To Celebrate A Birth (with video!)

To be honest, I sometimes wonder how we justify celebrating birthdays. I mean, everyone's got one. And countless numbers of people are born everyday. Every single minute, in fact. What makes anyone's birthday any more special than others' and actually worth celebrating?

But if you ask me, birthdays are a good excuse for you to something for people whom you care about. I can imagine that without birthdays, we won't have an excuse to show our appreciation and love for those around us. "Oh, I wanna celebrate your niceness, your sweet smile, and your rocking personality, George." "Alright everyone, let's get together to celebrate Adam's humbling generosity, charming demeanor and cheery attitude!"

Nah, give me the birthday cake and pink candles any day ;D

Today's date seventeen years ago just so happens to be the very day this person called Maggie Lim Shu Hui came into the world, but knowing her she'd probably be fully booked today by her friends and family, so we sprang her a nice surprise roughly 24 hours earlier xD

The Action Plan:

Maggie had class until 4.30 in the evening, so our secret operative Mabel (church mate/RBS friend) went along with Maggie's mum (who had also been roped into this surprise) to the college to get her. The moment she got into the car, she was duly blinfolded and driven straight to One Utama, where we had all gathered.

HERE'S THE VIDEO OF MAGGIE BEING CAUGHT BY AGENT MABEL!!

There were about 6 of us who had the taken the trouble to go all the way to One Utama via public transport. Some had to sit through hours of bus ride, others had to cross crocodile-infested waters, while still some braved the horrors of taking the ever-late and never-early KTM. Tough, yea. But we made it there, heh.

It takes a whole lot of guts and determination to try and get to
One Utama using public transport...Simon is seen here focusing
on the mission half way during the ardous journey.

Once Maggie reached One Utama, she was guided by Mabel all the way (blind-folded) to the rendezvous point at McDonald's.

What would we do without iconic eateries like this...

Having arrived safe and sound, operative Mabel was thrilled and
begged to have a photo taken in recognition of her skills.

From McDonald's, I was there to then personally lead them both to where everyone else was waiting, the food court. It's one thing to be blind-folded, but to be blind-folded in a shopping mall isn't something that can be pulled off easily, we found. Taking the escalator was tricky, but Maggie survived without tumbling headfirst. Moving on, everyone at the food court got ready with the cake (cup-cakes, in this case) and candles and stuff.

You'd notice the candles aren't lit yet, because we couldn't procure a
lighter in time, but thankfully agent Sim managed to 'borrow' a small
flame from one of the nearby food stalls.

Finally, having seated her at the table, we plonked the cake (cup-cakes) in front of her, rushed to get the candles lit, yanked off her blind-fold and gave her the best rendition of Happy Birthday that we could muster in the food court.

And........mission accomplished!! (^.^)v

Thanks again, to the people who took the effort to make it there (it's okay Sim, you'd do just fine for your mid-terms next week, after all it's just how you 'balance your time', right? xD; I still have no clue how you made it there Kit Meng, but I really appreciate that you made the effort to come for this event, don't worry, it'll be anywhere BUT One U the next time, haha; an hour and a half is quite a lengthy period of time but you endured the bus ride anyway and even had to end up going back all the way to Cyberjaya late, you're really a great assistant supervisor, Kelvin Tay, I appreciate the effort you put in a hundred-percent!),

to those who helped out with the planning (thanks Mabel, for stepping in and taking the trouble to do so many things, sorry you had to skip class but honestly you made it all possible; thanks Desiree for asking on Sunday about going out, because we otherwise wouldn't have thought of planning something; and of course, the not-bad-wor Sue Ann who not only made the cup-cakes but also actually called up some of the rest),

and to iTalk, for making all the phone discussions possible without burning through huge chunks of prepaid credit.


And what a relief. Another Shirtliff reunion (with extra help) scored!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MAGGIE!

Up and up and up and *click*...........WHOOOSH!!!

This post is best read by those who have not sat on the Solero Space Shot in Genting

Now this is probably too cliched to even post about, because the odds are 98% of you people out there would have had sat on the Solero Space Shot in Genting before at least once in the last 3 years. A quick Google image search revealed all too quickly that Genting trips and the Solero ride have been pretty much blogged about to death. The title would be something like "Genting Retreat" and then what follows is a whole plethora of pictures with small little captions here and there. Sigh~

So it's pretty disappointing to realise that I actually had to wait until now to get the chance to board a theme park ride that I remember seeing some 5 years back in the advertisements, but then again who am I to complain? I'd sooner get slapped with some disaster-front-page rolled-up newspaper, I know, so I guess I'm really grateful to have made the trip up to the cool highlands two days ago.

