6ixes celebrate my birthday

date: 10 august 2010
location: woodlands crescent, woodlands waterfront, champions way, civic centre

the only day i would walk around looking like that.

so much so for the kate spade closed door event with nurul, i got a shock of my life when i saw ila and ain appear at my floor landing, from the block staircase, just as i was waiting for the lift to go downstairs. a quick mumble of "sorry syaz", and i was blindfolded, dressed up (please do check out what i was made to wear!!) and deafened by music blaring from wani's headphones. my questions (where are we going? who is in the car? are there anybody looking at me? hello, can anyone answer me?!) fell on totally deaf ears - i was wondering who was the deaf ones there.

the unvealing of the blindfold brought me to woodlands waterfront, where we had a scrumptious brunch of nurul's nasi lemak, nuggets, fried chicken and jemput-jemput. the birthday cake was totally so me; of strawberries and chocolates. i got a pretty 'kate spade' bag and one of the loveliest birthday card i have ever received.

we went kite flying at champions way, where the wind blew so strongly even when the sun is shining mercilessly upon us. kitey was the kite which flew way up, up high into the blue sky - so high in fact, that the entire reel of string flew away with it, high above the roof of christchurch secondary. and then it was gone.

nonetheless, i enjoyed every second of the entire celebration (that blindfold and dressing up part too!).

♥ nurul, wani, ain, ila & sha.

thank you lovelies so much, for making this happen.

just last night, i found myself feeling really embarrassed and asking the boyfriend, "please dont be angry with me, but could you tell me what did you get me for my 21st birthday?" and he started off explaining the surprise birthday celebration he threw me in the afternoon while i was walking nasrin to school. he had a lovely cake all set up with candles at that small hut near my place. and next to the cake was pooh bear, wearing a necklace, bearing my name. later that night, he gave me an mp3 player.

i realised that i needed some way to remind me of these little accounts that happened in my life. cause i know that one dreaded day, i would forget them. and that scares me, a lot. cause these were the things that had once made me smile, wide enough, if not, wider. and these moments are the ones that i would want to capture in my memory - forever.

so no matter how late of me to blog about an event, i should do it. so that when that dreaded one day comes, i'll visit this space of mine and remember what it was that once made me smile.

5-week stint

the 5-week ta stint was the main reason why i went on hiatus. it was a complete 5 weeks of turmoil but it had a bittersweet ending. i had always loved the 10 year olds ever since the first day i took over their class. but i did not realise how fond i was of them, until the very last day. and on that eve of the national day celebrations, i was fuming angry with myself cause i left - without a single picture of them.

alhamdulillah, the 5 weeks went by pretty quickly and ended off with such a drama (the kind you would expect only on tv), but, all went well. of course friendships were forged and all of them were so lovely , in every single way you could imagine: (from left-right) aza, sim wii, sutha, me, wei wei, connie, shah and ramesh.

the weekend of 31st july

my birthday lunch could not be any sweeter - with both my best friends. right after mendaki, i headed to causeway point and walked around aimlessly for a good 45 minutes, before meeting the both of them. izhar presented me with a super cute flower bouquet and his birthday card while nana handed me all the stuff she got me. siam kitchen makes a pretty good alternative for thai food, but no doubt that nothing beats the real deal. i especially loved their green curry chicken! thanks to syazana, she picked the entire lunch tab.

the tiramisu birthday cake from eatzi gourment was brought out by one of the waitresses. i opened syazana's present and was pleasantly surprised to see a really lovely nine west messenger bag (which was fossil inspired) and a baby-g watch which totally made me squeal in delight. the entire frame was masculine black, with a hint of feminine pink around its face. pretty!! (:

iz made sure i opened his card only when i reached home. upon reading his card message, he gave away the first clue for my treasure hunt, which would take place downtown.

thanks to makngah and pakngah, they got me seats for the rentak singapura concert @d'marquee and a chalet room @costa sands downtown east. in addition, i got an entire ben & jerry's tub - all to myself! the rentak singapura concert did not disappoint, especially performances by my favourite duo, sleeq and hady mirza. sleeq sang 'untuk dia' and they still amaze me with their sound-like-recording voices. they manage to make every song unique to their genre. you could just hear this song on air, and recognise that its sleeq's. even ramesh and sim wii requested me to play their song while we were doing our stuff in the resource room while we were in school. check out their song here!

the concert ended really late. we wanted to get snapshots with sleeq and hady, but syairah was too excited to start the treasure hunt. we toggled between downtown east and e-hub while finding stick-ons which lead us to the next clue. the final pit-stop was at the bowling alley, where i received my 'treasure'!

the boyfriend got me a lovely tote bag from forever 21 and a beautiful caricature drawing of me! the one thing i cant imagine is the boyfriend stepping into F21, picking the bag from its shelf and paying for it at the cashier. (:

that sunday afternoon after checking out of the chalet, i had the tallest burger in town at mad jack's, thanks so much to pakngah.

my birthday weekend evening was spent with rage, who spoilt me with a box of goodies - including a set of colourful notebooks, hand cream, nalgene bottle, mini polaroid postcards, slabs of chocolates and a lovely card.

so much love and thanks also to ibu who presented me with the most sparkling pair of silver shoes, nasrin for the beautiful stationary from kiki.k, the cute YOG 2010 keychain bearing merly and lyo from muzakkir, a deep turquoise bag from busu and a hairdryer and a new set of bed spread from nenek.

definitely worth remembering, i love you.

