Category: life

Yahoo photos was closing and just recently transferred all the pictures to flickr. I was looking at some of the pictures that I have forgotten and remembered some of the memories that I had.

Like the time when my girlfriends and I went to Thailand. It was 2003 then. I had just settled down in my new job when we decided to head to thailand.

It was such an exciting time for me. We spent time walking to and comparing different agencies, scouring for a free and easy package. We spent about $350 per person for both the return flight tickets and the accomodations which seemed to be a reasonable price.

It was my first time taking an airplane. Hema let me have her window seat so that I could look outside and admire the scene. My heart felt like it was going to drop as the plane left the runway and tipped to the sky. I peered excitedly outside the window. Everything looked so small!

We arrived at the Krabi airport about 3 hours later. After clearing the customs, we headed to our bus and plonked our luggage in our beautiful villa and immediately explored the area.

We were walking about the sleepy town and chanced upon a beauty parlour. After hearing numerous accounts of how wonderful thai massage was, we couldnt wait to experience it for ourselves. We entered the small parlour and were greeted by three friendly thai girls. They were about our age and they started to chat with us friendlily and they led us to a covered room to change into a thin covering and proceeded to slather us with oil and gave us a good rub. It was a pretty good massage. It was so good that even Juli fell asleep through the massage.

There was no public transportation around the area. By pure chance, we noticed a scooter rental kiosk. Juli and I were game enough to try to ride one for travelling around. Prior to this, we had absolutely no experience in riding one. After about 10 minutes of demonstration, we were riding along merrily (albeit unsteadily)

It was awesome! We rode everwhere and I admired the rural scenery. On the first night we were there, we rode to a larger market and had our first taste of true thai food – it was significantly different from what we had back home. The ingredients seem to have a fuller and fresher taste to it and it was much much spicer. So much so that we were grateful for the sweet juice drink that accompanied our dinner.

The rest of the days were spent on doing fun things. We went kayaking and explored the beautiful sea and the mangrove swamps – it felt like we were in national geographic! Its such a tranquil and serene feeling going smoothly down the waters. There were some small monkeys who begged for the pineapple slices we had.

We visited temples and we explored monuments. I noticed a tiny woman who was sitting down outside and writing on some pieces of paper. As I approached her, she started to talk to me in Thai and handed me the piece of paper. I couldnt read it though. My knowledge of Thai was only limited to kap khun ka (thank you) and hong nam (toilet)

We rode elephants to traverse the jungle and observed the facinating landscape and vegetation in front of us. It wasnt all that comfortable riding an elephant as it swayed slowly back and forth. I felt like I was almost falling off.

We played around with jetskis. That was such an exhilarating experience, going at high speeds in the sea. Fun fun fun! The three of us took to it like ducks to water. It was awesome 😀

On the third day we headed to phuket which was more urbanised compared to krabi. The traffic was much heavier, thus we did not dare to rent a scooter this time. Our activities were less sporty here. Instead we spent time with spectator activities instead.

Like watching lady-boy shows where I was ashamed to see lady-boys who were much prettier than me. And watching a muay thai match as well as the ‘Phuket Fantasea‘ where the German lady whom we made friends with while riding the elephants recommended as a show that rivalled cirque du soleil.

On the last day, after spending all the pocket money that we had, we sat down contentely by the beach while waiting for the van to take us to the phuket international airport. It was a spectacular sunset view, one of my most memorable shot till today.

Pretty impressive for a decrepit 2.1mp camera 😀

O I’m missing beautiful Thailand already.

Sidenote :

Speaking of cameras, I’m completely obsessed about the Canon Ixus 860. Beautiful!

Wow, its already the 30th day of ramadan and we are already at the end of the fasting month! I can almost taste the ayam masak merah and ketupat already!

On this raya eve, I would like like to wish everyone Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri, maaf zahir batin! Forgiveness for our wrongdoings and words which are uttered accidentally 🙂

Related links

• What Hari Raya Aidilfitri is about
• Watch the petronas raya ad 2007
• How to make a ketupat (Like the one cartcart is holding)

Not in the raya mood yet? Come listen to this ultra classic raya song 🙂

[audio:http://rinaz.net/audio/raya.mp3]

Back in 2001, when doing a self examination, I discovered a rather large lump in my breast. Alarmed, I made the decision for a medical opinion to be sure of what it was rather than risking it to become something big. Nevertheless, I remember that the process was rather scary.

I was referred by the family clinic to visit the hospital, where I was given a biopsy. This procedure involved a huge syringe-like apparatus which is injected into my breast for a tissue sample to be pulled out. Boy did that hurt!

Some weeks later, I went for a radiology where the doctor smeared some sort of jelly on my breasts and used a scanning device to observe the lumps and take an ultrasound picture of it.

After a month later, the results arrived and I was relieved to hear from the doctor that the lumps were benign and was caused by fibrocystic changes.

I guess should not have worried too much as fibrocystic changes are a common trait among women. Many of my girlfriends has confided that they have similar issues too. Interestingly now, I don’t even feel these lumps that I felt back in 2001 which would mean that the lumps has shrunk on its own accord.

