AHH!

 

 

Just received unbelievable news about the the story’s latest progress from my dear (ex) housemate who shares the same interest as I do in the main character of the show – Michael. sigh. *grin*

ArGH! I want to watch Season 3!

Oily hands

I think I might actually really like to cook. A lot. OK. Before we start jumping into conclusions, I still don’t know how to cook. I’ve just tried my hand on a few extremely simple dishes…but that’s it. So this is not some extraordinaire speaking about finding her passion for cooking. It’s been a very intriguing experience so far. Sort of like learning chemistry in a lab. A little bit of this and a little bit of that mixed into a large pot with some fire from our ‘Bunsen burner’ creates this delightful aroma and exquisitely delicious taste. Ideally, of course. Most of what I’ve done has some burnt smell in it.

One ingredient which I’ve become quite fond of is olive oil. The simple taste of it bursts out as the oil seeps through the meal in which it was prepared for. More than just its remarkable taste, its presence in our history has been more prominent than we noticed. You may look up some of its history here.

One could practically dash olive oil in practically anything (except Chinese dishes I think.. haven’t quite seen any recipes which lists olive oil as an ingredient!) from spaghetti to pastas to tuna dishes and even salad.

Now recently my family was given a bottle of special olive oil to try out – its difference? The addition of truffles. Nope, not the chocolate truffles I initially thought it was. The expensive fungi. Yup, those that you read in one of your childhood novels by authors who grew up in farms and you recall reading one of the children collecting truffles. That kind of truffles. Had my first try.. and I cannot even begin to describe the taste of it. It’s just… different. Weirdly different. But intriguing. Interesting. But very different from our usual kind of normal tastes we have immersed our palate with. You got to try it to understand what I mean.

My experience with cooking has been fun. Thank goodness of my tolerating family who would eat through what I’ve made! Thank goodness none of us had a reaction to the food eaten too! Hmm.. talking about food is actually quite fun too. I might just do that more often. We’ll see. I’ve got so much to say. So little time.. actually plenty of time.. but also lots of work.

Speaking of work. I got offered a job I didn’t need to sit for an interview for… or even apply for! Going to be helping out in a booth at a convention for software engineers next week. Here’s a better bit: I was asked to emcee the whole 2 days event! Oh my. My knees started to quiver as I heard the news over the phone. Yikes! ME? I mean, I don’t mind doing it.. but in front of hundreds of engineers who speak waaay better than I can and probably some press people and maybe a big shot or two. Argh! ME? I mean, I’m just a fresh grad who has-totally-forgotten-all-her-medical-knowledge-because-they-vanished-during-her-lazy-holiday. I know nothing about software engineering except the name Microsoft. Thank goodness for scripts! I wonder if engineers might be amused with one or two doctor jokes? *shrugs*

The woman I thought I could admire

I’ll never look at Oprah the same way again. I grew up watching her talk shows and always feeling so inspired by her generosity and care for those who need help whether by counseling or financial means. I loved watching the episodes where she’d give away gifts to her audience, or when she helps some poor village in Africa or when she helps obese people lose weight. Despite some negative remarks I’ve heard from various people about her power, I had brushed it all aside because I felt she was different. Sure, she was one of the richest people in America but she used her money to fund many charitable organizations. Sure, she was one of the most powerful women in America but she used her popularity to reach out to her viewers by imparting what I had thought good advice.

I’ll never look at Oprah the same away again after watching this video. My dad first told us about this at one of our home cell meetings 2 weeks ago…but I only managed to view it proper today. What an eye opener. Her thoughts and views upon life and death were so different from mine. She was imparting knowledge firmly based on the New Age Movement where the world revolves around me and that I am in control of my life. This is where Oprah and I part.

I’ll never look at Oprah the same away again.. and I hope you will too.

What has the world come to?

OK. Let’s put the plans on talking about my new ‘toy’ and all the plans of ranting and writing my life stories on hold for a little bit today. I just read on MSN of 8 American teens who will be tried and charged as adults for a horrific crime they committed. It’s shocking. Extremely disturbing acts.

These girls (YES! Girls! My eyes nearly popped out on reading that it’s girls) lured a school mate into a house and upon arrival, they hit her repeatedly (ok. I got to be careful of describing too much here). ANYWAY, they hit her really badly despite pleas of letting her go. Then they posted the video of the assault on YouTube, just because. Just because. Just for fame. Just for ‘popularity’. Oh my goodness. I could just gape and wonder what has our world become!?

Then I tried looking it up on YouTube after watching snippets of it on MSN.com. [*WARNING: It's a disgusting video. ONLY go if you think you can take it.] I tried looking up for more videos on YouTube and as I was watching somebody commenting on it… I saw this banner by the side of the video.
  
(Click on the picture for larger view)

“As long as THEY’RE TALKING ABOUT YOU,
you’re doing something RIGHT.”

