Jumping Jumping

Last Tuesday I woke up at 6am after a rough nights sleep. I haven't been able to sleep properly the past few nights and the anticipation of that day's activity and the thought of seeing Lydia again wasn't helping.

After getting ready, I still had time to spare so I let my phone charge and practiced some knots for rock climbing. As it was nearing 6:30am, I had a change of mind and I switched my bag pack to a larger one and headed out. I drove down to Uptown DU for a quick stop at the bank before heading to Lydia's house as planned the night before.

I gave Lydia a call after parking my car outside her house but she didn't answer. I thought I'd wait in the car but I saw her mom outside so I thought I'd greet her. Doing so resulted in Lydia's mom inviting me into the house. I couldn't reject her repeated offer after declining once so I stepped into the house after playing with Nicky, their dog for a bit.

Upon entering the house I quickly remembered that according to religious superstition, I shouldn't have entered because Lydia's grandmother passed away last week. A folding table with her grandmother's portrait and some offerings were placed facing the front door. I'm not that religious so it didn't bother me that much. I took a sit in one of the couch as Lydia's mom informed me that she's in the bath. That quickly alerted me when I heard the toilet door lock opened. After a while Lydia came out, quite surprised to see me. She told me to wait a bit before heading upstairs. After some more waiting, Lydia came back down dressed and told me about the superstition. I assured her about it and she proceeded to pack her stuff. Lydia suddenly asked me if I remembered to bring Kayla's receipt, which to my horror, I realised that I forgot to transfer it from my previous bag to this one. Lydia quickly contacted Kayla and asked her to send her a copy. My carelessness resulted in us not having our breakfast.

After getting Kayla's receipt into her pendrive, Lydia and I headed out to shop lots to find a printing shop but none were open. As we wanted to grab breakfast at the morning market, the Rapid bus arrived and we had no choice but to hop on.

We got off at Asia Jaya and while Lydia was buying her pass to board the train, a Japanese man asked me to help him to buy a ticket to which I immediately assisted him without second thought. Which surprised me because I acted as if it was a normal occurrence to me.

Lydia and I got off at KL Sentral and we met up with Ryan, then we walked out and headed to the KL Methodist College. Our objective is to collect our Spectrum Dash race packs for the run this coming Saturday.

After a small problem entering the campus with the guard, we found ourselves getting stares and looks from the students in the campus as we made our way to the collection point following signs pasted on various walls and railings. We later realised that we were the only ones wearing shorts. As we waited outside the collection place which was locked, a lecturer passed by and asked us why we were wearing shorts. We told her that we weren't students from the college and she seemed rather alarmed and it doesn't appear that she's aware of the event.

After a while a girl in the Spectrum Dash shirt came up to us and informed us about the delay. We waited a little longer and then they finally got the keys to enter the room. We collected our packs and then we headed back. Lydia and I finally got our breakfast at a coffee shop Lydia knows about and we walked around in Nu Sentral for a while before taking the train back to Asia Jaya.

We got back to Section 17 and we hopped into my car. We then headed to 1U to fetch ZL and we headed for lunch at a coffee shop where Ryan's mom sells pan mee. We had lunch and then headed back on the road to our much awaited activity: Jump Street.

After paying the entrance fees and a slight problem with the lockers, we went right in and started jumping in the park full of trampolines. There was one with basketball hoops of various heights, there was a dodge ball arena with trampolines, a foam pit and a large jumping zone as well as an area with professional trampolines. We jumped around and even played dodge ball against another group of people. Ryan has been here before and he learned a trick and tried to teach us. ZL, Lydia and I tried to learn the trick but our bodies were too scared to free fall into the trampoline, regardless, ZL was the most enthusiastic about learning the trick and kept trying.

After an hour, we took a break and cooled ourselves then played another hour. At the last few minutes, we tried the professional trampolines, it was a lot more springy and we easily bounced up. ZL tried to master the trick Ryan taught us here.

