Back to work...

BYE BYE, BORING LIFE!
I got this message yesterday from my ‘EX’ manager…
‘Guy, can you come back to work on June? We need u urgently! Please reply ASAP!’
Without much hesitation I replied…
‘Yes, I can start working anytime from now, so can I come on next Monday?’

Then, my phone rang, it was manager…
Manager : Why didn’t you tell me that you’re out from NS?
Me : Opps, I thought of taking a break before I start my college life.
Manager : Can you come to work tomorrow? Are you free? I want to fully utilize you!
Me : You sound scary, but I can start working tomorrow!
Manager : Are you sure? U don’t want to rest more? Great then, I’ve got too much of work I need you to help.
Me : Sure, then I’ll report myself to the human resource department tomorrow at 8.30a.m.
Manager : Thank you Yeong, see you tomorrow then, bye.

I never had such feeling before… I feel so important to a person, or maybe I should say to a great insurance company… Is my presence really that important for them? I wondered… Words like, ‘we need you urgently’ and ‘I want to fully utilize you’ seriously lit my face up with a smile… I’ve decided, to work with all efforts, to work real hard for this company, and never give up for some petty problems…

-Back to my working place-

I used to work here as a temporary staff for two months after SPM… And it’s quite unbelievable that they still remember me after I left, I was just a temp staff after all… Yes, the world is like this, when you treat people nice, they’ll do the same thing to you and vice versa… So, respect people first if you want to earn their respects… ^^

Happy Dumpling Festival...

Of course I know, it’s a bit too early for dumpling festival right? But I definitely know that it is just around the corner… I’ve made some research, and for your information, dumpling festival for the year 2009 falls on 28th of May, it’s a Thursday! Dumpling festival which also known as Dragon boat festival or 端午节 in Chinese, is celebrated in honour of Qu Yuan, an ancient Chinese poet, bla bla bla… I don’t really remember the story, but who cares la right, for me, I just interested with dumplings…^^

Talk about making dumplings, haha, of course it’s the time for my mum to flaunt her culinary skills again!

First, let me introduce the ingredients used in making dumplings…



From the left, some-kind-of beans, mushrooms, sliced curry chicken and glutinous rice…
P/S: Kindly ignores the little foot in front of the rice pot. That belongs to my mum!



Last but not least, the dumpling leaves…

Next, procedures of making dumplings:



1. First, get a dumpling leaf and make sure that there is no hole or crack on the surface of it.



2. Fold the leaf and shape it like a funnel.



3. Fill up the funnel-shaped dumpling leaf with the ingredients.



4. Now this is the most difficult part, you have to hold on the dumpling with a tenacious grip and fold the leaf covering the ingredients firmly.

5. Last step, tie the dumpling up with the string, according to mum, the string is actually a kind of seaweed.

Taddaa… Done! We’ll have to cook the dumplings for about 2 hours before they are edible...

Proudly present, my sifu!

Undeniably, she is good, she has a pair of deft hand which can produce perfect dumplings… I always thought that bigger hands make everything easier, but I was wrong, I can’t even make a dumpling after the lucid lesson taught by my mum… The dumpling just collapsed in the end, very saddening but I have to admit that I really don’t have the aptitude for making dumplings... :(

Random...

At times, I wondered…

Should we tell lies or we shouldn’t?

When we tell the truth; we may hurt other people,

When we tell lies; we may hurt ourselves.

Complicated isn’t it?

Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy...

The feeling of coming back home from national service was really good, but this satisfaction was soon conquered by the boringness staying at home without doing anything… So, as a very organized person, I took the initiative to clean my book shelves (first time after SPM ^^)… I found this essay book, English essay book... For your information, I never get an A before for my English essay in my whole life, but still, I found this quite-interesting-essay written by me when I was form 4 or 5, couldn’t really remember… The title of the essay was: Write a story ending with “… I wish that I could take back my words.” And this is my story…

“Ring…” the bell rang. “Thank you Mr. Tan”. After greeting the teacher, everyone grabbed their bags and rushed out of the class. This is a normal phenomenon that often happened after four hours of biology class. All of a sudden, the classroom became tremendously silent. I slowly packed my books into my pink coloured bag that my brother presented me on my last birthday. I seemed to be very calm even though everyone had left the classroom.

