Category: Life

I’m asking a lot of whys lately and how. I’m not asking my mum but I’m asking Google. 🙂

At a certain point, I think I’m overloaded with information but at the same time, I feel happy that I’m curious and I’m learning. Even though those things are very small things.

I’m learning new words too through this discovery procress. For example, rice weevils, tile grout.

I’ve not cooked rice for so long, my container of rice has got this little black bugs in it. Very annoying and I never know how they even exist in the rice container in the first place. I usually get 1KG of rice because it’s just two of us, sometimes one, sometimes we don’t even cook. This is a 5KG rice supply bought when my mum was still in KL so it is a lot and it also means there are a lot of rice weevils. I’ve taken out all that I can…shaking the container, the weevils move up and I sweep them away. But I don’t think I can clear 100% of it. And I’m not sure if I’ll die consuming those rice but I don’t like the either of throwing those rice away….so I really don’t know what I should do. In the end, I did call Mum and she said I can try putting a garlic in it. I’m not sure if it works though but I know how I should handle my rice now. JUST KEEP COOKING!!! DON’T EVER STOP!!!

I’ve never paid much attention to the tiles in my bathroom. They look ok until one fine day, I find that they are stained so bad, I didn’t like at all. No amount of scrubbing worked at first. I mean I was squatting and scrubbing every tile grout that I can see. Yesterday, I managed to cleaned it better than I did the previous times. Part of them looks white now as compared to black. I stood there admiring the whiteness last night,  I squatted admiring the whiteness just now and I told myself it’s going to be all white, slowly but surely. Lesson learnt? Clean more regularly so that I don’t have to dwell into this kind of hardcore cleaning anymore. I think I should start to wear rubber gloves and  slippers when I clean, the bathroom cleaner liquid maybe a bit too harsh for the skin.

One term I chanced upon today is debt diet. I like these 2 words.

The best word I have for myself now is SLEEP!

I cooked lunch and dinner today. It feels good but dawned upon me that I need to brush it up a little on the cooking skills.

When you’ve not cooked for a while, you find things that are expiring, things that actually expired and you’re still eating it. So you see, when you cook, you got to keep cooking so that you have control over your kitchen. Now, it feels like the kitchen is controlling me.

I cleaned even though I only started cleaning at 8pm. I snapped when my sister came back after being out the whole day to only hear her say she’s going out again.

Her weekends are so packed that I find it hard to breathe. Coming back late and then waking up late the next day and going out again merely after waking up, came back to bathe and out she goes again. She’s not back yet at this hour and I’m not sure whether to be worried or angry.

My weekends can be packed but will never be as packed as hers because I need a lot of me-time and when I feel the need of not meeting anyone that weekend, I block it out just for me, myself and I.

Considering that I have more free time on the weekends, I do the cleaning. But if I get into the mode of who’s cleaning more and who’s not cleaning at all, I get mad! Like today. Although I tried hard to suppress the feeling, it surfaced too. Not full- blown but enough to give out a hint. She didn’t say bye when she went out so I know she wasn’t happy too.

From now on, I’m going to take cleaning the house as my sole responsibility because I don’t want to get mad or upset or count anymore. If she cleans, it’s a bonus. I understand very well, you can’t force someone to clean, it must come from within, else it’s not real cleaning.

She’s home. Time for bed. I need patience, energy and lots of friendliness to take care of someone new tomorrow.

Second week of 2011, hello!!!

This is a term I learnt at work at a previous company.

Since the new year, I’ve been deleting “friends” that I don’t know in Facebook. Some of those friends are people that friends asked them to add me to become friends, to get to know each other, and progress to more than friends. The thing is none of these “friends” are making any moves so they are gone from my list.

Then there’s this blog subscription feeds that I have. A very long list. Too many to read that it makes me feel guilty that I can’t finish them. So in order not to have that bad feeling each time I open my Google Reader, I told myself I could read lesser so only the ones I like remains. We cannot read everything, right? Even if we wanted to.

Today I went through all documents/statements that I have, discarding those that I don’t need anymore or those that are from the past that really shouldn’t be around to take up space and I allow them to rest in peace in the rubbish bin. They are teared to pieces so I have been merciless.

I’m not there yet but I like that I’m taking baby steps to get rid of things I no longer need and get myself more organised.

Excellent, Gracie! You have finally made the first step after a few years. Told you it’s not scary once you get the ball rolling.

Although the case is far from solved but you know what options there are and don’t give up in finding other alternatives.

I am grateful to have people hearing me out and helping me walk through this.

I will continue my decluttering journey over the weekend. Good night!

It has been a busy start for me but I welcome it. I have been setting little goals and tasks to do each day so that I will see through it. I’d say I managed to do most but not all. I’m happy enough.

The reason why I’m doing this is because I’m very good at procrastinating so I need to be very specific to myself on a daily basis. In the case where I don’t get it done on the same day, I’m hoping it’ll be done on the next day, the worst within the week.

Another resolution for me is to take more pictures. The next would be to face the situation I’m in now heads-on. The problem will always be there so it’s up to me to solve it. No matter what happens, Grace, never be afraid and never give up.

You’ve been a good girl, having oats every morning for 3 days now. I’m proud of you. Keep up the good work and let’s embrace tomorrow with a big heart, a positive mind and a can-do attitude!

