Hectic

Sometimes, at the end of the day, you'd get to sit around and just ponder at the many things you did that day. Sometimes, the day is so packed, you'd just go back home and collapse on your bed. Sometimes, you've got waaaaay too many things to think about, your mind is so active. You're so tired and yet sleep doesn't come.

For me, the past two weeks had been tough. Stage dressing was fun but at the end of the day, my body ached all over. When I woke up the next morning, I felt like an old lady. My whole body was stiff. Hmm..... sign of old age????

This weekend, in particular, my schedule was so full, I was hardly at home.

Friday night we had our Corporate Prayer meeting, focusing on the coming Christmas Musical.

Saturday, I worked from 9am - 6pm, Christmas Musical Committee meeting in church from 7pm - 10.45pm and after that, meeting for lights at my mum's place from 11pm - 2am!!! Yes, TWO in the morning. I don't believe that I've had a meeting that lasted until the wee hours of the morning. This must be a new record.

Sunday (which is today), we had church in the morning and 2 rounds of practices until 5pm. Thereafter, we went to my mum's place to continue on with our lights meeting until 11pm. Yeah, we've finally semi-finalised the light positions and colours. (We can't finalise the lights position and colours until everything is in place).

While going through one of the scenes, trying to determine when we shift the spot light from one place to another, we tried to recall exactly when does Pilate get into his position. Each had different answers. We know for a fact that there was a short scene when Pilate goes out to "wash his hands" as an indication that he takes no responsibility on the crucifixion of Jesus BUT we didn't see that scene taking place at all.

We called Cnythia, she said that it's before "Worthy of More". Not satisfied, we called Jenny, and she said that it's during the first line of "Worthy of More". Confused, we decided to ask one of the actors - my dad. He doesn't know. Then we ask my mum, who is in one of the crowd shouting "Crucify Him". Without hearing the full question, she said, "After the crucifixion". We burst out laughing and FC said that her Bible might be different than ours.

We decided to "play it by ear" next week.

Sigh!! So many things to do, so little time!

Christmas Musical 2008 - Dressing-up of Stage (3rd & 4th Day)

Well, what can I say? I've looked forward to this day for months - the 4th day allocated for dressing up the stage. It had been a very tiring 2 weeks for my team and I. We started off very fast and even on the 1st day itself, the stage looked almost completed.

Now, after 4 days of hard work, there are still lots to be done :( ... especially on the props side. As for the stage, I can say that I'm pretty happy with the results.

What I did mostly was to 'supervise' and see to it that the work was done correctly. I must say, it was really more tiring supervising than doing the actual work. Tables needed to be brought from one place to another, paint and brushes needed to be placed at different "stations", measurements needed to be done, etc, etc, etc.

Today, the curtains for the heavenly scene were put up. It's really very high up and we hired two people just to do that. While I made sure they placed the curtains on the correct panels, the others were busy painting at the education block.

I was so busy running from one end to another that I didn't have the time to eat my lunch. I did grab some goreng pisang, though. Yummy!!! Aunty Sally cooked Nasi Goreng Indonesia and mum (Tusi, actually) cooked mee hoon Siam and goreng pisang.

We were also helping Aunty Chris with her VBA decoration. We attempted to make a tree using chicken coop net and newspaper. Our base was not strong enough and the tree kept toppling over. Also, the starch didn't dry well as it was a pretty cloudy day today. There was so much frustration just keeping the tree still and pasting the branches and leaves onto it. We almost gave up when dad, as usual, saved the tree. He made a solid base using wood and slid the tree over it. It stood firm!

By that time, the leaves and branches had fallen off and we had to redo the tree. Because the tree was firm, we were able to paste the necessary onto it without much problems. (I used the word "we" very loosely because I didn't really help a lot due to my running back and forth)

We ended quite late today - about 5.30pm. We were all so tired. I felt aches and pains on every part of my body. All I wanted to do was to go home and sleep, but I didn't because I had to go into town to pick up my photo (to renew my driver's license), fetch Eunice back and fetch Tusi over.

