Journey mercies

So one of my ex-housemates in London, who now lives in Scotland, had a very scary moment when her new husband was admitted into hospital for pneumonia.

Labels: Church tales, Friends, Travels

My one year in Newcastle for my undergraduate was a truly truly blessed time. It was filled with so much rich friendships, despite how little of each other's lives we actually knew. As long as we connected with one another during that period, the friendship was special, no matter how briefly that connection was.

I met up with Christina in Hong Kong, who I got to know better when she visited Malaysia after my time in Newcastle. We had a great time catching up. She asked me what I would like to have for dinner and I immediately declared - hawker food! And she accused me of being like Ah Chan, who demanded the same thing last time she was in Hong Kong.




As she took me around err... one of the many Hong Kong markets (some place that sold lots of goldfish), we passed a stall that sold chow tau fu (smelly taufu) which smelt like rotten chicken. I made a face at it but when Christina told me how much Yvonne Chan looooooooves it I thought I would give it a go.

Labels: Friends, Travels

While Malaysia had May Day public holiday on Friday, the UK had theirs on the Monday. For some reason, public holidays tend to fall on Mondays though I've never been curious enough to ask why. I decided to visit Doctor Ming at Nottingham, where he's based temporarily before he heads back to Newcastle.

When I arrived in Nottingham on Saturday afternoon, he whisked me off in his Mazda sports car (his habit of claiming of being poor and with no money earned no more sympathy after I saw his car) to Birmingham for a Malaysian lunch. Birmingham is about an hour away.

The next day we went to Peak District, which was also an hour away. It was an interesting drive, to picturesque country side and I would have enjoyed it a lot more if I was awake.

I can't help it! I've been programmed since young to sleep the moment I am in a car. I like sleeping in cars. You can only see that much of trees for so long.

You can take a girl out of Malaysia, but you can't take Malaysia out of the girl. Especially if she's from KL. We went to Buxton, and the well, countrysides can't really have that much to differ from one another right? Trees are trees. Fields are fields. And it was cold.

In short, nature is nice, but well. Anyway. I did enjoy myself, I really did. But one experience is enough for me thank you!

We arrived a bit too late to do some tree climbing activities that includes high wire walking, flying fox, etc. We ended up taking a cave tour. The guide was pretty good in explaining the cave and the stalagmites and stalactites and stuff. And it really made me feel in awe at the Creator's intricate design of the world. But the Malaysianness of Ming and I was questioning why we paid £7 per person for a 15 minute talk, where walking one end of the cave to the other would have taken 2 minutes.

We then hiked a bit to where there was a stone structure named Solomon's Temple.













We climbed to the top of the tower but couldn't stay up there for too long because the wind was so strong.

On Monday morning, before I took the train home, Ming drove me around Nottingham city centre to make sure I can at least say that I've visited Nottingham!

Labels: Friends, Travels

Well, after 2 months in Malaysia, I'm finally back in good ol' dreary, cold and wet London.

I got up at 7am on Saturday to catch my flight back to London. Glad to have sat in between normal, non-smelly and thoughtful people in the plane so that made the trip bearable. Except for a baby nearby that wailed with all its might every half an hour throughout the flight.

The plane touched down at 3.45pm, half an hour earlier than scheduled and the immigration queue was blessedly short! Less than 10 minutes compared to the 2 hour wait I had to endure last year when I first arrived in London.

I was glad that Chris R and Martin F came to pick me up from Heathrow airport when I found out all trains passing my stop has been cancelled and taxis cost a bomb (£30-50) on weekends. But due to traffic, I had to wait for a while before they managed to find me.






The weather has turned quite cold, it was about 4 degrees when I landed. It's not too bad, I just need to remember to carry gloves with me. I am just a little surprised that I adjusted to the cold quite well. In fact, I had the heater on for the first time since I moved into the church flat, and I woke up to a not warm, not cold room this morning and felt it was a little suffocating. I actually prefer my room to be a little chilly in the mornings.

Where's the fun of life without a little hardship eh?

After Chris and Martin picked me up at 7pm, we went to Martin's place for supper. He bought the house some months back, and I didn't manage to visit it until yesterday night. It was small but cosy, and I think the guys are pretty happy to have a proper bachelor's pad for them to hang out in.








By the time I got back and ready to get to bed, it was 10pm London time. About 6am Malaysian time. Needless to say, I knocked out pretty quickly.

During my first service back in London, I sat all the way up front, where a few rows of seats are aligned to face the right profile of the podium, and where all the other seats are placed facing the front of the podiun to the right. I sat right at the end, so it was positioned slightly behind the podium itself. Being seated there also meant that I could easily see the faces of those seated in front of the podium and vice versa.

I thought that Paul L, the pastor, had seen me as he looked over to my direction a couple of times. But when he was preaching, and just getting to the swing of the message, he turned to his right to look at those seated there and he suddenly stopped and exclaimed loudly, "EW, you're back!! It's good to see you!! We've been praying for you!! Why are you seated there?!"

I had to resist the urge to slide down my seat in embarassment but I guess I'm glad to know that he genuinely likes me! Someone pointed out afterwards that his reaction in seeing me is forever immortalised in the tape recording of the sermon.

There was a moment during the service when I felt a little down missing family and friends back in Malaysia, but looked over to the faces of the people and saw some of them smiling warmly back at me, and I felt infused with a sense of gladness. It was like a reassurance from the Lord that where He leads He will always provide. There is a joy, in knowing that you give your fate over to an all-powerful, all-mighty God who is good and will never bring you harm or evil, but in everything, in every unsure step you take into an unknown future, it is for your good, to bring you one step closer to that eternal joy.