As the announcer announced that our time is up, ZL tried his last attempt but messed up and the recoil from the trampoline made him knee himself in the face. This resulted in him getting gashes in around his eyes from the impact of his glasses hitting his face. The wounds were very obviously deep and we quickly brought him out to seek medical attention. ZL however was a little stubborn and kept insisting that he's okay. After the three of us convinced him to get aid, he went into the office with a staff member to get some medicine. Later I helped tape some wire gauze to cover his gashes with the surgical tape I always carry around. It was a very upsetting incident and Lydia especially seemed upset. I suppose she felt responsible because she was the one who organized this outing, on top of knowing that ZL's mom is very protective over her son. This accident is bound to make his mom very upset. I however feel very guilty because of my fascination over how deep the gashes on ZL's face were. All the while I was studying the wounds and doing the science in my head. If I didn't restraint myself I might have asked for a first aid kit and started poking at his gashes for further inspection of the gashes to satisfy my curiosity. His gashes looked like they require some stitches.

I dropped everyone home before meeting up with my family. Well it was a fun day but with a tragic ending. I notice this kind of endings happen way too frequently.

Log

Today's a nice day. The sun is shining and the wind is blowing. If not for the fact that my house is absurdly dusty because of the renovation going on and the fact that I'm hungry because my mom didn't buy us lunch, today would have been a great day.

When I walked into the kitchen with the empty can of Milo, I was hit with a feeling of breathtaking awe at the frame of life's moment. The sun's rays were shinning through the bamboo shutters of the kitchen windows, there was a glint of reflected light from the kettle resting by the kitchen sink with the living lid open to cool the freshly boiled water, the wall fan was blowing and the soft sound of Kiss from a Rose by Seal was playing in the background from the living room. All of that felt alive and I stood in the kitchen a full minute just to soak all that in. If I had a good video camera I would have went to capture the moment. I was a good moment to capture and put into an artistic short film.

It's the third day I'm having away from work and I've been spamming myself with episodes after episodes of anime, be it something I haven't watched yet or something I've watched already, while slowly cleaning up my computer desk.

Also, I've been feeling pretty sentimental recently. I'm not quite sure why but I'm struggling between wanting to watch tear-jerking anime and sleeping, both which I want to avoid doing at the moment.

Also, my Internet is down because the construction workers snapped our Unifi fiber optic wire. I'm using my mom's mobile data plan with her tablet as a portable hotspot. On top of all that I'm getting annoyed of not having any Internet for my PC.

The other day I went out with Lydia. I don't know if it's counted as a date but as Lydia had mentioned before about seven months ago, 'an outing when a boy and girl are the only ones together is called a "date".'. We first had lunch at Fuel Shack, checked out the huge art store in The Curve, caught a movie, The Rewrite and walked around Ikea before ending the day. We didn't do much but I enjoyed myself very much. It was great catching up with her.

The Rewrite was an interesting film. It felt like something for an art festival yet not quite. It was the first time I could sit back and relax in a cinema, slowly enjoying the piece before me.

Sour Milk turned Yogurt

I was drifting in and out of sleep because I was feeling cold. As I was about to drift into sleep again, my alarm rang and the two of us sprang up awake. I quickly went over to turn my alarm off and Saw got up and looked at his phone. I was sleeping over at Saw's place.

After cleaning up, the two of us got ready and headed out quietly because everyone else in Saw's house is still asleep. The time was 3:30a.m. Shortly we arrived at Centerpoint McDonald's and we met up with Ryan and Calvin who camped out there. The two of them didn't sleep and Calvin was just about to have his "breakfast". I dropped by 7-11 to grab some coffee and sweets and then we headed to Lydia's house. Lydia was waiting for us outside her house, after another drop by at 7-11 we headed off towards our destination, the reason for waking up so early in the morning, Broga hill.

The hour long ride felt pretty long as we made small talk in the car. When we arrived, Lydia was so worried about us being the only people at the hill because the parking area was very dark and we couldn't see any other cars until we reached deeper into the area. We got down, grabbed our stuff and we started hiking up with me in the lead.

After a while, Lydia and Ryan started telling me to slow down because they were running out of breath. I was actually kinda surprised because I thought of Lydia as kinda athletic. Personally I have bad stamina and I thought everyone else was better than me. Soon after slowing down, Saw who was still pumped up, took lead after overtaking Calvin, Ryan and Lydia. Along the way I just kept giving the others words of encouragement thought it could have been excessive.

