Grr! Arf! Woof! Bark! (Translation: GONG XI FATT CHAI!)

And... so we welcome a new year. Good bye to the year of the rooster, hello to the year of the dog!

Chinese New Year eve was MADNESS... I was on the highway for SIX-AND-HALF FREAKING HOURS!!!! I attempted to leave again at 6pm and we still got caught in a horrendous jam. There were 3 reported congested sections: from Rawang to Bt Beruntung, from Lembah Beringin to Jelapang and from Ipoh (South) to can't-remember-where. I got caught in the first 2 sections; the third had cleared by the time we got there. I arrived in my grandmother's house after midnight!! This is the first Chinese New Year which I haven't had a reunion dinner in over 20 years!!! My Chinese New Year eve dinner consisted of a Dunkin Donut sandwich with my father in the Tapah rest stop (my other family members had gone earlier in another car, leaving at 3pm and arriving at 8pm).

Chinese New Year was spent the usual way... the visit to four temples. I took pictures with my brand-new Nokia 6270...

Didn't do much else. We rarely go visiting in Penang anyway. My bro and I took the opportunity to leave a little earlier, and we came back down on the 3rd day of CNY although the 4th day was still a holiday. I needed to catch up on work anyway. When in Penang, I have NO mood to work at all. All I do is eat and sleep. Tomorrow I soooooo have to hit the gym!

Unmoving traffic!

It's the day before Chinese New Year! And unfortunately, this year it happens to be on Saturday. So everyone who's not from KL but are staying in KL are flooding the roads with their cars today. I'm not not from KL (I was born and bred here!) but I have to visit my grandmother who's in Penang. My family and I entered the North-South Highway at the Damansara toll which was clear... up to Kota Damansara (which is like, about 5-10 km away) and got caught in a horrible jam.

No, I'm not writing this blog in frustration while stuck in stop-and-go traffic. We're not stupid enough to stay put in a stream of cars that can turn a 4-hour journey into a 10-hour one. We turned back and now I'm in the comfort of my home in front of my beloved PC... while waiting for a better time to hit the roads again. Yeah, we'll still have to get on the highway sometime today... sigh...

February comes... and friends go

Come February, I'm going to lose two friends... to another country. One is a friend whom I have known for 13 years, since Secondary 1; another is one who is very dear to me although we have only known each other for little more than one year. The former is going to Singapore for a lecturing job, and her news was rather sudden to me. The latter is migrating to Australia after her PR application was finally approved.

The former (Wei Kwan) is a very sweet girl who was my classmate for five years in secondary school. We rarely meet up anyway because the whole group is usually quite busy; but her absence will definitely be felt in our future gatherings. I'm happy for her anyway, because I think it will be a great career boost for her. And the great thing is, her boyfriend has a job in Singapore too. So she won't be totally alone. It can be quite scary to be alone in a country all by yourself, with people you don't know. At least she has someone she loves with her.



The latter (Barbara) is a dance teammate who's a very sensible character that I can totally rely on, and also very much fun to be with. I'm going to miss her terribly because over the past year, we've gotten to know each other much better (due to our many late nights practising together for various performances and competitions), and she gives me sound advice whenever I tell her about a particular problem of mine. I wish I have known her earlier. She won't be going alone too; she's going with her husband and dog, staying with her sister and her sister's husband until they get a place of their own.

Really gonna miss them. I'm so happy for them that they're moving on to greener pastures; but I'm still gonna miss them!

Today I flew...

OK, not really flew. But I tried being a flyer... :D

OK OK. Here's what really happened. I'm the teacher-in-charge of the cheerleading for blue house in my school, and I was watching my students testing out the flyers and practising the base positions (FYI: Bases are the people at the bottom of the pyramid, the flyers are the people on top of the pyramid). Towards the end, after many had gone home, there were only two boys and three girls left, and they were having so much fun practising that they actually asked me to try being the flyer. Initialy I declined, but upon their second time asking I decided to give it a shot. I did manage to go up, but err... it being my first time, there was a slight panic and instead of grabbing the spotter's hands, I accidentally grabbed the boys' heads instead. It was pretty embarrassing, but the boys were great sports and readily forgave me. They even let me try again, and this time it went much more smoothly. Probably not great, but at least I didn't grab anybody's heads and I managed to get up there straight without incident. It was pretty fun... and I inspired the captain to try flying (she initially kept desisting). Although there were a few false starts for her, the boys did say, (and I quote) "If we can carry Miss Hoo, we can carry her!!!" And they did...

I kinda wished that there was cheerleading in my school when I was still schooling. It would have been such great fun. But looking back, in all probability, I wouldn't have made it as a cheerleader... I was not at all flexible and I didn't know I could dance until I was 23 when I started taking line dance at the gym out of fun, which only then lead to my serious passion for dancing. Heck, I'm still not flexible, but I'm a lot more flexible than I used to be, hehehe. AND it's improving every day, only because now I'm a lot more willing to try than when I was younger. Sigh... the things I lost out on when I was a youth. Isn't it ironic that when you're older, you try more things which should have been tried when you were young?

And... we're counting down

I’ve never looked forward to Chinese New Year as much as this. I usually don’t like Chinese New Year. I still don’t. It’s not that I’m not proud of my Chinese heritage… it’s just that every year we have to battle the jam up to Penang, where I’ll spend sleepless nights not because of stress, but because of the ongoing firecrackers that go on for hours. And there’s nothing else to do there, and there’s certainly no Broadband access.

 

But this year I look forward to Chinese New Year. But it’s not because anything special will be happening this time. I’m just waiting for the Year of the Rooster to end. The entire year has been such a bad run for me, and even in its very last week, things are still falling on my head. The Year of the Dog promises to be much better. I don’t believe in astrology, but at this point, I’ll take anything that offers me sunshine behind the clouds.