When I was busy packing my bag, a shadow blocked the sun rays that penetrated in through the windows of the classroom. A man appeared right in front of me. I slowly craned my head up and just what I had expected, he was Vince. Again, he gave me a teddy bear as usual and wished me good bye before he left. Not to mention that this was the 73rd teddy bear that he gave me.

Vince was one of my form 5 senior, he was tall and handsome. His mesmerizing eyes and the gorgeous smile on his face could really melt every girl’s heart. Yes, he was my boy friend, but there was something weird about him and I just couldn’t understand why he never mentioned that he loved me before even though we had coupled for more than two months. What he did was just giving me a teddy bear which I thought merely cost RM9.90 only each day. My small little bedroom was fully filled by the ever-increasing teddy bears that he gave me every day.

“Beep… beep”, the noise of my phone woke me up from my nap. I was wondering who on earth was so free to call me on such a beautiful Sunday. I picked up my phone lazily, surprisingly, it was Vince on the phone. I always thought that he knew me very well and he usually would not call me at such time expecting that I would be taking my nap. Vince called me to go down to the bus stop in front of my hostel to meet him. I was frustrated, but still, reluctantly I combed my hair and changed my shirt before going down to the bus stop.

My first expression when I met him was ‘wow’. He was holding a teddy bear as usual, but the only difference was the teddy bear that day was much bigger than the usual ones. I was shocked and stunned for a while. He smiled and explained that it was the 100th day that we had known each other. I was happy because he actually counted all the days that we had been through. I held back my feelings and was trying to act cool. In response, I said to him: “Do not tell me all this if you cannot even tell me that you love me”.

He was still smiling when I scolded him, he then slowly passed me the teddy bear. I was really unhappy at that moment so I swiped away the big teddy bear from his hands. The teddy bear fell down onto the road. Vince was shocked with my action, he quickly went down the road and picked up the teddy bear. Unfortunately, a bus came and accidentally knocked him down without noticing. Blood splashed all over the road, I was so panicked at the moment but I still managed to call for an ambulance.

I followed Vince to the hospital with my hand holding tightly the teddy bear stained with Vince’s blood. Vince was sent into the emergency room right after he reached the hospital. No choice but I could only stay outside and pray hard for him. As I was waiting outside the emergency room, I looked at the teddy bear carefully. I noticed that there was a button on the bear’s nose. I pressed that button and the bear sounded: “I love you, I love you, I love you…” All of a sudden, guilt filled my heart and I finally realized why he had not said that he loved me before. I stared at the teddy bear and replied: “I love you too.”

A few minutes later, the doctor came out, Vince was pronounced dead. I cried for a few hours on Vince’s death body before I went back home with a depressed feelings. Then, I checked the previous bears that he had gave me before. Shockingly, I found out that every of the bears said: “I love you” when I pressed the button on its nose. I laughed at myself, laughed at my selfishness and stupidity. I wish that I could take back my words.

-The End-

People, you are allowed to laugh now… Told you, never get an A before for English essay what… Anyway, hope you enjoy the story…

Introducing, "Steady Gangz"…

This is my so called ‘Steady Gangz’… 5 buddies from the left, me, Eason a.k.a. Gou Lou, Ah Yang, Ah Chun a.k.a. 360 a.k.a. Shan Ju, and See Kiat… We are steady, don’t we? Haha… One of the most precious and momentous occasion in my NS life for this one and a half months, was being able to know this gang of friends… We chit chatted together, ate together, shower together, slept together, played together, watched the sky brightened by millions of stars together during night time, confided together at times, flirted with girls together (this is the time where we can’t see Ah Yang…), get punished together (err.. spasmodically? Haha…), stripped Ah Piau together, ponteng together, and many many more…