Love you to bits, Gracie!

Happy New Year!

I’ve been having so many late nights since I was in Singapore and now that the holiday is coming to an end, I don’t feel like sleeping early tonight. I’m just going to write to my heart’s content. I haven’t been writing as much as I wanted to and at times, I find that there’s nothing that I want to put in words. But I’d like to write more so that’s one to do for the new year.

The music player is playing songs from my old hard disk. I’m playing all the songs I have so I don’t know what is coming up next on my playlist and I like this so much. I’m listening to so many nice songs I’ve once enjoyed…away from the usual hits I’m listening to right now.

I spent most of the day decluttering..which is indeed liberating and easy on the eyes. This is only the beginning as there are more stuff that I want to let go. Minimalism is the keyword I’m going for so I got to think of what I’m bringing home so that I don’t contribute to the junks I already have. And while decluttering, I was also envisioning how I’d like my future house to look like and I think it’s nice to go for the minimalist look.

Okay…and now for some new year resolutions.

1. Declutter and get organized. I would like to make this a habit until it becomes a way of life. To clean as I go and not wait till it’s really really dirty. To solve things before it becomes too big to handle.

2. Learn a new language. I think you know be able to guess which one I’m going for. annyeonghaseyo! 🙂

3. Yoga in the morning. Yoga in the night.

4. Cook more often and eat well.

5. Travel to a new country. Make road trips within Malaysia.

6. Meet more people. Yes, time is running out. I’m not quite sure how I want to do this yet but I just know I need to do something.

7. Reset my vibes. Reset my channels. I keep getting the things I don’t want so it’s time I set my antenna right so that I can do with lesser nonsense. In short, to send out positive vibrations.

It starts now!

December: Took the last working week of the year off. Visited Singapore. Loved it! Love Marina Bay Sands, love the night view, love the sense of security walking around, love the awesome public transportation, love it that it’s clean. Had a great time at Universal Studios. I miss the food in Malaysia though so it’s good to be back.

November: Worked very hard.

October: Busy with work.

September: Obsessed with Korean series: Bread, Love and Dreams. I was watching the KBS Drama Awards 2010 last night and realised I watched almost all dramas that were nominated. I feel like learning the Korean language.

August: Went on a business trip to United States of America. Extended my stay by travelling partly alone to Chicago. If you ask me what’s significant about 2010, it would be this trip. It has been one of my dreams to travel abroad for work. It’s sweeter knowing that I worked for it to happen. I’m very happy that after the trip, I’m entrusted with more challenging work and was given the opportunity to work on an expanded job scope.

July: Got myself a yoga mat and started stretching.

June: When love and hate collide, it makes you sick. Very sick.

May: Unifi. Byebye to slow Internet speed. “Streaming” was the word of the month.

April: Fell sick.

March: It’s an animal month. Cat come visiting me. Monkey come visiting me.

February: CNY

January: I wrote something like this I think.

I was just trying my luck to see this site is up. It was down since Christmas eve because the auto-renewal of this domain didn’t go through. I’m glad that it’s up now!

Hope you had a nice Christmas.

Didn’t go to any countdown or party as I wanted to have a quiet Christmas. When you’ve been working hard for the past few weeks, all you want is just some peace and time for yourself. I have the entire week off and I will be travelling down to Singapore tomorrow. Yippie!

I will be back before the year ends. See ya.

It’s Winter Solstice. A chaotic one.

There was a gift exchange  and I’ve never really like the gift exchanges session I used to have. They never seem to go right, at least for me. I’m going to be very whiny today so please bear with me. The gift that I got today is alright, until the person who bought the gift, announced that it is actually a recycled gift right at my face and with the group of people involved with the exchange. And then dived deeper into how the recycled gift came about. Who in the world announces that they’ve just got you a recycled gift anyway? For a moment there, I didn’t know how to react or respond. But out of courtesy and manners, I just smiled and said thank you. Heartbreak #1.

Then, Iris and I went to Esquire Kitchen for dinner, thinking we can have dinner there and then have tong yuen. After we ordered our dishes, the waitress told another table that they have ran out of tong yuen. It’s only 8pm. How can they run out of tong yuen? Heartbreak #2.

So, we were thinking to have dessert at SS2 where they serve tong yuen as well. Oh My God, the queue. We gave up and I have to settle without any tong yuen today. Heartbreak #3.

I’m still not over with the fact yet because it just feels like something is missing. And because I’ve been like planning since yesterday and thinking about tong yuen since yesterday so it felt crappy when things didn’t go as planned today.

There were other choices like Soya Shop in One U or The Curve but you know how bad the traffic was today, right? I was following the tweets and One U traffic light wasn’t functioning. The tunnel along Persiaran Surian is flooded and bla bla bla. In the end, that was a no-go zone.

My head is heavy now. Mind tired. Eyes tired. Sleepy. Unfulfilled. Restless. I need to de-stress and calm myself down on the yoga mat later.

Hope you had your share of nice glutinuous rice balls!

Maybe next year, I”ll make my own tong yuen or get some from the supermarket beforehand.

Okie, I rest my case and will let this be over now. I don’t want to go to bed angry and disappointed.

Ta!