Clarifications about the Radiation Protection for Officer

By the way, in reply to the comment made by Eng Seng - I'm sure not everyone knows what this program is about since I never did explain it. It's a 2-week course about radioactivity that one has to undergo if they wish to be involved in an industry that uses radioactive materials, whether as suppliers (manufacturers of radioactive materials), users (of X-raymachines, nuclear gauges), or to work in the licensing board.

It's not just about attending the course; at the end of it, one has to take an exam consisting of 3 papers: one general paper (all MCQs), one specialization paper (as per the above three divisions; MCQs + essays) and one practical paper (we write our answers based on the results of a lab experiment we did sometime during the 2-week course). The passing grade is 70% average for the first two papers with a minimum of 60% each; and 70% for the third paper. If one fails, he/she is allowed to resit once; thereafter upon failing again, he/she has to retake the entire course before allowed totake another shot at the exam.

Because this involves radioactivity, as you can imagine, taking the exam is no walk in the park. It helps greatly to have some basic Physics background; students from Arts streams might find some difficulty doing this course, as this course is very technical in terms of its course content. The passing rate is generally quite low(but that might be because the people taking the
exam come from different ages with different backgrounds).

Although many expected I would pass easily, the reason I wasn't sure was because it's been years since I last mugged for an exam and I just am not used to studying anymore. I think I studied 5 hours at most. I simply couldn't focus! And the parts I focused on did not come out in the exam; most of the parts of Paper 2 came out from the other section I barely read. I had to BS my way through most of Paper 2. No, I'm not boasting here. I'm honestly surprised (and VERYrelieved!!!) that I passed.

Here I go again: I PASSED THE RADIATION PROTECTION FOR OFFICERS
EXAMINATIONS!!! WOOOHOOOOOOO!!!!!

Grumph postscript

Well, the dinner turned out quite lovely and it was at an affordable rate.
I'll admit that. I know I sounded really frustrated in one of my earlier
entries. They've done their best in what they had to work with. Thank yous
to those who planned it, I really appreciate it.

Still bugging me

They're still trying to miss-call me. The number 013-2643599 SMSed me asking
me to call him and when I ignored that SMS, the numbers 019-6785392 and
017-3776378 tried to call me. Immature brats.

Prank miss calls?

I got a missed call from a number today, so it was a natural thing for me to try to return the call, although no one picked up. Ever since then, for same strange stupid reason, the idiot of that number started giving me missed calls tonight. Then someone of a different phone number messages me in Mandarin asking why I called that first person. When I finally got through the first number I asked him who he was and all I could hear was a bunch of boys talking in the background before finally someone swore at me and hung up. Then someone else of YET another number SMSed me to call him. I did, just to find out what was going on, but I don't think they understood English very well because he couldn't answer me, and in fact stayed silent after a while. I stayed very polite throughout the call, but I persistently kept asking, "Why are your friends calling me?" even though I could elicit no response. After some silence I finally hung up.

I haven't gotten any more missed calls, but if I do, I'm going to lodge a complaint against all three numbers, AND I'm going to send an email out to every contact I know. I might not get any more tonight, but who knows what tomorrow might bring. There's no point trying to bar their calls because they might try to call me from another number. I'm listing their numbers down here. If anyone can tell me who these pranksters are, it would be a great help. The reason I'm pissed off it's because it's extremely annoying and I really do not want to be inundated with loads of useless missed calls or worthless SMSes in the future, and I have no desire to be driven to change my number by a few childish pranks.

019-6785392
017-6187758
017-3776378

Grumph

I'm broke. Super, super-broke. OK, it's my own fault I guess. The holidays are just draining on the wallet, and now it's empty as a sink with unclogged pipes. And I'm feeling a bit annoyed because there are some of my friends who don't understand the financial constraints that the rest of us go through. They're the older ones, fortunate enough to already have their money made, and some of them are also taitais who don't need to work. In a recent performance, we each got RM80 which isn't much but to rest of us, it can be a life-saver. Because it was in a single cheque, they had in their own discussion suggested that the entire group take the money and spending it on a high tea.

Fortunately the person whose name the cheque was made out to (who wasn't in the discussion) asked the rest of us first, and we said we'd rather have the ca$h. And she reminded them gently that the younger ones who are still working would look to the money as extra income, and not as extra pocket money.

Now we're getting together for our rare get-togethers, and they've been suggesting dinners at fancy restaurants which would cost just under RM100. I did make a request for something under RM50 but apparently it could not be achieved, and arrangements have already been made for a dinner somewhere that's just under RM80. Oh, and I was reminded that I have RM80 from the performance. Hah! I've spent that money long ago and I was not planning on blowing it all on a single dinner. I'm not even sure I'd like the place. I can't help wondering if enough effort was made to find a nice affordable place to go. These are people with expensive tastes, and somehow I feel that they've been looking at costlier places. It's not that I think they chose the expensive places on purpose. I think they looked at places they would like to go to, found that the price was high, and picked a place that cost the least among them. I don't think they actually made an effort to look for a place that was cheaper, because those were "lower class". I mean, even going to a place like Swensen's and having a la carte would chalk up to RM50 per person, on average, if you don't order three ice-creams in addition to your meal. Right?

I'm not angry with them. I'm just annoyed that they don't think about other people's financial constraints. That doesn't make them bad people. They're actually quite lovely. But for some people, it's easy to forget about money matters when money comes easy. My students are a fine example. (If you're a student of mine who's reading this - you fall in this category! I only have students from Sri KDU which is a PRIVATE school!! :þ Hehehe.)

What a mood to start the new year in.