When we were about the reach the top, Ryan was giving in already. He had worn the wrong shoes so he started to have cramps in his foot. It must have been very bad because he couldn't go on after we hiked to the third checkpoint of the hill. Ryan told us to go on ahead to the peak while he laid down and rest. This was the first time I climbed up to the peak of Broga hill. It sure was an accomplishment for me. The four of us sat at the rocks after taking photos and waited for the sun to rise but unfortunately it was too cloudy and we couldn't see the sun rise from behind the hills in the distance. After deciding what to do next, we headed down to reunite with Ryan.

After exiting the place, we headed to a nearby coffee shop and had breakfast. There, Calvin found out that it was my birthday when he logged into Facebook and informed everyone else. After the meal, we decided to go to the Shah Alam Botanical Park.

The long ride was most of us dozing in and out of sleep. I'm not sure but it seemed to me that Lydia didn't sleep during the ride. We made it to the park and made a quick decision to see the Four Season House and cycle around the park. After paying the entrance fee, we headed to the bicycle rental tent and got ourselves some bicycles. While at that, we were also deciding whether to go Skytrex as well, Lydia and I were really up for it but Saw didn't want to so we didn't go for it.

We cycled towards the forest area and tried to find the Four Season House. The problem was our bikes were not well maintained because the gears were in pretty bad shape, so were our legs. We got tired really fast especially when cycling uphill. My knees were so sore. Ryan got leg cramps along the way. After reaching several dead end,s we turned back to go back to the entrance area and it was a good thing because it started to drizzle. After returning our bikes, we decided to catch the coach to the Four Season House, turned out it was at the opposite side of where we went.

After we got off at the stop, we walked towards the house and to my surprise, it was freezing cold! We were informed that it was the winter season now but I never had imagined that it was really winter in the building. It was -2.1 degree Celsius and we could see our breaths, we were wet from sweat and wearing shorts, it was really damn cold! After messing around in the freezing cold we headed out and walked around the nearby area of the park. There was a watch tower that we climbed. When we made it to the top, Lydia and I had to help Ryan because both his legs were cramped up to the thighs. It was excruciating pain because Ryan was literally screaming and punching the floor when we helped him loosen his muscles. After enduring the pain, he was okay again.

We walked about the park for a little longer and then visited the animal farm. There were deer, horses, porcupines and tortoises. After a while, we headed back and decided to grab lunch. I recommended the shops around my area but the time wasn't exactly right because it was past lunchtime. The ride this time, Lydia fell asleep with her mouth open. She doesn't know that. Hehe.
 After lunch, Saw dropped me back home. Everyone wished me a happy birthday again and that was that.

This day was definitely the best birthday I've had in terms of productivity and health. An all out exercise day. I was experiencing muscle aches all over the next day though.

Running My Mouth, Spoiled The Milk

By a stroke of luck (or the work of my sneaky manager or purely coincidence), my off day from work changed to the 6th of January instead of the 10th. What's so special about the 6th of January? I try not to make it any special because I've come to find that this "special" event for this date to be so mundane and uneventful. Either way, it's probably wishful thinking but I wanted to try and make it special anyway despite most of my friends being busy with work or studies.

I spontaneously planned a hike to Broga hill with my colleagues, specifically Lydia, Ryan and Calvin but when Ryan said he can't make it, I got worried and desperate and I asked other people to join. While asking Saw wasn't a bad idea, Kristene heard me and spread the word like butter on bread. It soon became an amalgamation of people interested in joining in. I thought it wasn't a problem so when I updated Lydia about it, she got uninterested because of the number of heads that were going. And when I found out that I won't have the car to myself, we would only have Saw to rely on for transport so that's one car and limited heads to count. When I urged the others to confirm their attendances, one by one each of them bailed out including Calvin, which disappointed me much. Also, if Lydia doesn't go then Ryan won't go. So what's left is a party of three and here I am hoping to convince Lydia to join in again. Simply because I wanted it to make it special.

