I'm right side up again

My sleeping schedule is back on track! Yay! *doing a jig on the bar while Frodo and gang looks on* Oh I've gone slightly cookcoo with my lask of sleep before but I'm okay now. Not only is it back, it's back n the early slot. I actually sleep around 12am - 1am these days. Talk about miraculous. *grin* And I wake up at 9 - 10 am feeling well rested and blissfully refreshed. Sigh. I love sleeping... properly.

Anyway, while I'm bouncing around toadstools in this mood, I'm also hoping to bounce into Mauritius. Yeah I know it's premature, but Lee Hoon and her firm is palnning a trip to somewhere and I'm hoping it'll be Mauritius. She wants me to go too; said to help her survive her colleagues for 10 whole days. *grin* Lucky me. So now, I'm surfing websites about Mauritius. Later dudes and duddettes. Smile and the world will smile with you. *Haha*

We will miss you, Hon Hiew.

I just got shocking news that Hon Hiew, my Multimedia Lecturer in Curtin passed away last saturday, the 25th October 2003. Hon suffered from a congenital heart condition which led to his passing. I never knew he was sick, he never gave the slightest indication that he was sick. He was a quiet and reserved man, yet he was always friendly and helpful with all his students. We could always go to him for anything. Last year when my laptop's CD-ROM started acting up and the programmes went crazy, I took it to Hon to have a look-over. He helped me then and he has helped me several times as the semester progressed. I remember the time he gave his first lecture in 2001, his voice was all shaky and he was sweating buckets, but he bravely finished the lecture. He had since then gained a lot more confidence so much so that he was made a lecturer in Curtin by the end of the year. Hon Hiew is one of my favourite lecturers and my gosh, it is a blow to Curtin to lose such a fine young man. He was only 29 years old. There will be a funeral service held on Thursday, 30th October 2003.

I was in shock when I read my email and I really couldn't believe such news. But I do admit that I felt a premonition when I saw the title "Fwd: Hon Hiew". I began searching the internet for any kind of news about Hon Hiew and I found this weblog that confirmed my fears. In Michael's blog entry, he gave his readers a link to Hon's weblog. I wish I had known about his weblog a long time ago, but judging from the dates on the side, it seems that he just started blogging. He did have an earlier site that was his online protfolio, it's pretty good.

It is hard to imagine that Hon is gone, his life snuffed away just like that. Hon Hiew was a great lecturer and a great friend, and he will be missed by many who came under his tutelage.

You will be missed, Hon Hiew.

Halloween party at Tjj headquaters

The Halloween party at Tom's house last night was great. I got to wear my new costume - I went as Puff the Magic Dragon, complete with a long cigarette holder and I pinched somebody's ciggie to put at the end! =p My costume, made by my very talented sister Lee Na, was made out of green sequined material and sewn into a cape-style costume. Imagine me hunting down a dragon, skinning it and wearing its hide on my shoulders and back. Yeap, you get the picture. The costume has a hood too, with triangle velvet ridges running from the top of my head and down to my tiny fork tail. AND it also has very believable smallish dragon wings. I explained it as under-developed wings to my friends of course, which of course looks great and the value of cuteness is just up there. I love my dragon wings, made out of dark, green velvet to boot - so nice to stroke and experience pleasure. *sigh* I think everyone loved my costume. *double sigh*

The party was great and too bad some people missed it. There were supposed to be at least 25 people, but only 20 came, but it was still a great party. Lydia came decked out in ears and a fluffy tail - Puss in Boots - but she couldn't wear her boots indoors, but she still looked great as a cat. I think a few of the guys were taken with her. =) 'Sides, Lydia always handle herself great at parties even though the only person she knew was me. In the end, she had them all eating out of her paw. Meow. *grin*

Some came decked out in their own creations. Jessie was a slinky Medusa with a head full of aluminium snakes with red paper slips as forked tongues. Shanni was a pink genie in a tube top and pants. Tom was supposed to be Death, but he looked more like a devotee of a cloister with an artistist talent with face paint. Estella came as a dead chinese girl, complete with horrible makeup and death pallor. Jaymee was a sexy Morticia Adams/vampire. And Vijay was supposed to be Count Dracula - he has on a blanket for his cape and murukku for his fangs, which of course disappeared after a time. It must have gotten soggy. =p

TmNet sucks majorly.

