Chocolatey Time and a Walk Down the Memory Lane

Posted on June 20, 2009 in: Life Experience


- Chocolate Steam Pudding, Chocolate Waffles, etc @ Chocolate Boutique, Parnell, Auckland, NZ. -

I went to Atie’s place with Mira at around 6.30pm last Thusday and waited for our friends from Australia to join us for a little sinfully chocolatey indulgence time at Chocolate Boutique. There were Rozi, Sarah, Umai and Kak Fad (Kelsey’s not there, though). I’ve only been there once, and I went alone last time; so it wasn’t that interesting. Since I knew we would be going as a group, I just knew it was going to be fun. I’m not the type who’s comfortable walking in a crowd, but they’re a bunch of lovely friends. Being able to join them while being known as the not-so-sociable girl (at least not anti-social) eating, talking, laughing and just having a good time with them is something I consider precious.

We took the link bus and arrived a little bit further than our destination, but it was okay. It was a short walk down, no worries. After a random camwhoring moment, we ordered for our chocolatey treats. Yummy, yummy chocolates in all forms. I ordered their Chocolate Waffles because of my sudden craving for waffles (saw the easy-cook waffles at Foodtown, but it’s not in my budget at that time), and a glass of Mocha Affogato (melted milk chocolate + 2 shots of espresso + ice cream) to slurp. Poor Atie took my espresso as chocolate and got the strong taste of coffee burn her tastebuds. Sorry dearie~

Acap arrived way too late to join the feast. The funniest think he said was probably “Where are the other guys?”, because there weren’t any (though I kind of expected Dyau to tag along, but I guess he was sleeping?) After the food, we camwhored for a while and walked all the way back to the city from Parnell. It was a pleasant experience it you don’t count the cold. My back was sweating under my jacket and sweatshirt, so no probs there. Mira pointed out to a fancy shop selling equally fancy stuff.

“Look, it’s like the Phantom of the Opera!”

That was what set Atie, Sarah and me into a long conversation about our Foundation days back in IPBA in which we parodied PotO in small groups, under the supervision of Miss Pat. I was the Phantom in my group. Sarah was a memorable La Carlotta. I still remember LOLing at her ‘Where’s my doggie?!’ lines, and the part where the (imaginary) grand chandelier fell atop her (imaginary) doggie. Fun times! We agreed that we kind of miss those days. I hope I still have the video recording of our parodies at home. I know I took them, so they must be there!

Before going home, Mira and I went to Foodtown for minor grocery shopping (because I already did most of them the ther day). Sweet night was sweet indeed, and our house was not that cold. That’s about everything for now. Some photos have been uploaded to FB, and are available for viewing here.

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Sticky Post: About Adi’s http://adi.carameltoffee.net

Posted on June 19, 2009 in: Blog Updates

I seem to notice that many people from Malaysia were looking for Adi’s old blog, which I used to host since early 2008. Please be informed that I am no longer hosting his blog after he declared that he wanted to say goodbye to it. Yup, this blog is all me now, and all deleted subdomains (including nonexistent subdomains) will show the main page of my blog.

Sorry for the inconvenience. It feels weird that some people called me (or at least thought that I am) Adi because they misunderstood.

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Six Months Left Before Goodbye, One Until The Last Term

Posted on June 18, 2009 in: Life Experience, Rant

Myself (left), Atie and Kelsey @ Hulu Cat Tea House, Auckland, New Zealand (170609).

I have revamped the entire blog, minus the jumbled up tags, as a silent promise to make this blog more active from now onward. Yes, yes, I say that all the time, but I really hope I’m able to keep it. Why is it so hard to spend at least 10 minutes per day to write a journal entry that I can go back to in the future? I really need to work on my poor time management skills and my ability to write more serious stuff – fandom doesn’t count.

I’ve finished practicum in New Zealand last Friday. While I’m glad to not have to commute from Auckland City to Avondale College, I do feel a pang of sadness. Just a tiny wee bit. It’s not because I miss the school or the students; it’s just that it is a reminder that I now have less than a year and a half to graduate. It’s a reminder that this is my last year in the university, doing headache-inducing third stage courses, preparing for another year of training back in Malaysia. Mmhmm. It makes me nervous. So, so nervous.

Putting that aside, Mira and I left the cocoon of our warm house (not that warm, but warmer than the pre-winter chill outside, at the very least) to join Atie, Felicia, Wira, Dyau, Hijrah, Danial and Kelsey at Hulu Cat. Kelsey and Dan are here for he term break, over from Brisbane. Once there, I had a sudden craving for kare- ramen. The closest thing they have there is kare-udon (seafood, of course), so I settled on that. Yummy. The worst part, though, was the Caramel Latte. For $6, it sucked big time. It tasted exactly like Nescafe Freeze. I’ll never ever order that drink again.