I was so worried about not having enough people for the hike to work that I forgot that what I wanted was to spend this "special" day with some of the people I care about and not with acquaintances I've made. So much for running my mouth and not thinking through. I hope Lydia will come. I really do. I want to spend time with her on this "special" day because I want to make it special to remember about, not make it yet another mundane "special" day.

But I get the feeling that even if she does go, I won't be as happy as I would have been if I hadn't run my mouth because spoiled milk is spoiled milk. Once, sour, stays sour.

New Year 2015

It's the New Year of 2015. More brooding uncertainties to come. Time to review my boring yet eventful life of the year 2014.

The past year sure has been eventful. Besides officially graduating from college and feeling utmost lazy from studying, I got my first job at a retail outlet. Sure, it's got nothing to do with my line but it was a fun and eye opening experience at work. On top of that I feel that I've matured a lot more working at the outlet. I learned about business, staff management, merchandising and a bunch of other work related stuff. I also learned a lot of things about myself. Lots of self reviewing there.

For the New Year celebration, which wasn't that much of a celebration, Lydia, Ryan, Calvin and I went to the Curve to see the fireworks. We met up after work and walked there together. We were early so we went to Ikea to grab some curry puffs and we chatted for a while. After that we went out to try and catch the fireworks. We were not sure where the fireworks will be let out from so we went out towards the Surian tower where we thought we could see the whole sky. It was a whole half an hour of standing around waiting for something to happen. And then suddenly fireworks. No countdown, nothing. Just suddenly fireworks started firing. But guess what, we can't see the fireworks because it was on the opposite side and it was pretty low. Lydia asked if we should go over but as the fireworks were displayed, people started going over which discouraged us to join in. We also thought there would be bigger ones but after two rounds of aerial explosions, nothing. Feeling disappointed we went back home.

Happy New Year. Yay. Another year older, not a little bit wiser. Cheers.

Lazy post is lazy.

Christmas and Comic Fiesta

Comic Fiesta Day 1

I woke up behind schedule. I was suppose to leave the house at 7a.m. and reach the LRT station in Kelana Jaya by 7:30a.m. thus allowing me to reach KLCC by 8a.m. and be ready for booth setup and preparations. Instead, I woke up at 7:30a.m., got distracted by my phone for half an hour, reached the LRT station another half an hour later and reached the convention center at about 9:30a.m., which happened to be the time for the event doors to open. What luck but I still manage to set up my stuff in time before the massive crowd pours into the artist booth section which was located far away from the entrance (at Hall 5) at Hall 1.

Upon reaching KLCC, I quickly rushed my way to the convention halls and made my way into Hall 1. There was a ridiculously long queue going into the entrance of the hall for the normal event goers, like usual. I contacted Cheryl and Wee and soon Wee came out of the hall and got me in with our booth pass. After dropping my stuff down and greeting my friends who I haven't seen in a long time, Misaki, Baddie and Za. Cheryl and Choi were out getting food from Suria KLCC. While I waited for the others to settle their goods, Misaki informed me that I should fetch Cheryl and Choi into the event hall with our booth passes and so I went towards Hall 3. After getting the two of them and briefly catching up with them, I had to make a quick drop at the little boys room as usual in the mornings since I've started working. After the quick relief, I went back to the hall and upon entering, I met Wayne! It's been a really long time since I last saw him. We chatted for a bit and then we parted ways. I went back to my booth and set up my badges. With that we were ready for business!

Like usual, our table space was cramped. With five people sharing a single booth, we had no choice. Like usual, I sat at the booth most of the time because digging into my bag full of different Pokeballs is difficult for the others because they don't know the way I've organized them in my bag and I am the only one who can remember ever single Pokeball.

And like usual, nothing much happens at the booth. Most of the eventful events are friends dropping by. My juniors in scouts dropped by. My juniors in college dropped by. Some friends dropped by. But the highlights are of course, Emma came in cosplay as Yokai (Mr. Callaghan) along with Yumi, Mae Yen dropped by! She's got a nice short haircut that makes her look mature, she sure is growing up now. I thought Denise would have went as well but turned out she didn't because she had Christmas dinner in Ipoh. I also met up with Snow, Shu, Mandy and Mandy (Samui and Ayaka). I went one round around the booth area and I spotted Debbie from highschool. I wasn't sure if it was her because I only saw her profile view.  Either way, at 6p.m. we were suppose to close shop. I packed up my stuff and headed to the LRT station. A Christmas party is waiting for me!

