The seventh day

Keys to the Kingdom series by Garth Nix.
I finished Lord Sunday last night at 1.30 a.m.
;(

If I'm right, I started reading these books in Form 4.
At the moment, it's the very last fantasy book series that I was still hanging on too.
I kinda stopped starting on series fantasy when I finished school. No time.
And now I've finished it.
Hmm feels like the end of an age seriously. :/

The ending was incredible. I cried a little. Haha.
I saw some of it coming, but a lot of it was unexpected.
Reminds me a bit of the Pendragon ending, but unlike MacHale, Nix managed to tie it up without making me freaking confused. Sorry MacHale, I loved Pendragon but the ending was pure WTF.

Also? Amazing thing?
The final page got me shipping a ... brand new couple.
That in itself is a feat, ladies and gentlemen. Shipping on the last page!
Man I want to re-read the series now.

Bother

I've been reading 'A Spot of Bother' by Mark Haddon for the past week.
It has made me ridiculously depressed.
The past few days I've just been ... drifting. And feeling over-emotional. Overthinking things. Feeling strangely alone even though I'm surrounded by happy, smiling people cracking jokes and stuff.
I BLAME THIS BOOK.
:(
It's about this old man who starts to go crazy when he thinks that he's getting cancer. He starts to have depressing thoughts and every time I read it it makes me feel depressed and upset. And then his family life just seems to fall apart around him. Even more depressing. And he keeps crying about how he thinks he's going to die of cancer. And Mark Haddon is such a brilliant writer; he captures human emotion in words so well. You empathise with what the character is going through.

I feel so miserable.
I'm happy to note that I'm not suicidal after finishing the book.
I had to finish the book, couldn't just leave it.

I think I need to go cheer myself up now.

Don't panic

First post of 2010 ...
And here is my new daily planner. :)
The last time I had one was in Form 5. I figured since that college has butt-loads of activities going on and I'm consistently out of the house all the time it would help me organize things better.

I'm re-reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy at the moment.
The idea of having a book with 'Don't Panic' on the cover in big friendly letters was very tempting.

Got back from Penang on Friday. Will post pictures when Mira passes them to me.

The very last song I listened to in 2009 was 'Waiting For Tonight'. -_-
For the first one, I switched my iPod to shuffle and stuffed my ears before the karaoke singers could ruin the moment with another lame party song (my first song of 2009 was Burning Up by the Jonas Brothers. I was in the dewan makan at NS camp. I could do nothing but stand there helplessly as the song played over the speakers). So my first 2010 song was 'Mercy' by One Republic. Good enough. :)

Some of the stuff on the planner I cut out from old magazines.
The little animals and stuff I drew myself.
I printed out 'Don't Panic'.
'It's raining kit kats and hot dogs' I came up with a few weeks ago and I have the MSN chat log to prove it.
:| No yanking and claiming own credit.

Happy 2010 everyone.
Here's to interesting stuff to blog about in a year's time.

Bargain like whoa

I've been wanting to read this for AGES.
Since before SPM, in fact. The only thing that put me off was how it costs 60 freakin' bucks. I always try to budget myself to RM40 because dang it I don't like watching money fly away every time I visit a bookstore. :/ Anyways, went to Amcorp Mall a few days ago and saw it selling for RM14.

I KID YOU NOT.

Seriously, I think my brain shot itself with happiness and went on a roller coaster ride of joy.
I'm only halfway through the first chapter.
And I realise that I miss being a booknerd.

College has changed a lot in me.

It's both a good and bad thing I guess.

Layer me this

Baked kek lapis yesterday.

Two big things about making kek lapis:
1) Separating 30 eggs. :O
2) Building the cake layer by layer by layer.

Only the yolk will be used to make the cake. Only 5 egg whites are needed.
So the rest of the egg whites?
Well we'll be having a lot of yolk-less eggs for breakfast in the near future. :p

Separate the mix into two, one with rempah and one without.

First layer! This was around 11 or 12 in the afternoon.

FINALLY DONE.
7 hours later.
I spent the whole day in the kitchen with the laptop. Whee.
It rained in the evening so it wasn't so hot.
Sadly, I made the layers too thin so you can't really see the layer pattern. :( Still beating myself up about it. At least it tastes good. Hmmm.

Oh and as is tradition with every exam season:

Drawing yayyyy. :B
Sabriel (the girl) and Mogget (the cat) from the Abhorsen trilogy.
So. I've been re-reading the Abhorsen trilogy (best modern-ish fantasy book series ever forever in a bed of clover). I'd forgotten just how awesome it is. Sabriel (main character) is about the ONLY female main character in a fantasy series that I do not hate. She is cool. Very cool. The fact that Garth Nix is trying to make a movie out of this baby gives me happy tingly chills. If they do it properly it could be amazingly awesome. Like, zombie horror meets fantasy slash romance.