Alright, that’s it for now. I have to catch the Link Bus to Chocolate Boutique, with Mira and Atie, as well as a few others. Ciao.

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Why Blogspot When I Have Livejournal and Dreamwidth, etc?

Posted on May 24, 2009 in: Interests, Life Experience, Nerdy and Geeky, Rant

I seriously need to work on my holiday and practicum entries, but I’m feeling extremely lazy for lengthy recaps. And some people who asked me these questions left me thinking:

Friend A: Why aren’t your journals on Blogspot?
Friend B: What’s Livejournal?

They’re so internet savvy, so it appals me that they don’t know about Livejournal. I can be sure they have no ideas about the LJ Strikethrough that shook the blogosphere or the recent development and emergence of Dreamwidth. If you ask me to compare Blogspot with Wordpress, Livejournal and most recently Dreamwidth, I’d say Blogspot is MOST DEFINITELY on the bottom of my list. Heck, even Vox is at least ten times better.

Purpose of A Blog, and Privacy Level

Is it personal or commercial? Why are blogs suddenly popular after a few years of it’s initial existence? Why do everybody have blogs now? Some keep blogs for commercial purposes, but some wants it to be personal. It makes me wonder why personal blogs are kept on Blogspot, which offers no post privacy filters. If I want to keep it personal, and allow only a few to read my entries, or even keep the blog entries to myself, I would choose a blog provider which allows me to control ‘who can certain entries’. It’s more effective than making the entire blog private. Sometimes, you want to share your entries with select friends. Sometimes, you just want to keep them to yourselves. Sometimes, you want to share your entries with anyone at all.

This is why I love Livejournal (LJ) and Dreamwidth (DW) so damn much. Of course, I love InsaneJournal, Greatestjournal, JournalFen (IJ, GJ and JF respectively) and other LJ-based providers too, but my best experience had been with LJ and recently DW. I can make it so that my blog entries can only be read by friends who also have accounts there. I can make it so everyone in the WWW can read them. I have that freedom.

The new development of Dreamwidth (currently in open beta) is even more wonderful. New privacy options let me have greater control of my journal entries. If you were to have a look at my DW now (http://adlina.dreamwidth.org), you can only see one entry when I actually have a total of 5 entries. Same with my Livejournal. Out of 325 journal entries (I’ve been using LJ for six years~ 325 is a small number, sadly.), the public eye can only read 160 of them. The rest are either private or shared with friends, who are DW/LJ users.

Ongoing Conversation and Meaningful Discussions

LJ and DW makes me feel alive. You write something, someone clicks reply, and you can click reply on the person’s comment. In other words, the wonders of threaded comments (like Wordpress, but we all know WP is a bit slow to implement this features). Have a look at a sample comment thread from my LJ:

ljcomthread

It’s an ongoing conversation, people. It looks alive. If you have something you disagree with, you can always argue. The arguments can continue. Other people can also join in the discussion. The thread doesn’t have to be between two people.

If you want to one person’s comments invisible to other commenters, you can screen the comments. This way, no one knows about your private discussion with the other person. You can also delete their comments if you want to.

Sense of Community

You can join and create communities with LJ-based journals. What’s the point of keeping your short stories or poetry or even songs to yourselves? Joining specific communities can help promote your artistic pieces. Share them with other people and get into discussions about them. It’s your chance to get feedbacks and even constructive criticisms. The latter is hard to come by these days. Comments of “Wow, it’s cool!” is getting so old and lame and bleh.

communitydwOne of the communities I’m in helps me with my language learning. It’s very useful when you have native speakers correcting your works and help you improve. Information exchange, file sharing – you name it. We have it all.

Friends Page / Reading Page

You don’t have to individually open each blog to read your friends’ newest entries. You don’t even have to subscribe to their RSS feeds if you don’t feel like it. Just click on your friends page, without the apostrophe, (or ‘reading page’ in DW) and then you can read the entries of everyone you have access to. If you want to comment, just click on comment straight away. Easy as that. Your friends page will also show newest posts in communities you subscribe to if you don’t filter them out. I usually filter communities and individuals

profilepage

You can always go to your profile and click on ‘view entries’ for friends or communities. Instant filter ;)

Conclusion to Friend A: No, I will never have a working journal on Blogspot.

To Friend B: I hope you have a clear idea now.

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Because I Can’t Not Categorise Love

Posted on May 9, 2009 in: Life Experience, Musing, Opinion

oveachance

Or it could be that I think too much. Lately, my mother has been pestering me about the matters of love to no ends. Always reminding me that Allah created us to love and be loved. Always reminding me that I need someone in my life other than immediate family – to love. Always reminding me that I can’t survive on her love alone forever. Always reminding me that I need to learn to love, and to learn to accept love.