KiCheol and family had me have breakfast with them, while in the afternoon John S invited me to have lunch at his place. That's one thing about the folks in IPC, when a family came back from a stint overseas doing mission work, and when a mother gave birth to a new kid, they got different people to provide them meals until their lives settled down for them to go back to a routine of living. I'm thankful that they are also taking care of me.

I'm not glad to be back, but I am glad to finally stop having my life being put on hold. I am not glad to leave family and friends in Malaysia, but I am glad that God has blessed me with family and friends in London in stead.

Labels: Travels

Since I've been left hanging in limbo for nearly 2 months pending my visa approval, the only option that I have to do is to go have holidays!

I went to Kuantan, Pahang for a week with some friends and for the first 6 days, roughed it out by sleeping in tents. The first night was the roughest as it was a little hard to fall asleep with the natural surround sound system of crashing waves. But the next 5 nights I slept like a babe.





But roughing it out only extended to sleeping arrangements, toilets and showers while for our meals we went to scout out all the best coffee shops Kuantan had to offer. Malaysians has not yet cease to amaze me with their love for food. It seems the #1 business here is the food business.

Labels: Travels

Last week I followed my mom to Malacca on one of her business trips. My mom's reasoning was, if I was just going to bum around in the house, I might as well bum in a 5 star hotel. Good enough for me!

Plus I've actually been wanting to visit Malacca because it's a really interesting town, with a lot of its historic heritage preserved, not like KL, which has erased a lot in its bid to be a modern urban jungle. More importantly and probably the real reason - to eat the Malacca chicken rice ball!!! It didn't disappoint!

Labels: Travels

So Jono, Martin and I went camping. We borrowed Ali H's 5-man tent, which fit 3 air beds just nicely, so we agreed that it was meant to be a 5-man-cram tent.

We actually set up camp in the backyard of Jono's friend's parents' house on Friday night, splitting the 4 hour journey to Wales over two days. After a 3 course supper that was prepared for us, the three of us settled in the tent and since we all were tired from work we were eager to fall asleep. Ten minutes later, Jono and I shouted in the darkness...


"PARSLEY!!!"


Jono's friend's big black Doberman decided that he wanted to sleep with us to and came barging into the tent. We had to push it back out and zipped up the tent, to which the Doberman sat outside whining for a bit.

After that, I slept beautifully sound, and woke up in the morning to the guys muttering about some stupid bird that kept them awake from 4am onwards and they couldn't believe I slept through it. No, you can't underestimate my abilities to sleep anywhere anytime at all.

On Saturday morning, we went horseback riding in Wales! It was a bit weird when I first got on top of the big horse, but liked it very much. Jono, being a little more experienced, went of on a separate galloping route, while Martin and I stuck with the walking trail. But at one point, it so happened our guide was behind the two of us making sure that the horse was alright or something, and Martin decided to be a little adventurous and kicked his horse into a canter, without knowing that my horse was used to following the lead of the horse in front of it. So without me being prepared for it to move, was caught in surprise with one leg free of the stirrup and trying to hold on to my balance while trying to pull my reins to stop the horse.

The poor guide, who was a student in Cardiff University, was so frightened, because she shouldn't have allowed that to happen because we could have had a bad accident. But it was a good thing that we didn't really go that fast and my horse was only really interested in eating grass and plants than exercising herself.

Later in the afternoon we decided to hike up one of the hills, to which Martin proved himself to be one of the most straightforward guy around. He basically decided that the best way to hike the hill was to go straight up. Literally. Even despite me saying that there seemed to be a proper track going round the hill. No, he said. Straight up, he said. Tempt the wrath of the strong gust of winds, no proper trail to let us know it's perfectly safe, ignore the heart-thumping fear in face of the possibility of the winds blowing you over the steep hill and plunge you to your death, he might as well have said.

Naw, just being drama mama. It was perfectly safe although I did realise that I do have a slight fear of heights after all.

Jono and Martin posing for the camera

To be continued...

Labels: Friends, Travels

Paris is BeYooTiFul!

And thank God that the weather was simply amazing throughout the four days we were there. It was warmer than England has ever been!

Ahem... forgive my lack of knowledge of which picture was taken where. All I wanted to do was to visit a different country and I'm a pretty lazy traveler as far as travelers go. Despite knowing the kind of life EyeBee-Mers has, I still passed the buck to KC to plan the entire trip SINCE he was so gung ho about exploring Paris.

But when we got to Paris he admitted he eventually didn't manage to get all the planning done, so we 'recycled' the itinerary of Adrian and Grace's, who had visited this part of the world a month before KC. So the result of this was me tagging along wherever KC pointed the direction to.

Labels: Travels

I've finally got highspeed broadband connected in my new flat! Long awaited day! It feels so good being able to stream music from the net, upload pictures in seconds, etc.

Just in case you're wondering about the silence, speed of life has taken off and for the first time, I've had to have a heavy dependence on an organiser, planning my week ahead in time, and cut down on a lot of my spur of the moment plans. Last minute plans are an absolute no-no now. It's a pretty big change in lifestyle for me.

I was also in Paris for the last few days with a friend from Malaysia. He was the perfect travel buddy. We spent the first day together, split off for a few hours to do our own thing the second day, and completely went separate ways on the third day. It was a great combination of having company yet having the time and space to explore our separate interests.

And to cap the weekend off, I met up with Akosua on Sunday morning, the day she left UK to go back to Paris for a short while. We thought it would be fun just to be able to say we met each other in Paris. It's funny how sometimes when you least expect it, great friendships grow.

Labels: Travels

Yeah, I'm slow in posting pictures. It's just annoyingly slow to post pictures up.

Labels: My stupid moments, Travels, Work tales