Oh yea, what really happened is that together with three other friends (all guys) we went and got ourselves the one-day-trip tickets (which sells at RM 42 for bus+skyway+full park+skyway+bus vs RM 51 for full park alone if bought separately).

Two of the guys were my old schoolmates, and it was certainly great to be able to get together again because once everyone hits college you know it's next to impossible to even meet up for small yam cha sessions anymore...it just so happened that we're all free, and quite likely it would be the last time we could do anything else like this.

But back to the trip. For the most part I think I really enjoyed the rides that we went on. Especially in go-kart, because Suresh (one of my old schoolmates) got a really slow kart, and I pulled off one of those F1 cornering-cut uber-cool moments on him, super fun!! (^.^) It's not so much the ride though I guess, it's just having good company to enjoy. It's like watching a movie in a cinema, I'd rather watch a lame show with a bunch of friends than to go watch something better all by myself. But having said that, I went on the Solero Space Shot by myself because I was so dissatisfied by the fact that 3 months ago I had to give it a miss due to the massive queue and although the wait was excrutiatingly long (half-an-hour for a ride that's 10 seconds??) I'm so glad I went ahead (one was afraid of heights and the other had stomach problem, one more joined me later) because I believe to experience the same kind of rush you'd need something like skydiving (which isn't covered in any sort of theme park deal that I know of) or a suicide jump off a 10-storey building (which is free but...). It's SO awesome!!

If I were made the Prime Minister, I would've made it mandatory for everyone to go ride it at least once, buahahahaha xD

Investment

When you invest in something, you would naturally hope to gain or reap benefit of some sort one way or another either in the near future or in the distant years. But when they call marriage an 'investment', it just somehow doesn't seem quite right to me. Does the husband expect to earn something at the end of the day? Does the wife seek to gain a decent profit sometime in the future? Or are they mutually investing in each other, so that they may enjoy the fruits of one another's labor?

Far be it that I should know anything about marriage other than that's how I came to be, but I guess the many nuggets of wisdom imparted at today's wedding must've somehow found their way into my central thought processing centre. But it was awesome. A bit longer than you'd expect, perhaps, but awesome.

I hope I have the permission to put this picture up, haha.
Congratulations Rach and Guan!!

And here's to all the behind-the-scenes hard work put in by people from all the different areas of their lives, be them relatives, friends, church members or what-nots. It's always the unseen ones who are responsible for a good part of big-event weddings like this one, kudos to everyone!

Lately

Lately, I realised I had not been blogging about anything substantial...

Lately, I realised I had not been doing anything substantial....

Lately, I realised I had not been thinking about anything substantial.....

Lately, I realised I had been living a life that's not very substantial.......

For more reasons than one, I've been feeling pretty angsty lately (no need to guess, angsty isn't a word). I've had far more free time on my hands than I ever imagined, and to be honest I had not been a very good steward with them...staying up late (like now) and waking up even later (like 12!!!!! It's very depressing because I'm the kind that only responds to physical contact, so the loudest alarms can buzz away without so much as to make me move a finger) can apparently have very detrimental effects on your mental health. Which I believe is why I'm so out-of-myself lately...getting worked up easily, getting annoyed for no reason, getting frustrated at the slightest trouble or difficulty and frankly, the worst is just plain apathy.

And what better way to express angst than to draw it out:

Okay okay, so it doesn't look as angsty as I had hoped it would but that aside....I've got a lot on my mind now, and I think it would take me a while before I can properly come to my senses again. I guess understanding my own psyche would be a nice opportunity to practice for uni, heh.

Music Catch

Don't know if this came from any particular music maestro, but it's the background music for this game called Music Catch (here at http://www.kongregate.com/games/Reflexive/music-catch) which I highly recommend you give a try because it's such a simple and relaxing game :D But if you do have a few minutes to spare and wanna get some thoughts in your head shaped up, click on the song to play it and just wander away in your mind ;D

Excerpt from Carrie Underwood's So Small

It's so easy to get lost inside
A problem that seems so big, at the time
It's like a river that's so wide
It swallows you whole

While you're sittin round thinking about what you can't change
And worryin' about all the wrong things
Time's flying by, moving so fast
You better make it count, cause you can't get it back...