhen probably the week after I return to KL. Would definitely need more than just one entry. Have about 3 film rolls of pictures. Yep, using the good old traditional Olympus camera while the digital camera lies idle at home.

Just a few golden rules of survival in China. My dad calls them Sun Tzu's Art of War: The 21st Century.

Please watch your steps at ALL times. There is a probability of 97% that you will step on either urine or vomit or spilt stuff or food or shit or human. From there, there's a 50-50 chance of stepping on a combination of more than two listed above. Note to self: Please remember to wash my boots.. can't endure thinking all those disgusting stuff I've been trampling on. Eeewwww..

Please watch the people around you and be careful especially when you hear anyone nearby you clearing their throat. Walk far, FAR away and stay clear. You might just get spit on :) Just imagine 1 million people walking along the same street and spitting at the same time. Yuck. You start to wonder whether you are walking along the street or you are caught in the middle of a football field with an ongoing match between Manchester United versus AS Roma.

During festive season, stay clear of young unpatronized children with fireworks. They might just throw one at you. Read: Not NEAR you, but AT you.

Worldwide, "ladies first", "children first" and "elderly first" may be common practices. But here, it's the "ME first" culture. Pushing and nudging are two extremely necessary skills to polish in order to survive here. If you can't fight them, join them. Hahahaa. Yeah girls, remember to guard your assets too. Just remember to switch off pushing-and-nudging once you're out of here. It is NOT a nice, at all, mannerism to adopt.

Don't smile too much, the police may render you suspicious.

Beware of peeing toddlers. They do their business anytime, anyhow and anywhere. And I mean it. Into the garbage bins in the subway station, drains at the side of the road or middle of the sidewalk, etc.

Please check the doors of toilet cubicles before you decide to use it. Sometimes the doors may not lock. Sometimes the floor may be puke-fied. Sometimes you may find the "contents" of the rubbish bin exposed with really disgusting stuff. Sometimes there is NO DOOR! Sometimes there're even no cubicles.. so pleasure doing business staring at one another. However, the last two do not apply to Shenzhen though cuz it's a planned city (bandar terancang).. thank God! The last time I went to upper north of China, I was told to bring along an umbrella - big enough to cover my butt - in case I need to do my business cuz in some areas where toilets don't even exist! Unless you count areas behind bushes and trees.

Beware of people who try to trick you into paying for them. We were at this 2 yuan shop, where all the stuffs sell for 2 yuan lar as you can tell. Decent stuff selling for ridiculously low price. You can imagine what the crowd was like in there. This is where nudge-and-push culture is at large rather annoyingly. Anyway, my mom bought a whole basketful of stuff and was paying up. Then there was this "nice" lady whom we shall refer to as Kee Kuai Zha Bor (Miss Weirdo) for the remaining of my story.

You see. As my mom was taking out money to pay AND the cashier was NOT looking, Miss Kee Kuai Zha Bor, holding a few items of her own, threw her items into my mom's basket thinking that my mom nor the cashier wouldn't notice and my mom would pay up for her items as well. You know the trick - mix your stuff with others, let them pay, then run off with their items as well as yours. Unfortunately for Miss Kee Kuai Zha Bor, she thought my mom was one she eh sai tipu one. Who would be dumb enough to try mess with my mom and her two brilliant *cough cough* daughters? My mom did tell the cashier which were her stuff and which were not, much to her dismay. Padan muka! Can't believe how cheapskate people can get.. I mean this Zha Bor had only 5-7 items in her hand which would add up to RMB10 to RMB14 (RM1 = RMB 2) and she wouldn't even pay for it?? Geez.

Beware of desperate salespeople. Think Malaysian salesmen/women are bad? Try the Chinese. Yes, you do stand an excellent chance of getting dirt cheap prices for just about everything. But once you start bargaining on an item, you better get it. Or risk getting pulled by your clothes/hands or even blocked from getting out of the shop. Forever.

Here, you also have pro-active beggars. They would walk around with bowls, chasing after people for about 50 yards for money. Oh yeah. You not only have professional accountants, lawyers, engineers and doctors.. you have professional beggars. My dad told me once that some would find easy money by throwing their food into the dustbin and eating from there while carrying a toddler or two. All these to squeeze money by manipulating the public's compassion and kind hearts. Just like a story, right? I thought so too... initially. Until one fine day, my dad, my brother and I actually caught one "professional" beggar doing exactly that. The things people would do for easy money.

What joy to be going back to civilization this Friday.