Plans for New Year's Eve

For the first time, no plans. No plans with family, no plans with friends. Last night was my routine meditation night and Tuck Loon said that there would be a meditation tonight, so I was thinking.. ah, what the heck? Come meditation better than nothing to do! So hah, I've not only geared myself for meditation tonight, but will also bring Thea and the maid there together!! If I was going to be surrounded with loving-kindness, then so would they! :) Kiasu hor?

This is really the first year I have no where to go and not surrounded by family and friends supplemented by food, alcohol and ciggerates. And by that, I do mean adults. However, I am not complaining, because I'd be surrounded by like-minded friends who are embarking on the same journey as I am and also, my precious daughter and loyal maid. I am truly blessed. Although it is unlikely that we will stay at the centre to countdown, but to feel their presence and to invoke beautiful and loving energies into us on the eve to welcome the new year would truly, truly be, or rather, is an extraordinary gift of life.

Well, I'd be leaving soon.. and will update whatever, if I feel like it. :)

Thank you, 2008 - the weakness has brought forth the greatness, the ugly has brought forth the beauty, the bad has brought forth the good and the fear has brought forth love, peace, joy and harmony... thank you for the lessons bestowed, and learnt.

With love, gratitude & grace, I wave goodbye to you. You have served me well. :)

New Design Template

Someone (yes, you will be kept anonymous) commented that my blog colour was too brown. Hmm.. actually I thought so too, and even though I loved its fonts on my title, but didn't really fancy the same font in my entries. I know that I could change fonts, but then.. don't know why, just never really got about doing it... and since I don't really enjoy the colour brown anyway, I decided to change the blog design altogether and TA-DA!!

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Just in case you were wondering why I chose the brown if I didn't really like brown... well, it's was quite late in the night when I created this blog with Gladys' help so I simply just picked one quickly and really not quite carefully. I thought I could live with it, but then as days went by, I realised that I didn't really fancy the colour nor the font, so with the additional comment from this someone, this facelift is now possible!

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I love this fresh green design because it is green (duh!) and quite natural in its own state. Green is easy on the eyes to read, and its background design seems to put you back to nature.. nice...

Friends & Shopping A-G-A-I-N!!

I met up with 2 old friends of mine, Belinda (from Kuching) and Ming Yen this morning at The Loaf, Pavillion. We were together since 10:30am till about 2:30pm - that was really pretty long and we had so much to catch up on! It was really great to finally sit down together and just talk, talk and talk... about men (no longer boys *ahem*), kids, shopping, relationships, marriage, life and other people... Both Belinda and Ming Yen are my swimming friends from the old days. We always met up for competitions about 6-8 times a year at various states, representing our own states. Sometimes we represent Malaysia together ;). Even though we sometimes compete against each other in specific events, when we are out of the pool, we get together like we were all the closest and bestest friends. Ahhh... good old times... Amongst us were Ai-Lan, Ai Wee, Michele, Tania and some others... It was really nice then.. And I have not met Belinda since year 2004! It was really good meeting up with her again after all these years. Just in case you were wondering, I meet up with Ming Yen quite often. :) She is really just too nice and would always accomodate me to meet up wherever I pleased... thanks Ming Yen, I love you!! Oh yeah, did I mention, Ming Yen brought a gift for Thea too? So sweet of Ming Yen... :)

Coming back to Belinda, I promised Belinda that Ming Yen and I will try to plan a trip down to Kuching next year for the Rainforest Festival - whatever that is! She has been telling me so much about it and it looks like it'd be a good excuse to visit her! Don't worry, Belinda, I have written it down on my to-do list for year 2009! :D

After chatting at The Loaf, we decided to go to Aussino because I needed to get new bedsheets for CNY. It has been years since I had new bedsheets so I was quite determined to get new ones for the coming year. I bought 2 queen-sized bedsheet sets (because the 2nd set was 80% off), 1 quilt cover set (50% off) and 1 Disney Princess bedsheet for Thea (20% off) which came up to a total of RM509.40. We parted at about 2:30pm after lunch at Yo! Sushi. Ming Yen and I then decided to go to 1U to do some more shopping.