And Touchstone's actor better be pretty damn hot. Because I've built him to look like Hugh Dancy in my mind. Mmmph.

Starting line

Puasa tomorrow! Most likely.
So yesterday I bought passionfruit bubble tea.
My favourite bubble tea is from college ... I dunno, it's just nicer than other places I've tasted. So I won't be having that for a month. Haha. But I've fulfilled the craving so I'm satisfied.
Here's to an excellent Ramadhan month! :)

And here's some Pendragon fanart. Anybody who wants to read it but doesn't want to be spoiled ... well stop reading this post. I warned ya.

"I don't know why I did what I did, but it would have been wrong not to. I got out of the chair and lay on the bed next to Courtney. I got down on my side behind her and put my arm around her. She hugged my arm around her waist."
- Pendragon: Soldiers of Halla pg. 420

Bobby and Courtney.

This book is weird when it comes to shippering.
It's like MacHale couldn't decide which couple to put together so he settled with what's safe.
Which I don't really mind but still.
I was kinda hoping for Mark/Courtney. For a little while.

The end

I just finished the book.
I went offline a couple of hours ago ...
and I'm online again.
That is how hyped up I am.
It's like a freaking sugar high.
I've got nobody to rant to!!! ARGH.
That's why I'm spilling on this blog-space.
>:(

Slight spoilers.

Um.

It was epic. Believe me.
Saint Dane in the end? Awesome lah. He's my favourite villain ever. He's not some dinky dude you find in all the fantasy novels nowadays. He's got some serious badassery going on.
There was an epilogue.
Can I just say, after the whole Harry Potter fiasco and everything, I'm not a big fan of epilogues? I was reading this one and thinking OMG what the hell is this I DO NOT UNDERSTAND and then realised it was an epilogue. An epilogue that snaked back onto itself and became a paradox that is very weird and confused the hell outta me.
I'm still trying to grasp it.
The way it's written, it's like nothing in the books had ever happened ... but they did.
OMGWTFISH.
But. Awesome book series.
Ending is still confusing.
Hmmm.
*moment of thought*
I'm thinking that they all forgot ... and were given the chance to remember? And then live happily ever after in the book-universe version of Heaven.
I like that way of looking at it.
Sigh.
I love this series.

Hobey ho

I went to the MPH clearance sale and found THIS.
OMG.
It's sitting on my bed right now.
I've read the Author's notes.
The summary.
But I haven't read the actual story.
I've been waiting for this book for more than a year!
ARGHH so excited.
I haven't had a fangirl squee session in so long.
This is like a flashback of reading Deathly Hallows the first time.

I hope it's awesome.
*sets messenger status to Busy*

EDIT: I'm like, 150 pages in and all i have to say at the moment is I KNEW IT I KNEW IT. AWESOME PREDICTING SKILLS OF AWESOMENESS YESSS. *does happy-dance*
*goes back to reading*

EDIT2: 300 pages in! I guessed it again! BAHAHAH. AND HE'S ALIVE OMG YAY.
*back to reading again*

Wonderful world

My bedroom is cooling nowadays with the new blinds in place.
Just had breakfast, so my tummy's satisfied.
I'm working on a little DIY scene frame thingy which I will blog about when I've finished it.
Had a good day yesterday at Joe's dad's new restaurant.
Then later at Tropicana City Mall.
Had fun with you guys ... Fira, Joe, Jovenne, Carmen, Kent, John, Nick, Pinto ... and Joe's little bro Alif. Haha.
I'm in such a good mood.
Birds are singing outside.
And I can see little baby rambutans growing on the tree outside my window.
I'm reading Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett.
Listening to Speed of Sound by Coldplay.
Pebbles slept at my feet last night.

I turn to Peach's fishtank behind me and say, "Life is beautiful, isn't it Peach?"
He just stares back at me.
I'm smiling.
:)

Snakes in a bottle

Red stuff.
During MMH class. Really tried to pay attention, but ... meh.
So Fyra, Jov and I dug through our bags to pull out all our pink/red stuff.
Fun. :)

We watched The Great Debaters yesterday, it was OK.
The subtitles sucked. Didn't help that the movie's full of freaking bombastic-isms and I couldn't understand what they were saying ... the subtitles just made me more confused.

Anyhoo, went to Subang Parade today to buy ice-cream! It's the 31st so yeah.
Baskin Robbins, baby.
Yum.
Bought If You Could See Me Now by Cecelia Ahern. It was among the suggestions for our ECS project so I looked it up on Wiki and got interested. 20% discount since that MPH is having a book fair. Not bad. Hoping to finish reading it by Monday.
After that went to KLIA to see Atuk, Matuk and Acu before they left for India.