Christmas Party

Ethel had invited me and others to her Christmas dinner/party. It was a potluck party but since I came straight from KLCC, I couldn't bring anything that was within my budget. It was mentioned before that there will be a gift exchange so I brought along the Stoplights card game I bought from my workplace there. I was late, so obviously there wasn't much food left. Fortunately I wasn't that much hungry so I ate a little and then the games started. We first had our gifts exchanged. We took turns to read a description of our gift we wrote beforehand and then we took turns to pick a gift from the pool. We also had a choice to snatch gifts that were picked before. At the end, I got Beng's gift and it turned out to be a notebook, much to my disappointment because I thought it was a small novel. Yati got a cool Darth Vader keychain, and Jason got a selfie stick, Melvin got some kind of a mug thing and Hou Yi got a pig soft toy. Those gifts I remember clearly, everyone else's, not so much. After that we played charades to which my team won, whoot! After that we just sat around and chatted random stuff while drinking liquor. I talked to the people I don't know there despite not catching everyone's names. There was wine, rum and vodka. Melvin even made Bloody Mary to which I had like three shots I think. I went pretty tipsy but I got myself under control enough. Eventually I didn't go home, instead I crashed at Yati's house after I sobered up. That was like 3a.m. already.

Comic Fiesta Day 2

I couldn't wake up even after I set my alarm. I just went back to sleep after turning it off. When I did wake up, I figured that I was late already and that I was having a hangover. So I slept another hour and then I headed off to KLCC again.

I had a tag with me so I went right in and set up my stuff. Cheryl and the others were ready already (obviously). Choi wasn't around because she had to go for church in the morning. At one point of the day, Debbie and I caught each other face to face and I went up to meet her. Turned out she was helping out Kid-chan's booth. No wonder I felt that the artwork was so familiar. I was too busy moving along the booths to pay attention to the artists because I wanted to get back to my booth as soon as possible. We chatted for a bit and then went back to our booths. Mae Yen dropped by again but after Krystal and her sister dropped by. Krystal had been messaging me on Facebook about meeting up and I found it quite unusual because besides scouting I don't really talk to Krystal (also that age gap). At my booth I also met Akira! It's been a really long time since I last saw her, she went MIA after some drama about her studies but now she's enrolled into TOA and it seems like she's doing really well. I also caught up with one of the twins, it was either Dion or Fion, I can never tell one the other apart. The two of them are also in college already. This was probably the first time we talked more than three sentences, the twins were always so shy in person. I also caught up with Jun Ee and Yun Han we talked for a bit but I had to attend to some customers and they made their way after a brief farewell. Weiss also dropped by for a short while to greet us. Abel and Mun Hoy also came by. I talked to Abel for quite a while about further studies in animation and creative arts. He later bought some of my badges and went on his way.

Earlier in the morning Sally dropped by, she was pretty excited seeing Cheryl and I. Later in the afternoon, Sally came by again looking down. There were pickpockets going around and she fell victim, losing her cellphone. She had informed the committee members already before coming to our booth but because she got separated from Weiss and Rong Tau she could only turn to us for help. And so I lent her my phone to make calls and log into her Facebook. I let Sally sit with us behind the booth while she waits for her help to come. Later Rong Tau came and the both of them went home after thanking me.

The day went on as per expected of the second day of ACG events. Business was slow but still moving. When it was almost time to pack up, Wee and I went random nuts like the good old times in college, we started shouting random nonsense in Cambodian slang. It was intense I don't even. After we cooled down our random nonsense, we started packing up and said our farewells before heading off our ways. With that Comic Fiesta had come to an end for us. The normal event goers, maybe they're going for the after-CF dance party featuring Hachioji-P.

This year the artist booth section is located so far away from the stage unlike previous years so it was relatively not as active as before. There wasn't any music, just the sounds of the crowd. It wasn't so bad. Cheryl discussed with me about her plans for the next event. She wants to split us so that we have more booth space but that we'll see how it goes. Well then. Until next year!