You see, T2 gave me this RM50 Lewre voucher some time back and I was thinking that I could use it to buy new shoes for CNY. When I arrived at 1U, Ming Yen has not arrived. So I went into Aldo first just to explore my options. To be honest, I loved their designs, but when I tried them on, they were just not that comfortable as the base of the shoes are all quite hard. So I left for Lewre. I scanned around for suitable shoes and hoping that I could find one that I could live with. I had already decided on the colour, height of the heels and certain designs of the shoes I wanted to get, so I picked the pair closest to what I had in mind and VIOLA! It fitted not only nicely, but comfortably! I was very pleased... what made me even more pleased was that the price of the shoes were only RM159 and it was new arrival! So with the voucher, I only paid RM109!! I had originally expected myself to pick up shoes with price range of RM200-RM300 and since the voucher was only applicable on normal priced merchandise, I was actually expecting to foot up minumum of RM190+ to RM200+ for my new pair of shoes! And what a very very pleasant surprise!! I paid way less than what I had expected myself to pay for a beautiful pair of new shoes for CNY!!! Good on me!!

Ok... like I said... my photoshooting skill is really.. sighs.. don't know what to say la.. just bad la.. and the shoes really does look nicer in "real life" than it looks in this picture.. but nevermind la hor.. I also not going earning a living from photoshooting or make it my life career, so it's ok la.. I forgive myself... haha! Eventhough the phototaking sucks, I'd really like to share my new shoes with the world (how it looks, I mean)! It's just simply beautiful - SIMPLE & BEAUTIFUL! hah!

Anyway, after Lewre, Ming Yen finally showed up. We both walked to Jusco at the old wing because she wanted to redeem some stuffs from her J-card. While she did that, I went down to the kids' floor to get stuffs for Thea for CNY. I got 2 dresses (I wasn't intending to buy her any new clothes for CNY because she still has some new clothes; but these 2 dresses were just too sweet and irresistable!), 1 pair of shoes and 1 box of 3 pieces of panties for her which totalled up to RM189.80. Only the shoes were discounted. Ming Yen joined me in time to collect some more points in her J-Card. Mine expired long time ago :{

Because she had a movie to catch at 5pm and I wanted to rush back to show Thea what I bought for her, we parted with a hug and our goodbyes. Thea was awfully excited when she saw me and kept asking me what I bought for her (hah! as if she already knew!). When I showed it to her, she was really delighted and just kept saying, "wow.... mommi...." Oh ya, she liked the present that Ming Yen bought her too. It was a bottle of "bubbles" with a fairy on top. She likes it, Ming Yen, thanks for your thoughtfulness! :)

So, to sum it all - besides the great time I had with Belinda & Ming Yen, I had a total savings of RM408.50 (RM352.50 from Aussino, RM50 from Lewre, RM6 from Thea's shoes). Great day, huh? ;)

Excitement - The Jinjang Orphange Project

I am feeling very very excited at this moment. I received an email from Gladys yesterday about this orphanage in Jinjang. It is pretty run down in sight and there are currently 31 kids staying there with the youngest about 1 month old and the oldest about 23 years old I think. All Gladys asked for was for us to pool our resources together so that the kids could go to school and to bring them lunch some time next month. What came to my mind was, what is going to happen after that? Because not many people are aware of this orphanage, they are struggling on a month to month basis and for us to pool resources once in a while amongst friends to help them pull through this hurdle may only be temporarily. So an idea struck me while I was trying to get myself to sleep last night- to start a fund-raising project for them!! And this project will include so many things that will not only bring them sufficient funds but to uplift their current environment!!

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I trusted my instincts on who to call.. friends from various fields and with gifts/talents to share... and started contacting them one by one. In fact, I am meeting Terri tonight to see how we could approach this. Maybe we could get Ramesh to get us an affordable location to host a charity bazaar and etc... Lots of ideas that really need to be carefully planned and discussed for it to materialised. I have also spoken to Boon Ling to see how Clove&Clive could contribute to this and she promised that she will look into it.. it is so wonderful!! All positive feedbacks so far!! And all these is thanks to Gladys to have brought this orphanage to my awareness!! Thank you so much again, dear angel!!