Best part about going to the airport?

CHOCOLATES.
Uh-huh.
We saw this box of five choc bars that cost 60 bucks.
It's like the freakish designer label of chocolate. Gah.

And this Mira and I found in the prohibited items case.
It's a SNAKE IN A BOTTLE.
I'm not too sure what it was ... a drink? Yeah.
That should have a very ... unique taste.
Hmm.

Eternity

First things first ...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY VANESSA! :D

Anyway, first day of second semester!
I think it went by OK.
During IIT, this guy came in and everyone fell silent. I remember thinking, so this is our new lecturer. Hahaha, it'd be so funny if he wasn't.
Guess what.
He wasn't!
It was kinda funny. Haha.
Turns out whoever our lecturer is supposed to be s/he was sick today so we had two hours to kill. I dunno how we're going to cope our Mondays from now on ... we only get one hour of break with four different classes from morning to evening. What a nightmare.

Suki brought his new car today, so a group of us (Azhar, Vanessa, Michelle, Fyra, Jovenne and I) went to check it out. We could see it from across the road outside the college building, it was so striking. Haha. And it was pretty far away, considered. Just ... really stood out. Azhar took it for a test ride with all of us piled up inside the car. It was scary.

Oh and a lot of people were sporting new hairdos.
Totally random sentence sitting in the middle here like this.

During ECS we talked about what we're going to do for our English drama project for this semester. I'm pretty excited about it. Right now we're supposed to look up books that we can adapt into a stage play. Ms. M is leaning towards To Kill A Mockingbird. I love that book, but I think it'll be a little too heavy to turn into a drama. I'm worried it might end up boring. :/

So we all went off to do some research on possible script ideas.
And I stumbled upon Tuck Everlasting.
I saw the last five minutes of the movie once when I was 12 on Disney Channel. After that I waited and waited for them to show it again but they never did. I wanted to buy the book it was based on, but for some strange reason ... I never did. And the book just faded away from my conscious mind.
I read the synopsis just now at college.
And ... I kinda fell in love with it.
It's got some Twilight elements in there with the whole immortal thing going on, minus vampires, bad writing, lame plot-twists and annoying female lead. I watched it just now on YouTube. Here's the first part of the movie:



My eyes got watery at the end. I am so pitching this idea on Thursday's class.

When I grow up I want to be

J.K. ROWLING
IS
MY HERO.

:D

She's the woman who wrote the books that made me a geek.
The books that got me into fantasy.
The books that weaned me off Enid Blyton.
The books that shaped what ... most of my pre-pubescent years.
When I was 11, I was actually depressed when I didn't receive an owl from Hogwarts.
Joining the world of fanfiction taught me how to write.
Joining the world of fanart taught me how to draw.
What can I say.
The movies are pure entertainment, etc. I watch because they're entertaining.
Inaccurate. But OK.
It's the books I care about.
Thanks J.K. Rowling. You da bomb!

AND

I'm in MALAYSIAN TODAY!
No, nothing to do with Raja Petra.
There's an 'N' behind the 'Malaysia' so yeah.
CLICK HERE

Hehe. My first ever interview! xD

The Word Shaker

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.
I just spent fifteen minutes crying my eyes out as I finished the last couple of chapters of this book.
Seriously.
I've never cried so hard over a book before. I mean, I squeezed out a tear for A Walk To Remember and my eyes get misty over many other books but I had tears pouring down my face with this one.

So yeah. Pretty obvious that this isn't a book you want to read if you're feeling a little suicidal.

The story is narrated by Death and tells the story of Liesel Meminger, who is sent to live with foster parents during the time of Nazi Germany. She has to adjust to her new environment. She learns how to read from her foster father Hans Hubermann and that is how Death comes to know of her srtoy; she wrote it all down. I don't want to give an in-depth summary because I guess it's better to read it yourself.

I think I'll re-read it to see if I can pick up anything I missed the first time around. But not right now, I think I should look for something ridiculously cheerful. Or at least not so tragic. Hmmm.

Making rainbows

I baked rainbow cupcakes today. :D

Got the idea last week while surfing on Deviantart. Someone had made a layered cake with all the colours of the rainbow and covered it in blue icing and fluffy white cloud shapes. So when you cut up the sky, you got a rainbow inside. It was gorgeous. So Mama and I attempted it this morning.

Our tools.

Step 1: Violet.

Step 2: Yellow. Hehe. Sri Aman colours.

Step 3: Orange.

Step 4: Blue.

Step 5: Pink. It was supposed to be red. But I put too little colouring.

Step 6: Green.

Last layer is normal cupcake-y colour.