Hello! (:

First and foremostly, I would like to wish you happy national day, as the nation turns 45 this year. And all of us are looking forward to it (especially me, no doubt about it cause of the long weekend holidays). Except mine will stretch all the way till september till a new school semester starts. And because of this long end of year holiday for us, which so coincidentally clashes with ramadhan, I'm complaining cause it means that my end of the year trip to egypt will happen without me. ):

I have been on a really long hiatus, missing out important events of july, and I'm really sorry. The 5-week ta stint drained everything out of me, so much that my room (only my corner) looked like its been hit by a typhoon. And don't get me started on the state of my wadrobe! It got hit by a combination of tsunami and cyclone. Thank goodness the damage done to my wadrobe has been cleared - I've yet to save the aftermath of the typhoon still.

I decided that I'll post pictures of my entire july just to fill you up, and to also remind me of what happened in july 2010 when I happen to read through my past posts down the road.but for now, I'm going to enjoy my long weekend and weekday before ramadhan settles in.

I'll be heading to the cinema for the last airbender but I have a feeling that I wouldn't enjoy it as much. I enjoyed the cartoon tremendously and I'm sure they'll make great alterations to the story. For one fact that instead of a chinese buddhist monk, aang is played as a bald white boy instead. We'll see about the rest of the movie and I'll tell you about it!

Till then, enjoy your monday too! (:

i guess that all along, i thought wrong about you. i thought you would treasure our 6 years of friendship. but what you really wanted to do was have me out of your life, on the base of a stupid reason. i got that crystal clear. we're good as strangers.

my firsthand experience at kick-boxing tomorrow.

i wish life was as simple and as easy-going as achie's comics.

vietnam, june 2010.

its 7.52pm.

i fired an M-16 today and it was the coolest ever. the noise was deafening, even with ear plugs and ear muffs on. the impact of every shot was so strong that it actually pushed my shoulders back. we were allowed to bring home an empty bullet case, however, we could not possibly get through the singapore customs with it in our luggage.

the experience at cu chi tunnels and war museum brought us to a historical stance during the vietnam war with america 43 years ago. we were exposed to the different tortures and living conditions the vietnamese had to go through in those gruelling 10 years.

i had a vietnamese custom made suit done and it would be sent to my hotel in 2 days time. i hope its pretty!

chúc ngủ ngon!

its 7.26pm here..

the first day at ho chi minh confirmed that the weather was indeed freezing cold at 35 degrees celcius. the traffic here is completely crazy, with 6 million motorbikes on the roads of the city! they apparently have no government, beat the lights and dont even adhere to pedestrians at the zebra crossing!

we nearly got hit by a motorcycle which was merely freaking 5 cm in front of us! the water puppet show was amusing as the puppeteers were moving those puppets while underwater. the food here is not that bad, we have been to the same restaurant twice.

we went bonkers trying to figure out the exchange rate while shopping at the supermarket. calculators are a must while shopping and it came down to dividing the vietnamese price by 12,500. we grabbed bottles of coke at merely 50 cents each!

the hotel is awesome, especially the clean toilets and free wireless internet surfing at the lobby. the only downside is that i have to challenge with the others on who gets to use the computers first. thank goodness, i have such lovely cousins who kindly let me use it. syahir is super glad that he can catch all 3 world cup matches on the screens.

till then, nhìn thấy bạn! (:

im leaving for ho chi minh, vietnam, in four hours time and im hardly done with packing. im not too keen with the physical structure of the city, the temperature of the place and the sights or attractions it has to offer. instead, i will be looking forward to learning more about the history of the country during the war, and not forgetting the shopping experience that it boasts of. i have gathered enough information to tell me that the north of vietnam is much more beautiful, with halong bay topping the list.

while planning for this trip, i thought i could squeeze in short getaways to the north, cambodia and laos. however, that meant more accumulates to added spenditure and days, which ibu could not afford to prolong, since she would start working on monday itself. she was already not too excited about reaching singapore on monday morning, at 0100 hours.

akmal managed to do up a beautiful drawing of me before he slept last night. and i could not believe that he could complete it so fast! i had no idea that guy could even draw! you might recognise the picture as the one i had posted a few months back. and of course, i love it! (:

Chúc ngủ ngon!