Surviving a Disaster

Last month I was so busy with perfecting my moves for Arabian Nites 06 and only now is it possible for me type this. The other day I received an email from Mary. She was explaining to me how busy she was that she didn't had the time to go for Arabain Nites. And the most important, rather shocking news she had? That she was in and out of the hospital visiting her friend who just came out of a 10-day coma.

Apparently while windsurfing she was struck by LIGHTNING (gasp!). Her heart stopped beating for 15 minutes. It's a miracle she survived. M-I-R-A-C-L-E... A simple word. Often over-used. But you truly understand the power of this word only when it happens.

Arrythmetic?

Wonder what the below items are?
On the left's a recorder attached to five different colours of wire........

And guess what??? These are attached to my waist and the five wires connected to different parts of my chest. The recorder's meant to record my heartbeat for 24hours, which means I cannot bathe which means I wore them to bed which means I didn't have a good sleep which means by the time these stuff are removed from my chest I suffered five red glaring round marks. So so itchy! I went home immediately to bathe and put moisturiser but still very itchy. Probably I am really sensitive to the sticky surgical tape. The itch lasted a day; the marks one week!!

I have to lie pretty low on my sofa cos the recorder keeps getting in the way.... Look at the picture below. See what I mean??

Anyway, the reason for doing all these and spending $600plus in all cos I've been experiencing some irregular heatbeats so my cardiologist has to do this monitoring to dertermine if it's too fast/ too slow/ miss a beat for him to prescribe the correct medicine. Moral of the story?? Buy insurance when you are healthy!!

Hobbits

By far, Hobbits are a legend to me. They only appear in Lord of the Rings. It was a Hobbit with three other Hobbits who saved Middle Earth. Together with a white hair man, a shortie man with long beard, a man with pointed ears and a man who looked younger than his age.

I was watching Angela Zhang's (below) MTV the other day. You know Taiwanese MTV has this habit of having chinese characters written as the MTV was being featured? Something like having a commentator except there's no real commentator but dialogues being flashed at the below of the screen so you gotta just read the 'commentaries'. Get the picture? Ok, she's compared to a Hobbit. A Halfling (in Middle Earth words).

Why? Because she is 158cm and weighs only.... *drum roll please* THIRTY-EIGHT KILOGRAM. Yes! 38kg! I spelt it out cos if I just type 38 doesn't give it much weight, geddit? I must type T-H-I-R-T-Y (spacebar) E-I-G-H-T. How can any decent girl who has reached puberty be only 38kg? It's not as if she's like a midget below 150cm or something. Her heaviest was 42kg.... Really can't tell from the picture huh?

Me? I am uh-erm, 159cm, one cm taller than her and weigh *no need drum roll* 47kg. Only 1cm taller but almost 10kg heavier. TEN KG overweight. I need to slim down and lose weight! My lightest was 45kg and by that, I meant I looked real thin (and sickly if I may add) plus my boobs were non-existent. FATS=BOOBS. So no fats means no boobs. And I don't have much to start with in the first place. What a dilemna!

What Kind of Panties are You?

You Are Lacy Panties

You're one seductive chica, but you've also got a ton of class. You are like a pinup girl, with timeless beauty and sexiness. Men are afraid to talk to you, knowing they'll be addicted to your charm immediately. Only a true manly man, confident in himself, is your perfect match.

What Kind of Panties Are You?

I don't want to be a pinup girl!! And what is a "true manly man"?? Girls, take this test and tell me is it accurate for you.

There must be a reason!

Everytime I load a picture, the paragraph I wrote before the picture will have some sentences missing on the blog. However when I go back to edit my post, every single word is still there! How can it be?

Anybody?

Taipei

My past travelogues have been done in at least three separate entries so i'll attempt to squeeze everything about Taipei in one entry. My camera's a siao-ding-dong during the trip and often frustrates my flair in photo-taking (as if!). Which is why I returned with not much pictures this time.

Taipei is still very much a place where local fare prevails so much so that this is what makes her 'Taipei'. So if you are somebody who cannot stomach roadside stalls or weird 'xiao chi', then maybe you wouldn't get to taste the real Taipei nor enjoy this place much. Having said that, I am sure all of you will surely like this! Have to Queue very long to buy!

Since this is my first trip there, I did all the touristy stuff like visit the C.K.S. Memorial Hall.....

where lo and behold!!! President Chen Shui Bian was grazing some opening ceremony....

Next, we moved on to Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall....

and then Taipei 101.

On our way to Danshui, we purposely made a detour to Miramar Shopping Mall (which is quite out of the way) to take a ferris wheel ride. Not a let down indeed!

Danshui took me by surprise.... Incredibly hot! Until I can feel the heat through the soles of my shoes. Either that, or my shoes are really lousy. Time (or excuse) to get a new pair. Oh well, I might as well confess, I got 5 pairs of shoes ultimately.

It very fun just to walk around and get real lost in all the little shops or busy my mouth gobbling up all the funny funny snacks from the endless foodstore. Everywhere is just so crowded so the atmosphere here really rubs off on me. It's never boring as I never know what's around the corner. Turns out that I actually bought 'My melody' Handiplast here. So cute I don't think I will bear to use it... only for emergencies!