Okay, let me introduce to you one by one about how I approached them and get to be in the gang, be their buddy… For introduction, I need to reverse back to the moment I entered my dorm… As I just said, my dorm members seemed unfriendly, besides that, another reason why I wanted to leave the dorm so fast was because, there was no Chinese in the dorm… Perhaps there was one, lying at the far end corner there with a cap covering his face and he was sleeping, I guess… So, I thought he was some kind of weird people who don’t socialize with anyone, too afraid to disturb, I went down to the hall alone… After I went down again to the hall, met some friends from Selangor, Shazmiq, Max, Ching Kuan… and the list goes on… Actually I’ve known most of them even before reaching the camp… In the bus we had already known each other… After talking for a short period, the staff from the logistic started to make announcement, calling us to get our properties provided by the government from the logistic which located at the opposite of the hall… We have to go by order, from the first company to the last ones… So, I was in Charlie Company, which means the 3rd company, and that was why I got plenty of time to spend talking with friends before moving to the logistic…

In the logistic, we lined up and sat down to receive our properties… Coincidently, the weird Chinese guy that I mentioned just now sat beside me… So I kind of paid some attention on him… We didn’t talk until we finished receiving all our belongings… Headed to the dorm then, it was time to bath… I don’t want to bath alone neither I want to bath with strangers… So, I took a deep breath, boosted up my courage, and I went to the far end and talked to the so called ‘weird Chinese guy’…

Two of his friends were with him, Wen Ji and Ah Wai… So, I introduced myself, and here comes the first member of Steady Gangz… His name is See Kiat, but I prefer calling his chiniese name…



See Kiat, he is the first Chinese guy that I knew in the camp… Undeniably I was impressed by his brain power, he always can come out with many impeccable master plans or ideas… For a simple example, my hanger can only at most hang an underwear, but for him, a simple hanger, he could hang 4 underwears… Impressive! Another cool attitude of his is that he’s very brave, he dared to go flirt with girls just like nobody’s business, even when the facilitators are all around… I guess that is a good thing also right? Haha, besides that, he got plenty of jokes in his brain, we exchanged jokes together sometimes and he has always been my best source of funny jokes…

Now, let’s move on to the second steady guy… Still on the first day of my NS life, after we bathed together, we went down again to the hall for dinner… When we were lining up, I could feel that someone is observing us, so I looked around and I found this guy, with his hair dyed in light gold colour… I was like, wow, this guy is hot… He approached us, or maybe I went to him, couldn’t remember clearly… But, one thing is for sure, we had some conversation and that’s it, the second Steady Gangz member… Sieh Yong, or we usually call him Ah Yang…



Ah Yang, hmmm, for me I think, he’s the most handsome guy among 5 of us… He got a lot of knowledge, from A to Z, you can definitely just ask him anything… Besides handsome, he’s a funny person too, always make jokes that entertained us… Hmmm, I bet none of us can forget this: No, no, it’s not double S, it’s SPORTS ONE ONE ZERO S S YAMAHA (In our special tunes, tremendously funny ^^) Ermm, sorry to those that don’t understand… Ah Yang is also a very straight forward person, he scolded us when we did something wrong, not because of anything, just because he wants us to be a better person… I always salute him for being so caring to us, to his friends… Friendship is always the first on his priority list…

Nothing much for the first day after getting to know Ah Yang… Let’s move on to the second day: the day when trainees from Perak came… There were many Chinese came from Perak, especially from Ipoh… My dorm, which only has two Chinese fellers including me on the first day, increased to 7 Chinese guys on the second day… Yeah, all 5 of them came from Ipoh… Sam Tuck Chai, Ah Piau, Ah Meng, David and Eason… Yeah, Eason is our next buddy, my best
buddy…



Eason, his real name is Ngai Seng, but calling him Gou Lou is preferred owing to his height… He is a simple and happy-go-lucky guy… He is the one whom I talked most to, I just love talking to him, and he makes me feel better after talking to him… He always been the victim whom I confide my problems or secret with, cause he can always turns all intricate stuffs into simple things… We could just chit chatted on the bed even after the exhausting activities where everyone in the dorm was sleeping like decease… Besides that, he is very generous, always spent money to buy some junk food to share together with us… I feel bad when he does that, cause I can never pay back him by treating him and everyone as my wallet is always empty… Sad case…