Still, with breast cancer being the most common cancer among women, with about 1,100 women diagnosed in Singapore a year. It’s good to practise prevention before something big happens.

October is breast cancer awareness month and I’m putting on my pink ribbon in rememberance of my little encounter.

Related Links

• Pink for October
• Breast Cancer Foundation – Singapore
• How to do breast Self Exam

Many of us would recognize this picture as a tortilla bread, ready to be topped with fillings and then rolled up.

Imagine my surprise when I found out that if you ordered a tortilla in Spain, you would get this egg dish instead.

This was one of the many interesting facts that we learnt about Spain.

Having subscribed to the lifeskills and lifestyle @ People’s Association newsletter, I saw a contest about a Latin American Culture Workshop and participated for the fun of it. I’ve forgotten all about it till I checked my email some weeks after and realised that I’ve won. I decided to take my mum along.

We reached Tanjong Pagar Community Center and we were introduced to a Antonio Codinach, a director and teacher for the Las Lilas Spanish & Portuguese Language and Cultural School.

As soon as Antonio started talking, I was immediately fascinated by his accent. I must be having the same fascination as how my family was when they met Cartcart for the first time.

Antonio started with an overview of the different regions of Spain and then talked about the interesting facts about it like :

• How the flamenco which is famous in Andalucia, had Islamic roots.

• And how the City of Arts in Valencia is shaped like an eye, which will actually open and close at intervals.

There were a number of people our group who have previously travelled to Spain and shared their experiences there. Mum chatted up to the lady sitting near her and she affirmed that Spain was indeed extremely beautiful but it could tend to be messy.

Antonio moved on towards the gastronomia popular spanish foods, such as the Paella, theTortilla and the Gazpacho. I have to admit that although I was fasting, my faith almost wavered while looking at the most appetizing sights!

Seeing how the food was prepared made me realise how similar Spanish food was with some of the food that I have encountered. The Arroz con Leche (rice with milk) for example, reminded me of an Indian dessert as well as a Malay Bubur Pulut hitam (Black Glutinous Rice pudding).

I could also see how the Tortilla definitely reminded me of the Italian frittata as both uses eggs as the main ingredient, fried and turned over. Many Spanish foods use olive oil, as Italian foods do too.

Later on towards the end of the workshop, we learnt some basic Spanish words.

It was interesting to note that the Spanish ‘ll’ sounds like an english y. So when we say me llamo, it is pronouced as ‘meh yammo’. As the Spanish language has its roots from Latin, I immediately picked the similarities to Italian, the language that I am currently learning like the genderisation of words and how similar certain words are to each other. For example, an egg is uovo in Italian, and huevo in Spanish.

Fascinating stuff.

Without us realising it, workshop came to an end. Mum and I thoroughly enjoyed the enriching session that we had about the food, the culture and the language. To be honest, before this, it never crossed my mind about visiting Spain. I wonder if we will be going to beautiful Espanol in the future.

Here is a clip from the workshop :

Related links

• The Las Lilas School of Cultural and Language learning
• Spanish tourism info

After collecting my scooter on monday, my brother and I stopped by Zamzam restaurant as we were near the vicinity. I think that Zamzam serves awesome murtabak and we decided to get a couple of packs home to break our fast with, with the family.

When we walked by the sidepath, I almost couldn’t believe my eyes. There were so many workers touting us to enter their restaurants. I felt as if I was in Newton Circus food center instead. And there were so many cars lining up to buy the murtabaks. There was so much traffic honking, and the staff shouting that it was almost chaotic.

I’ve never seen so much traffic in that area before, not even during the weekends! Since when did the area become a drive in?

It’s amazing how time flies by so quickly and now it’s already the first day of Ramadan!

Ramadan is a month where Muslims abstain from eating from dawn to dusk. Personally for me, I like this month as it heightens my mental clarity, and I can focus better without the distractions of the need to feed.

When I first started my full day fast at about 9 years old, it felt like such an achievement for me to do what the ‘big people’ were able to do.

Now that I’ve grown older, I’ve come to realise that this month isn’t only about our non consumption of food and beverage but a dedication on our spiritual, mental and physical selves.

With this, I wish everyone a beautiful month of Ramadan 🙂

A bunga telur is a decorative container for eggs meant to be given away as gifts to guests in a Malay wedding.

When mum brought home a huge box of bunga telur and an ornate copper display stand, I started to have my mini panic attacks. Cartcart and I haven’t even planned our wedding yet and already mum has been talking and advising me about our future wedding. It makes me wonder who was more excited – Me or her?

She’s been giving me advice like :

1. To set the date in the registrar of marriages at least 6 months in advance.
2. To have a double ceremony.
3. Drinking jamu to make me more fertile.

And the more she talked, the more I am in realisation that there are so much preparations to do! Not to mention the costs of the ceremony like, catering, invitations, dowry et al. And the more I think about it, the more I am starting to feel overwhelmed.

Why do weddings have to be so much work?