I may be able to learn to love, but I honestly think it would be hard for me to learn to accept love. I’m the type who thinks too much at times, and doesn’t want to think sometimes. I wish I could be as outgoing and joyful as some of my friends. I tried. I failed. It’s not about confidence or even the classic “I’m overweight and not pretty and a geek and cannot mix well with people” either. No. I don’t care about that. I’m not pressured either. Heck, what do you think? My beloved best friend is underweight and fair and pretty and cute (I hope she’s not reading this) and of mixed blood (not that I’m not one myself, but still) and more, you’d think I’d be feeling so low just to stand by her if I shoot myself down based on looks.

Based on the paragraph above, you can see how I think too much even when I only meant to say ‘I don’t care much’. You get the picture. That’s the kind of person I am. I describe things to much. Think about them too much. When it comes to emotional matters, it only gets worse.

For me, love comes in types. I categorise people in my live into different love types. There you go. It’s because I categorise people that I’m this way. I hate crowds. I prefer doing tasks on my own, so I’m worried about myself because my profession clearly states me to be more social. When Mom tells me to ‘try accepting xxx feelings’, I told her that I’d feel weird that way. It’s like trying to allow someone into my small circle of love. My brain has this weird schema where I put myself at the center of a circle, surrounded by layers much similar to our earth itself. The innermost layers are my family, and then my best friends, and then my friends. Where in that layer would,say, a boyfriend fit into? It’s like trying to destroy an established equilibrium. Now let’s look at my types of love:

  1. Filial
    It’s the special kind of love I have for my parents. The way I feel about them cannot be compared, or even described. It’s the greatest kind of love you can have for another human being. That’s why I can never understand or comprehend people who tell their lovers “You’re the one I love most in the whole world”. That mentality alone disgusts me. Filial love cannot be replaced. Never. I was rebellious, I know I sometimes still am. Really. This love I have for them is the type that always instantly gets me into ‘guilty, suicidal mode’ when I defy them or think of defying them.
  2. Familial
    The love I feel for my brothers, sisters-in-law, nephews and nieces. And probably my close extended family members as well, like my aunts and uncles and cousins. It’s almost like loyalty. No matter how much they annoy me, I can never come close to hating them. True, I could say “Dammit, I fucking hate you” to my brothers, but we all know I don’t mean it. My brothers are both hot headed. They were almost always at each others throat up until they grew into working adults and got married. It makes me feel warm and fuzzy sometimes, when they’d e-mail me or text me or just called me all the way from Malaysia just to see what I’m doing. Not that I’d ever tell them. My niece and nephews, though we seldom see each other, they have this cute attachment to me. Always calling me name and asking me stuff when we have the chance to see each other on Skype. Hmm.
  3. Platonic
    The love I feel for my best friends (and possibly, crushes). Close, intimate, affectionate – but never romantic. We tolerate all those jokes. We take less than an hour to get back on good terms when we offend each other. We care when one of us gets sick. We relate some things to each other when we go shopping, something like “Hey, this shirt will suit [insert name here] really well!” or “Doesn’t that remind you of [name here]? That’s so her/his style!” It’s the same as familial – just that we’re not related by blood. I can name a few, like Mira, Hanin, Khairiyyah, Keith… yes, yes, you guys are my light. And a few others. Even this one guy…
  4. Romantic
    The kind of love I think people feel towards their boyfriends/ girlfriends/ spouses. This is in a different teritory all together. I’ve never sit in this zone. I’ve never felt like wanting to build a warm, loving family with someone. Truthfully, I am scared of this type of love. Romantic love, to me, have its branches. I’m afraid of possessive love the most – the one where you have an unhealthy feeling of wanting someone only for yourself and vice versa. There’s just a lot of things about romantic love that I’m scared of. I… can’t help it.
  5. Respect
    The kind of love I feel for friends, and sometimes, some guys I had a crush on. Respect is a lot like love, and maybe even loyalty too. I don’t take sides. If friend A and friend B are at each other’s throats, I don’t take sides. If they should choose me as someone to confide in, I’ll listen to both sides of the story and keep what I know to myself. I respect them that way. I’ll feel concerned if something happens to any of them. I don’t pry more than I’m allowed to know. I just try to be a good friend. I may not answer their texts sometimes, but that’s mainly because I have no credit left to reply with. Sad, I know…

Categorising people are bad, my Mom said. But I don’t categorise people per se. She misunderstood me. I just categorise love. And she said she couldn’t understand my types of love. I thought I was being clear enough. Frank enough. Apparently, she didn’t think so. She still doesn’t think so.

She insists that normal people are born to feel love. Normal people are born to love. It’s natural to feel love and to be loved. But what I would like to say is: It is also common to not be born normal.

Guh. All these are hurting my braincells. I still need to finish my travel logs. I’ll probably backdate them anyway.

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