Here comes the last guy that I want to introduce… First and foremost, I’ll start off with how I get to know him… I went back home for a whole week holidays after 4 days staying in the camp due to the interview that I had to attend… Holiday, of course it was nice, I enjoyed my whole one week although I need to go for trainings and interview… Too bad time flies without waiting, before I could blink, it was already the time for me to go back to the camp again… I appreciated the last two hours of car journey before reaching the camp… Well then when I’m back to the camp, of course, first thing, I went to search for my friends… I saw the agonized faces of Charlie members in the dining hall, they were all excited to see my return, but I detected one unfamiliar face, I thought, maybe this guy is in after I’m out for my holidays… So we introduced ourselves to each other… His name is Wen Chun, our next member…



Wen Chun or Ah Chun, talk about his name, he got many… Malays called him 360 (Tiga Enam Kosong), Indians called him San Ju (Babi Hutan), and we all, are free to call him any names… He can said to be the most interesting friend in the gang… Being an avid joker, his stupid jokes, inane movements, and his crazy remarks can just cheer us up to the max… At first before I knew him better, I thought he was a gangster, his look was rather turbulent, and stream of invectives can easily flow out from his mouth, maybe it was because of the environment of his, that’s why we can easily find dirty words from each of his sentences… Basically, he is a very nice guy, he’s helpful in many ways, for an example, getting whole packet of bread back to the dorm and get scolding from both canteen aunty and the Malays had always been his job… Thank you San Ju, I always wanted to say that…

Salam Khidmat Negara...

It came,
The day finally came,
“The day of sorrow”, they said,
“The day of tears”, I said.

It had been slow,
Creeping slow,
Crawling inch by inch for the first few weeks,
Then, with the sudden rush of the adrenaline,
It speeded up,
As quick as lightning,
Till the very end.

This will be the pit stop,
The farewell,
The end of everything,
NO MORE waking up at the early of the dawn,
NO MORE sleeping before midnight strikes,
NO MORE sweat dripping from the epidermis of a skin,
NO MORE curses shouted when tiredness overruled a homosapien,
NO MORE……..

It’s over now,
THIS is a once in a lifetime experience,
THIS is a part of a journey,
THIS is a memoir,
MY MEMOIR….

Story begins when the check list for trainees who have been chosen to attend national service 2009 is released...Solemnly enough, I entered the regarding website and I slowly typed my IC number to check whether I’m the ‘lucky’ person or not... I waited for the result in a state of trepidation, and to my astonishment, this was what I saw…

Stunned, my eyes widen, jaws dropped and silence overruled for several minutes... It was so unbelievable, I have an elder sister, and she got chosen for national service too 2 years ago, so to tell the truth, I had much confidence that I will NOT be chosen… Anyway, knowing that reality is always cruel, I tried to accept it impassively…

Yes, name of my camp is KEM SENTOSA, CHENDERIANG TAPAH PERAK... I like the name of my camp, cause sentosa means peaceful and serene, which is also the lifestyle that I desire for... Hoping that my NS life would really be like the name of the camp, I went to the pickup point on the day informed…

The place was crowded with a medley of different races of people, but still, I managed to make friends with some Chinese who came all the way from puchong… Fish & Alwin… Sitting in the bus travelling to the camp, together we chit chatted a lot about our backgrounds and personal details… At that moment, I thought: it’s not as bad as what I had imagined, I got to know friends even when I haven’t reach the camp… So I started to have some hope for the next 3 months surviving in the camp…

After a 3 hours journey, we finally arrived… When I got out of the bus, ‘wow’ was the word that I mentioned… I stood as stiffly as a toy soldier, looking at the camp which is surrounded by mountains with different altitude, creating striking scenery…

My camp is beautiful… It is the most beautiful camp in Perak according to one of the facilitator… I started to fell in love with this ‘cruel reality’ which I first mentioned, the attracting sceneries of my camp diminished the negative feelings of mine towards national service… So I thought, national service is not that bad after all... Things went smooth until we went to register our name at the counter… Fish, Alwin and I were separated into 3 different dorms and 3 different companies… Felling a little bit of disappointed, together, we carried our luggage and moved into our dorms…

G5 is my dorm, and it looked like this:

So, after settled down my entire luggage by placing them into the cupboard given, I went down again to the hall… P/S: I went down fast cause people in my dorm seemed unfriendly!!! Opps, I meant my first impression when I reached the dorm ok, don’t get offended, friends… ^^