As I am typing, my mind is working overtime (hmmm... maybe it's shutting down; I can't tell the difference). I still need to get a lot of things done for the props part. And gosh!!! I was supposed to email FC on the colours for lighting - I'm not even half done. I'm just so physically drained that it is affecting my mental state of health. I can't think anymore. Plus .... my bed is calling me ........ and my answer ... Here I am, take me!

iphone

About 15 days ago, I was at the church office enjoying the aircond when I saw someone "playing" with an ipod touch. Intrigued and curious, I looked over to see how it functioned. It was love at first sight!!! The sleekness of it just took my breath away. I was really impressed with it and all the functions that slim beauty could do.

Naturally I askd if there was a camera function to it and a negative reply almost broke my heart. What???!!!! No camera function?? I asked if there was another version of it with the camera feature. "Get an iphone", came the answer.

"iphone? But I don't need a phone", I exclaimed.

I found out that after the ipod touch, there's the iphone. Nothing in between.

I also found out that it's not available in Malaysia and if I were to get it from else where, I had to unlock it.

"Huh?" I was really blur. What do you mean by unlock??? What code?

I went back to do some research and found that the iphone is normally sold with a 2 year contract with a fixed mobile service provider, depending on the country you're in. All I was thinking was ..... I really want the phone, so why is Apple being so tough on people like me? Don't they want my business?

I made a few calls, talked to other people about it and found out that the unlocked iphone is only available in countries like Australia, Hong Kong, Italy, etc. AND that the price for one is double the price of the locked version. NOW I know why it's so difficult to get the unlocked version. You still can get an iphone, but you'd have to be willing to fork out extra cash.

I guess I can say now that apple does want my business. The very fact that I was willing to part with so much extra cash showed that Apple or someone else is making so much money out of this. Brilliant marketing strategy!!!!

I contacted Hazel in HK to get one for me. Her mum brought it back to Malaysian and I received it on Wednesday (Nov 19th) night. I was really so tired and didn't really fiddle much with it until Friday night.

It took me a long time to get the phone up and running. I thought that just by inserting the SIM card, I could make calls out. To my dismay, it was written that it was only for emergency calls only. Puzzled, I looked for the manual in the almost forgotten box. There were some instruction booklets but none on how to start using the iphone.

Frustrated, I went online to check it out. Then I chatted with my friend, Eric, and told him about the problems I encountered with the phone. After a few tries, he asked me to download and install itunes. .... which I did and it took me so long.

When I connected my laptop with the iphone, it started syncronising BUT there wasn't any indication that it was doing so. My phone still kept saying "For emergency calls only". This was so frustrating. I thought there was something wrong with it and wondered for the umpteenth time if money was wasted on this phone.

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Not knowing what to do, I played free cell on my laptop, read my emails and chatted a little.

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1am was fast approaching and I needed to hit the sack. Feeling really disappointed, I started to switch off my laptop when my iphone suddenly lit up saying "Synchronizing completed". To my delight, I was able to use the phone. I was so excited, I called Eric with my iphone to let him know the good news. :-)

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Thanks, Rajen, for getting this phone for me.

Tracting

The YCYC cell went tracting yesterday (Nov 21) and today (Nov 22).

The Stats

Date : Nov 21, 2008

Number of ppl : 11

Time : 5pm - 7pm

No. of leaflets given out : 650

Area(s) covered : Tmn Layang-layang

Date : Nov 22, 2008

Number of ppl : 10 (7 from YCYC, 1 from RKYC and 2 from MRYC)

Time : 5pm - 7pm

No. of leaflet given out : 600

Area(s) covered : Tmn Ujung, Tmn SEA, part of Tmn Layang-layang

On the 1st day, everyone met back at Esther's place where we had a little song session and prayed for the tracts that were given out. Other prayer requests were the SPM exams, good health, etc.