Seriously, I've had it with tmnet! I've been at Lee Na's place for the past one week and during all that time, I couldn't even log on to the internet. Every one of my 40+ attempts were met with 'No answer' or 'The line is busy'. It really drove me crazy. Everytime I got those excuses, I wanted to roar with frustration. Not being online for a whole week really made me lose my control. Great, I'm a net addict suffering from withdrawal syndrome. *snarl* TmNet, you suck. Your service is abysmal as none of the people hired are able to solve my problems AND you play musical chairs with your customers. We need more phone companies, so that they will force stupid Telekom Malaysia to improve their services and products else perish into nothing but a bad memory. Idiots all of them. Nimcompoops every single one of them idiots. They obviously have no idea about Customer Relations. Fre'kin dumbasses. *Yes I'm angry and raving, so what? I'm sure there are a heck of a lot more people who thinks Telekom sucks as well.*

Anyway, I came home today and here I am. The moment I had my dinner, I got online. Thank god I could. I don't know what I would have done if I couldn't. I think it is the area. Lee Na's place is in Kepong. Maybe there aren't enough cables or lines or something. Nevertheless, it is not an excuse to be that horrible in delivering their services to paying customers.

I have my Halloween costume... tra la la la

I traded a week of chores and milk bottles for a costume. Hee hee... nah it is not as bad as that sound. I went over to help Lee Na with the kids while she sewed me my halloween costume. It wasn't as easy as I thought it would be. It was quite a chanllenge, technically, coz Lee Na has to think about how to shape it, sew it, then the finishing touches. Lots of sewing technicallity. I never knew. I think my sister is a genius, and I'm glad she loves me enough to do this for me. Thank you very much sis.

The kids, as usual, were rambunctious. Had a good time as I got to spend time with them. Had to send Daniel to the corner at least twice a day as he was very naughty. He doesn't listen and when you scold him, he roll his eyes, pouts - basically ignores you. So the only effective punishment was to send him to the corner for 20 mins. He has developed this fake sweet smile whenever he wants something, doesn't work on me and now he hates me. *sigh* I think that little boy is spoiled. He loves my mom of course as she coddles him, and he basically gets away with a lot of things with her. Me, I call him on the spot.

The last straw that will break this horse's back

It is 4.30pm in the afternoon and I've yet to catch a wink of sleep since yesterday. Finally decided to blog and maybe it might purge my mind enough to let me sleep. *sigh* This is going from bad to worse. My body is so tired that my fingertips are vibrating everytime a current of air sweeps my way, but my mind persists on staying awake and active. Even my skin is suffering. I feel as though everything is breaking down slowly, bit by bit and I'm helpless to put a muffler on my whirring brain. I am thinking too much. I no longer just read, I think. I really think I'm on the verge of falling into a clinical condition - insomnia. I think it is safe to say that my condition is fast becoming chronic if it isn't already because I have been loosing sleep for the past two weeks. I feel as though that my time is running out. I am still jobless. I've been considering shelving my writing and just settle for a sales job which I've been dreading since forever. *sigh* I'm so tired.

Also in my frenzied imaginings, I came up with a horrible thought. What if I become like my sister who sees *shudder* other worldly people? What if my not getting enough sleep will trigger my 'third eye'? I really, really do not want this to happen. Of course when I was thinking this, I was already all alone at home with everybody gone off to work. I managed to worked myself into such a scare that every creak or thump had my heart racing. In my weak-minded state I started imagining figures (old hunchback women with leathery skin) outside my window looking in, waving to me, calling me walking though the wall towards me. I see shadows in every corner, even under the bed and worse, in bed with me. I really scared myself silly a few hours ago, so much so that going to sleep was impossible.

I. Am. Going. Out. Of. My. Mind.

Custom-made costume

My sister Lee Na is going to sew my halloween costume! I can't reveal what it is just yet; I will after the party. I did have another costume in mind but my sis talked me out of it and offered to make me a new costume. My previous idea was to wear a cow costume, a halo, and wings and that would make me a Holy Cow! But then my cow pjs are flannel so it's going to be very, very hot if I do wear it outside an air-conditioned room, so that idea is scrapped.

Since it is halloween, I'll be going as something green and old. Hee hee... you'll never guess, and for those of you who already knows my secret, hush. My sister wanted to sew me a witch's costume but I refused - that is sooo unoriginal. I don't want to be those girls that take up any chance to dress up to max their assets in trying to hook one! Come on people, have a little imagination here. Of course I'm all indignant about it... coz I can't carry it off that why! =p =| =\ *boo hoo hoo*

But halloween is about fun and scarying the shit out of ourselves... so I'm gonna enjoy playing dress up no matter how horrible I look. After all it is Halloween. Muahahaha!