Baking!

Success!

Every cupcake cup has a different rainbow pattern on it. So awesome.

How do you like your cupcake icing?
With chocolate sprinkles ...

Rainbow sprinkles ...

Or both? Hehe.

I'll be bringing what's left of the batch next week to college. I tried to rescue as many as I could, 'cause my siblings sort of ... didn't stop coming to the kitchen to grab a piece. Haha.

Ps. Went to MPH warehouse sale again. Geehee. Bought another 6 books. I found a 1980's Teen Titans graphic novel for only 20 bucks!! It was a steal! Haha.

Ps.2 Happy birthday to Li Jing and Nigel, my two NS pals. Have a rocking good time and welcome to the Legal Club! :D

Yay, presents!

I turned 18 yesterday. :)

I share my birthday from many famous people. Jessica Alba, Terry Pratchett, Harper Lee ... Saddam Hussein. Yup, famous people.

And Ee Won! Happy birthday dear! :D

So here's the photodump of stuff I got. And that's my new laptop, under all the stuff! Still haven't named it. It's awesome, got webcam and everything. I love it. xD

Bracelet from Hanna. :)

The necklace also from Hanna. Purse from Maktuk.

Swimming dog in the mouse Mira gave me. Haha.

Baby Phat watch from Mama (It's GORGEOUS.) and a 'newton's cradle' from Nazim. I love the cradle thing, I've always wanted one. Hee.

The day went by very normally. Went to MPH warehouse sale, bought 6 books. Started reading Soul Music by Terry Pratchett yesterday (I think it's awesome that I share a birthday with this guy. He's awesome.). Hilarious.

After that was supposed to go to Pyramid with ze Collegers, but then Mr. Zul (my driving teacher) called and said that my Wednesday class has to be cancelled, so he moved it to Tuesday. I said OK, since that I have to pass my QTI test this week if I'm going to get to take the JPJ exam in the second week of May. So yeah. I passed my hill, parking and turn test, but failed the road test. So I have to take it again, by this week. Grarr. Engine died twice. Felt like an idiot.

At night, ate at Cozy Corner with the rest of the fam. Then went to the DVD store and bought a copy of The Secret Life of Bees. I'm only halfway through my assignment, 'cause I couldn't remember any of the 'verbal and non-verbal messages' I'm supposed to note down. Also bought Aristocats, because I was feeling nostalgic. Asked for Beauty and the Beast, but they don't have it. Haha.

Ooh and today, I went to the college to see if the computers there could access Malaysiakini. Turns out they can't. But I did my ECS journal essays instead. Then met Hamizah for lunch. It's so good to see her. <3>

Mission accomplished, chap!

Went out with Nad, Hannah and Sophie yesterday. :D
Had teppanyaki for lunch, then basically lepak all over the place. I wanted to buy new clothes, but couldn't find anything really really nice, y'know? But had fun window-shopping anyway. Then Hannah said she would belanja us ice-cream, so to Baskin Robbins we went! Watched an episode of Wizards of Waverly Place on Hannah's iPod (I actually really enjoyed it. Haha. Cute story. I just wish they'd do away with the fake audience laughter, it kills a lot of the jokes.)

We also went to Borders, where Sophie met William Shakespeare.
...
Yeah, he's the same height as me. Uncanny!!

We told Hannah to get a facebook account.
Instead, she got a facelift.
"I'm BOOKFACE! :D"

We did a lot of bookshop-visiting. Hannah bought some Jonas Brothers biography thingy ... and Sophie won awards for Best Observation of Stubble on Celebrities. xD Nad bought The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I bought Lost For Words by Lorelei Mathias. Yeah, a romance. I wanted to find something written by a local writer, I don't care whether English or BM, but a story, y'know? But I couldn't find English fiction and the BM books ... um. Their synopsis scared me. As for Sophie ... she bought nail polish. Hehe.

Tried to catch her unawares. Candid shot. Y'know, weird facial expression, etc. But dang, Nad's too photogenic.
D:

Finished the day sitting in Coffee Bean. Ate some chicken pie and chicken puff for dinner. Felt good to go out with them. Been far too long. :) We thought of a movie, and Sophie wanted to karaoke, but ... I really enjoyed just lepaking with them.

Today I went for my driving ceramah. The classroom had little spray thingies to chase away the bad smell. Would have been nice if the perfume they used wasn't bad to begin with. Felt queasy the whole time I was there. D: But thank gosh, the speaker wasn't as boring as I expected. He was actually pretty funny. The youngest person in the class was 16, there to take his motorcycle license. The oldest was 34. I could tell which of the boys are fresh out of NS ... by their haircuts. Haha.

So, now I've got a book to study. Can go back anytime to take the computer test. :)