Then we went out to Rahang New Village to have dinner. Rajen left it up to Qing (the boy) and Dino to order the dishes. I think we over ordered because even as we were in the midst of eating, the food kept coming. I remember feeling quite stuffed and seeing more dishes being served. I thought that we would have to "ta pau" some of the food because only Qing (the boy) and Dino have bottomless stomachs.

I was indeed surprised that everything was wiped clean ... yeah... but both the boys. Gosh!! Such great eaters. Not sure if they could survive one week of famine!

On the 2nd day, which is today, We met at Esther's place, prayed and went out into the HOT, HOT sun. We talked to some people, got frightened by a dog which suddenly jumped out of the bushes, got barked at, etc, etc, etc. It was a good experience and the plus point is that everyone got an exercise out of it.

We went to A&W for dinner after that.

Christmas Musical 2008 - Dressing Up of Stage (2nd Day)

Yesterday we dressed up the stage again. This time, we accomplished a lot - painting those missing parts, the door frame, the door, making more water goblets, painting the rock and making clouds. From past experience, I know that lining the edge of tier 3 with fibre is not an easy task. Last year, we took almost a day to complete it. I guess this time, we're smarter and didn't use glue to stick the fibre onto the netting. I remember last year, the glue didn't dry and some turned into fungus - yucky!!!

Mum cooked porridge and made egg and sardin sandwiches. JoelC, who said that he doesn't eat porridge, was one of the first ones who helped himself to the porridge. He knows that mum's porridge received church-wide popularity. Others, who earlier on had plans to go to MacDonalds, also ate the porridge.

But alas! Mum thought that I was bringing the styrofoam bowls and I thought that she was bringing them. So what we did was to use styrofoam cups but even as we were about to eat, YChan sauntered past us carrying 200 syrofoam bowls. We honestly thought that she knew about our eating difficulty and decided to whisk up some bowls for us. We called out to her asking for bowls but she was lost in her thoughts and didn't hear us.

Finally, we walked up to her and asked for the bowls. We discovered that she bought them for the coming VBA and she allowed us to "borrow" 13 bowls.. which must be returned before VBA starts.

Wow!! All I was thinking was ... we needed bowls and God provided them. It was like a miracle happening in front of our very own eyes!! Thank God!!!

There were a lot of rest time but we manage to finish with the stage dressing at 4pm. There was nothing much left to do except for the tomb scene as I needed FrankieY's help in doing the sliding door. FrankieY has been a GREAT help to me during the construction of the Stage. He said that he couldn't sleep for two whole weeks when the stage was under construction.

Now, as I look at the end results of Day 2 of the Stage Dressing, I am happy and glad that we have accomplished a lot in just 2 days. Thank God for youths who brighten the two days up by sharing jokes, teasing one another and behaving like normal youths, singing out of tune songs and helping out in many ways.

Degil

This morning, a man and a lady walked into the sales office. From their body language, my guess is that they are colleagues. One of my sales people needed my help and I walked to the sales area, only to find that the man was busy snapping pictures of the model houses with his handphone. I saw a camera slung over his right shoulder and suspected that my colleague had warned him to quit taking pictures.

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I was polite with him, first asking him not to take pictures. He pretended not to hear me. I reiterated my request. He paid no attention to me. I was getting quite annoyed with him. I repeated for the third time. Only then did he look at me and said, "I am not taking any pictures" while snapping some more pictures with his handphone. Gosh!!! Did he think that I was born yesterday??? I told him that I am not that stupid and I want him to put away his phone. I was pretty close to confiscating it from him.

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I think he's such a stubborn man who has no respect whatsoever. Maybe he's just plain stupid and didn't understand what I said.

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Personally, my opinion is that when you step into other people's territory, you need to "do as the Romans do".

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SOME people are just so degil!!!! Grrrr!!! I still can't believe he ignored my request. The nerve of him!!!!!!!!!!