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I am really excited and praying for all these to happen.. asking the Universe to bring me like-minded people to make this project a huge SUCCESS!! Who knows, maybe though this project, we might be able to reach out to more people who actually need our assistance and help!

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Now, now... don't get carried away.. hehehe.. but I thank the Universe for this project to at least get started. With love and light, I BELIEVE and TRUST that this project will come into fruition and to bring more love and light to these wonderful children who are our future.

And YOU, if you think that you want to be part of this project or anything that you can contribute, please do drop me a mail at gerrykpy@yahoo.com ya! It'd be a blessing to have you on board too!! Remember that no one is too small for anything, and YOU can truly make a difference if you choose.

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Blessed You Are.

Tijana Kyra's 3rd Birthday Party - TGIF

Today is an amazing day. Both Thea and I woke up at 10:30am. Because I had a lunch date with Penny, I couldn't have lunch with Thea hence she had an early lunch + early nap to rest sufficiently for her Tumble Tots (TT) friend, Tijana Kyra's 3rd birthday party at TGIF later in the evening at 5pm.

She was really good.. she woke up at exactly 4:30pm to get ready for the party. She was really excited. When we arrived there, I realised that we were the first guests to arrive (the others who were already there were their relatives I believe). It was my first time meeting Kyra's parents. I have only seen Kyra in Thea's class a few times but never really talked or connected with any of the kids' parents. Anyway, Kyra's parents - Ravin and Jocelyn were very very nice and grateful that we came. In fact, Thea was the only TT friend who attended the party. The rest of the kids (who later on showed up) were mostly either relatives' children or their friends' children. Here's a picture of Thea and Kyra before any of the other kids turned up.

When all the children turned up, a clown turned up. He was really good because Thea warmed up to him almost instantly! He made balloons and told them jokes and etc.. it was so good seeing Thea enjoying herself, UNTIL.....

...BARNEY ARRIVED!!! Ok.. he is definitely not the real Barney from the television. He was one of Kyra's uncles wearing a Barney costume pretending to be Barney and it scared Thea right away!! Thea starting crying and crying and pleading for us to go home!! It was erm.... quite hilarious... bad mommi huh.. hehehe.. check out her terrified she was!

Barney stayed on until the cake cutting. And let me tell you, Kyra's cake is so so beautiful! It must have been very expensive and it was simply delicious too! I am not normally a cake person, but this cake was too good.. However, I was very disciplined not to eat too much as a new friend who is a holistic doctor kinda told me that my sugar level is pretty high at the moment hence the control. I took so many pictures of the cake! See the cake for yourself!!

Nice huh? Sorry la.. I know my photography skill still not there yet but am really working on it ok? :{ But you have to agree that besides the fact that my photography skill sucks, the cake looks damn nice right? Anyway, Barney "left" after some phototaking with the birthday girl and her friends and the clown continued to entertain the kids. At first, Thea was just standing at the corner refusing to participate. I think she was still trying to "get over" Barney. As soon as the clown started performing some magic, she was really interested. She actually sat quietly observing everything and laughing together with the rest of the kids! I was really just so pleased and happy... See her laughter? Just so joyous!!

Before the end of the magic show, the clown dropped plentiful of sweets as finale. All the kids just went wild picking up the sweets! She grabbed so many sweets and stuffed them in her pocket with help from Kyra's maid who is really very very sweet and attentive to Thea throughout the party especially after witnessing her shyness and fear of Barney. I quickly took out her Minnie Mouse bag and told her to put all her sweets inside so that nobody could take them away from her. She quickly obeyed and smiled. Aww... So sweet hor..

We left shortly after the clown said that it was time for him to go home. In the car, I asked her if she enjoyed herself and she nodded her head. Even I enjoyed myself, just watching her laugh and play! It was truly time well spent with her and also, times like these that I am glad and honoured that I get to bring her to parties all by myself! I am just so bursting with love for her all the time... :)

Speaking of which... I really need to crack my head to think of what I'm going to do for her for her 3rd birthday next year! Ideas, anyone???