I also made it a point to wake up early catch the railway to Rui Fang Station so that we can head to Jiu Fen. Jiu Fen again is quite a commercialised place (if you can spot all the stores behind me in the picture).

Jiu Fen used to be a old mining town and nine families resided here so all the portions have to be divided by nine shares; hencefore the name - Jiu Fen. Now, this place evolved into quite an interesting one with a heavy concentration of tea houses. Even the store lady is interesting (look at the below picture)....

See what I mean? Yahahaha.... Anyway, the meat snack below is very famous also. But I was so busy eating when I step foot here that by the time I saw this, I was too full to try it. Anyway, I took a picture so that I can continue to imagine how it would taste like. Tee Hee.

We tried to look for HRC Taipei but walk round and round still cannot find. I collect shot glasses and Wilson actually asked the hotel receptionist for directions. Maybe the place 'dao bi'?? Eventually we gave up and rested my tired feet at Macdonalds. It was at this point that we ran into somebody outside the indoor stadium trying to sell us some concert ticket. The original price per ticket cost $100 (I think!) and she was willing to sell to us for $50 for two tickets... means $25 each! Wu hua right? After we went through the security check, Wilson turned to ask the security person whose concert are we watching.... he looked at us like we are idiots! Guess we were cos we blur blur buy, and blur blur walk in. Anyway, Sun Yan Zi was singing her third song by the time we got in. Inside's really spacious and fully occupied... what a high!

It turned out that our tickets were on two different rows! Damn it! Luckily the ushers managed to find us two empty seats side by side on rows that are maybe three rows further away from where we were supposed to sit. Heng ah! No camera's allowed so I secretly snapped a few pictures. Especially when FIR got on stage to perform as guest star later part of the concert. Even though I am not a fan of Sun Yan Zi, the concert was truly amazing! Sometimes you just have to marvel how things can turn out to be a nice surprise when it wasn't pre-planned.

Maybe some of you may ask: Is that all you have to say about your trip? My answer will be a 'Yes'! Of course I went to Shilin Ye Shi... twice in fact. But what I want to write now is what I want to remember in years to come.

One-Year-Old Blogger

I just realised I have been blogging for a year! I WOW-ed myself! Hahahahaha

There has been some interesting journey over the past 360plus days and some very warped or nonsense thoughts on my mind that I wouldn't ever remember again if I hadn't written them down here.

Sometimes I will re-read what I wrote and cringe at what I came up with!!! If any of you read something that makes you cringe, pleez pleez pleez dos me a feevor!!! Buzz me and blast me for being a stooopid gal with stooopid thinking.... okie okie??

Birthday

Is it boring to read my blog these days, I wonder?

I only write on an average of once a month these days.... I am appalled by my lack of cool!

Anyway, I am blogging now because I turned 29 a week ago. My husband took me to Taipei as a gift and I returned a fat girl! There are just too many nice snacks to eat so every single moment is eat, eat & eat! Very nice lei!

I used to be greatly affected when I turned 20 but now I can't really feel anything. I like to think that birthdays don't exist at all. In fact, when I get to know new friends these days, I hate to tell them my birthdate. There is no point at all. What I like for my birthday is very simple: A cake and someone to sing the birthday song for me to hear!!! Very nice to hear lei!

Each year, Wilson will text me the whole birthday song... this is the 6th time he has done that for me. What I do is I keep the sms for one year until my next birthday when it will be deleted and replaced by the new one. The first year he addressed me as gine, the second year as dear, third year as darling, fourth year as only love, fifth year as my dear wife and this year... guess what!! I am " my wife, queen the gine"!!! Hee Hee!! Me queen lei!! QUEEN!!

Human Mind

i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and evyernroe awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

Belly Dance Competition @ National Museum

Singtel

presents

Street Revolution - Urban Revolution

Singapore Street Festival 2006

2 June to 18 June 2006

Asia Global Belly Dance

Competition

3-4 June 2006

@ Gallery Theatre

Call me biased but I think Mary's the most chio-looking in this picture. In case any of you don't yet know, I am a bellydance student. So if you don't yet know, shame on you for not keeping in touch with me!!! Yahahaha! Sorry, no pun intended so don't take any offence. To keep a long story short, I was introduced to the school by Mary. Oh Mary wears white in the picture, i think she has this feel of a cross between vixen and angelic, totally babelicious! Yummy Yum Yum! Lord, I sound like a pervert....

Okie, back to my story, I have been learning how to slide my ribcages and thrust my hips in the hope to look foxy for like the past six months. Mary's been at it much longer and she's already in the advanced class, almost two years?? Pardon my memory. And she has done us proud by being so so good that she can compete on a professional level. U go, girl! Anyway I thought her troupe was quite good and a pity that they didn't get into the finals. Maybe the judges were looking out more for uniformity than creativity or techniques. Definitely much better than the third runner-up in my opinion.

The top three in the solo catergory & troupe catergory will each come back again the next day (which is Sunday) to compete with contestants from Taipei & Shanghai respectively. I must say that except for a few, the other representatives from other countries were quite lousy! I think even the worst Singapore contestant from the previous day beats them hands-down!

The downside is that I suffer from eye-fatigue! Wahaha.... it is really no joke to watch non-stop for three hours, break for dinner then come back and watch for another three hours. I ended up dead-pan straight on my bed at the end of Day 1....