Christmas Musical 2008 - Dressing-up of Stage (1st Day)

I was kinda dreading for this day to come. Why? Because it marks the begining of a very hectic month. Because it is the first day of Stage Dressing and up to yesterday, I wasn't sure of what needed to be done. Err... of course I had some ideas ... but me, being a very last minute kind of person, had to scramble to get all the paint, stapler (even though I already had 2 in my possession), etc this morning itself. I only roughly knew what paint I had left over from last year.

For a moment, my car looked like a "contractor's car" - so messy and full of painting stuff.

It was a good thing last Sunday, I had people helped me shift all the things out from the cabin to the education block. That saved us at least 1.5 hours of precious time.

Everyone pitched in to help ... even little Brian.

What we did first thing today was to sort out what we needed from the huge pile of paper mache.

To my horror, we only found one section of last year's painting. I tried searching for it again ... and was really disappointed with the outcome. I figured we had to make do with what we had and repaint one whole section of newly made paper mache.

After we stapled most parts and painted one part, Eunice came to us with the good news. Literally. She brought with her another section of last year's painting. I was indeed relieved!!!! You should hear my BIG sigh of relief.

I quickly asked J.Lin to take out the half-painted part and restaple with this painted one. Gosh! That really saved us 2-3 hours of painting.


Alas!! We still did not have enough of last year's painting to cover everything ... but I'm not too worried as it was only a small section. :)

Lunch time came and I asked them to feel free to eat the food cooked by my mum - Non-spicy mee hoon and yummy home-fried goreng pisang. I was just too lazy to go out to pack lunch for them, so I made arrangements for mum to cook.


Some ate ... but some went out to get food from A&W. Gosh!!! These are youths and I was really surprised that they had money to get food which cost 8 times more than what was provided!!! Nevertheless, they were kind enough to get extra root beer for some of us. For that, I was grateful because at that moment, I craved something "Sweet" and cold!!! Forget the fact that I am still coughing every now and then. Iced drink won hands down.

By about 3.45pm, I got everyone to help put things away neatly. We created a huge mess during the short time we were there and I didn't want to be in Y.Chan's blacklist.

I told them that they could only go back AFTER everything was neat and tidy. And so, they begun cleaning the place with a driven mission. They were tired, I guess and wanted to go back early.

We finished cleaning up by 4.30pm and by the time I left church, it was almost 5pm. And no, I didn't go back home and collapse. Eunice and I went to Ah Seng's place to have something light. More importantly, we needed a refreshing drink to quench our thirst.

Then we went out to look for baskets. That took quite a while because the "boss" wasn't in and we needed to ask if he could do us a favour and make some of the baskets looks as though it was half completed. His 10 minutes turned out to be 20 minutes ... and when he came back to the shop, there was a further long discussion with him.

We went to C.Leaf after that - not for dinner, but for a drink. Indeed, we were really dehydrated.

Well, our first day of dressing up the stage went well, ahead of schedule, I might add, thanks to the 17 people who sacrificed their time to come and be a part of my plan of having free labour. :)

Christmas Musical 2008 - Construction of Stage is Completed

The construction of the stage was completed (err... actually there are a few more loose ends that needed to be tied up) on Saturday (November 15th), much to the delight of Frankie, who's helping me with the supervision of the construction fo the stage. He said that he couldn't sleep for 2 weeks because he was worried about the stage.

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The stage definitely looks bigger than last year - and it is, too. P. Ben said that we are "reclaiming" more space from the congregation area. :)

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We used last year's painting backdrop of the cross scene. From the arrow, you can tell that there is one part which is not painted. This is a mystery that caused the 3 accidents to happen. Sharon, Eunice and I remembered saving all the 6 pieces of painted plywood and keeping them in the cabin.