Halloween costume puzzle

What to wear, what to wear? I've been trying to decide what to wear to a halloween costume party for the past one week. So far I haven't found a solution that is applicable to my dilemma. Sigh. But I did find this site that gives great ideas. Do have a look if you have time. They've got a lot of funky ideas. I particularly like the Lightning Victim and the Jellybean Bag. I think I might go as a bag of jellybeans. It is easy enough to execute. Afterthat we can have fun with the rest of my costume. But then I'll be the only one leaving with a ruin costume. How deflating. ^_^

Taking carpe noctum too far

My sleeping schedule is soooo screwed up now! Everything is topsy-turvy! I'm sleeping at 7am these days and waking up at 3 or 4pm, when most of the day is gone! Trust me I do not think it that peachy either, okay? Sigh. I'm going to try not sleep for 24 hours and maybe by then I'll be so bone tired that I'll fall in bed at 10pm tomorrow night and everything will be right with the world again. If not, how on earth am I gonna be able to go for my daytime interviews? Maybe I should take Kim's suggestion and work night shifts instead since I'm proving to be more of a night owl than I initially thought.

I know why this is happening though. I'm enjoying my nightly sessions too far. What do I do? Well I read. All kinds of books that I can get my hands on. I don't care if it's a mag or a romance or a thriller or even plain old boring text books. I feel as though I do not have enough time to read everything. I feel like the day is not long enough; that we should have 30 hours a day or something. But of course that would kill us but that is just my nocturnal sentiments airing it's ugly purple head. Purple because it's not getting enough oxygen to keep itself a healthy pink. Eee-diot.

Vijay put in an interesting suggestion - drink warm milk with sugar! I've heard of and tried the warm milk remedy but the sugar part is new. Have you guys tried it with sugar? I have drank milk with sugar before and it taste like vanilla, but never for the purpose of a sleeping draught. I think the key factor is the warmth... but we are in a darn warm country so would it be effective? I think the warm milk remedy was concocted on cold lands and it probably did help people into Morpheues' arms, but then here? I'll try it tonight. I'll try anything to right my screwy sleep schedule.

Day or night

...makes no difference to me! It's 7.30 in the morning and I'm still awake! I can't sleep. I feel tired but I can't sleep. Arrrgghh! Sleep depravation is gonna make me very cranky in the next few hours when I go for my aerokick session. This is not happening! I need to sleep. Why can't you shut up in there?!

"Sinbad - bad sin" ~ Sinbad, the sailor ~

I hate the ending. I went to watch Sinbad today and I hate the ending. I cannot believe Sinbad got his friend's fiance. What the devil?! Is this how cartoon's are nowadays - mirroring our present day morals and principles? So Sinbad's the hero and she's the heroine but she's affianced to his childhood friend, the Prince, which I might add was a cool dude. He was a loyal friend, great personality, trustworthy, great swordsman and he loved her, and the stooopid woman had to go and fall in love with Sinbad. The kind Prince naturally told her to follow her heart and he let her go. He was nice. There was nothing wrong with him - he even put his life literally on the block for Sinbad. Also why couldn't they have created another heroine, a daring younger firebrand sister perhaps that was the one who stowed away, instead of that stooopid ambassador? It is sooo frustrating. I do not like to have my fairytale morality shattered - it is just too disconcerting. If that is the case, Ariel would have become flotsam, the Beast would have remained a beast, Pocahontas would have gone on to live in a colony and died of a broken heart and Nemo would not have been found at all!

So the end is that "Okay kids, it is alright to take your friend's beloved fiance as long as you both love each other. Follow your heart regardless of whatever may be, whatever should be!" I do not have a problem with the characters but the creators of this version of Sinbad. I do not like the ending, it's too real. That is not what cartoons are about. Cartoons are magical, and all the good guys goes home happy.

On the other hand, I love Eris, the Goddess of Discord. She is the most deliciously wicked character ever drawn. She is sexy, sinuous, way cool, and creative as a divine troublemaker, and surprisingly fair in the end. The havoc she created is worthy of her title. The taunts and threats were delivered with sexy drawls and animations. Kudos to Michelle Pfeiffer for doing a great job in the voice dept - think Cat Woman except this time she has the power of the world at her fingertips instead of a whip. Eris is one of the best villains ever in the history of cartoons. I love her. They should definitely bring her back if possible.

However, the heroine, Marina is unremarkable. Nothing to point out except she is fickle-minded. And the fact that Catherine Zeta Jones voiced her is unremarkable too. She was okay. Normal lah.

Overall the cartoon is actually quite good. But it is geared more towards young adults, with lines like:

Scenario: Their boat is trapped in ice and the weather is freezing.
Sinbad to his firstmate who is shirtless: Do put a shirt on before you poke someone's eye out.

That was funny. Lydia and I couldn't help it when we actually guffawed out loud. That, in a cartoon? *grin* The graphics were good and the lines even better. It is actually quite funny. Honestly, if the ending wasn't so crappy I would happily say that it was a great cartoon movie, instead it was a good movie to me. That last bit is the only thing holding me back from giving it a 10.