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Last week, Frankie could only find 4 pieces. He searched the cabin twice. Once, when he was painstakingly leafing through the plywood, the whole stack fell on him. Because of the weight and size of the plywood, the fall was hard. :(

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A few days after that, I got Eunice to look for it, after all, she was also certain that we kept all the painted plywood. Guess what? The plywood fell on her, too. :(

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Yesterday, while taking out the props from the cabin, Sharon and I couldn't resist looking for it for one last time. I was holding on to one end of the very heavy pieces of plywood, when suddenly everything fell .... I heard a loud thud. The next thing I knew, I saw Sharon being tossed onto the ground and all the plywood was on her. I saw her covering her face and feared the worst. Sharon kept asking me if he skull was cracked but all I saw was the ugly bruise and the begining of a swell. She cheered up after I told her that she didn't need stitches. The knock was hard enough to cause her to be dizzy for an hour or so.

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In the end, the missing pieces could not be found and we had to resign ourselves to looking for the right colour to paint that small portion.

Above - one of the scenes from yesterday's practice.

New Cool Toy

Guess what? After days of "research", I finally decided to buy a new toy.

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My interest sparked when I saw someone having it (a slightly different gadget, though) 6 days ago. I did some research on it and found that I liked another model ... which happens to be much more expensive. That's NOT the bad news.

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What is worse is the fact that I can't get it in Malaysia because it's not sold here. To buy it "legally", I gotta pay more than double the original price. Gosh!!! Someone is sure making lots of money at the expense of "kiasu" people like me.

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..... will blog about it when I get it next week :)

Christmas Musical 2008 - Stage Under Construction

The Construction of the Stage begun on November 3rd and is scheduled to complete within two weeks. From previous experiences, by end of week 1, the 3rd tier (highest level) could not be used as the staircase would still be half-done.

That's why, I was rather surprised that within 4 days of construction, tier 3 can be used. I can only conclude that either the carpenter is much more efficient this time (he's actually a very good carpenter) OR Frankie did a good job in supervising. It could also be that this is the third time we're hiring him (carpenter) for a stage job and he knows what we want.

There were one or two things that needed to be corrected, though but other than that, I think the carpenter did a fabulous job.

We were able to practice with the choir up on tier 3, and the cast all over tier 1 & 2.

By next week, tier 1, extension of tier 2 and the "mezzanine" floor should be completed....

Return of the Cough

I stoppped coughing for about 1 week in October. Relieved at finally being able to do things which I couldn't while coughing, I started eating chilli and fried food, I went out to the "New" Lake Garden to exercise, I drank cold "air kelapa" (coconut water) ... etc, etc, etc.

On October 30th, while searching through one of my bags, I found a bottle of Redoxon Effervescent Vitamin C (I had stopped taking Vitamin C for about a week or so) and had the sudden urge to consume 1 tablet (1000mg).

I filled water into my mug, dropped in one tablet, waited for it to dissolve and drank.

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Big mistake!

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In the evening, my throat started to itch and by night time, I started coughing. Next morning, I woke up with discomfort in my chest and throat area.

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And I coughed ... and I coughed .... and I coughed!!!

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Now, a week later, I am still coughing :(

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I have learned my lesson, though. NO Vitamin C for me unless I am FULLY recovered.

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FYI, I have given the remaining tablets of the Vitamin C to my colleague, Mr Liew.

Stung

Many years ago, during cell meeting at my place, my niece, En, was stung by a bee when she stepped on one. She was about 5 or 6 years old at that time.

Esther and I rushed her to CMH. In the frenzied car ride, we tried to pacify a crying En by talking to her to take her mind off the pain. Even that, after every few minutes, she'd cry a little, saying that it was painful. We asked her to describe the pain and she said, "It's like someone taking a knife and cutting me with it".

Yesterday, for the first time in my life, I got stung by a bee. I was in the midst of drying the clothes, when I stepped on one almost dead bee, who still managed to sting me a little before leaving this earth.

Oooouuuucccchhhh!!!

I thought back about what En said. It's true!

It was painful!!! The whole sole of my left foot was in pain. And to think that En got a full-blown sting years ago and only cried a little! Bravo, little girl!