OK. That is a bunch of nonsense right there in one sentence. I did not click on the advert to see where it would lead me…but here I was reading about girls who deliberately beat someone up to post up on YouTube to be popular, and then I read something like that, my heart just sank and I felt like puking. It seriously sickens me that these are the kinds of messages that are displayed on YouTube, no wonder, teenagers would commit crimes that are inhumane.

Sigh. This world needs Jesus. Period. 

Not done

I got me a new toy today. Can’t wait to tell you about it… but I left my laptop at church. Ugh. Hopefully I will have time to write tomorrow. Til then. Take care, everybody!

Finale song on "Idol Gives Back"

OH my! I couldn’t believe my ears at first when I was told that “Shout to the Lord” was sung as the closing song for a special episode of “American Idol”. I don’t think I have to elaborate too much on it. Watch the video. I had goosebumps seeing these Idol contesters belting out a worship song! Amazing.

Of course, they had to replace the name Jesus with Shepherd. But y’know what, even with it replaced, it doesn’t take a genius to know it’s a Christian church song.

What others had to say

Just thought that I should post up some of the responses I’ve received in relation to my previous post about being a pastor’s daughter and seemingly living in a constrained and limited shell to express my true views. The first I received in an email because the amount of what this friend had to say could not fit in the comment box… of course. The other was a comment in Live Space, which I thought, might as well transfer it here. Here they are.

Do not live the way others expected you to live, and do not write what people expected you to write. What is there to a blog if all you write is to please people and to paint a picture of a perfect world? By doing this you are no different than an advertising company. Be free to break all boundaries that confine you; don’t be kept under the shadows of your parents, occupation or religion. In your previous post you mentioned about crying. Are no other emotions equally important as well? Or is it a sin to feel dissatisfied, displeased or unjust? Sometimes it is better to let them out and have a different perspective from others. Allow others to give words of wisdom or encouragement you sometimes fail to see under all those emotions. It is okay to be blind, but let’s not be blind forever. If people are unhappy about what you have written in your blog, let them be. Most likely these people would be there for you during good times only as well. True friends will always be there no matter what you write. Be open to criticism and value them as you would to a praise or advice. This has nothing to do with you not caring of what you wrote; I’m sure you’re very careful in selection of words and minding the readers’ feeling when you write a post. But I see no obligation for you to feel positive and happy in each post you write. Pretense is not who you are, Lydia…

Do not project yourself in cases of misfortune, instead learn from them. Promise yourself that you would not drive long distance after on-call as it is not worth it. Get them to come over if possible. If not, 3G technology is there to help. I’m not that well verse with 3G but if you are really interested, I suggest you look it up. Driving skill not good? Practice then. Can’t do anything about the long hours, but you can entertain the other factors. Some sacrifices are needed at times. Your safety comes first.

If you are really serious about going to do your housemanship in Australia, I suggest to get in touch with the authorities there. Calls, e-mails or even make a trip there. I’ve read somewhere that the Aussies are rejecting Malaysians from entering their country but I’m not sure of the details. Do clarify with them regarding this matter. If you need any help from me, do let me know. I’ll try to get in touch from some of my friends there.

You mentioned that you were picking up some culinary skills, am I right? Why don’t you come out with some signature dish? Or be really good in one (or several) of them? You’ll definitely need them if you are going to be away from home.

Holy cow, I seemed to be blabbering a lot, haven’t I? My comments are to be taken with a grain of salt, if you intend to take them. My utmost apology if I offended you in any way.

Cheers,
*Friend

*Name has been changed to protect identity (by request of author)
For those who don’t know, I have been strongly considering getting a job in Australia. Because of the recent traumatic events, I haven’t quite been researching as much as I wanted to… and it appears like time is running out for me to scout for work there. Right now, it’s as if I’ve lost the want to do anything at all.

Yes, I’ve been trying my hand in learning to cook proper meals. *Friend, that was way back in the beginning of March. Of late, not at all. Lost the interest at the moment.

Here’s the second comment I’d like to post up. This is from a person whose identity I can’t seem to trace.

It’s funny to read that you mentioned that pastor’s kids should write happy stuff and that you wished that people won’t have pre-conceived notion about who you are. Well, first of all, who had ever declared that it is wrong  and ‘unbecoming’ to write about the dark side of your life? Honestly, i don’t know about how is it to be a pastor’s child,but i do believe that it won’t automatically made you a saint or anything perfect. It’s alright for you to be honest with yourself. The ‘imperfect’ lydia is what the readers is concerned and cared about. Remember, nobody is perfect, not even those who is a devout christian and definitely not a doctor,sigh… Anyway, excuse me but the way you described your situation is quite amusing.   God is our strength.

Both with rebuking content, both very honest responses, and to the both of you (if you’re reading this) I thank you from the bottom of my heart. In the midst of the true and open words I know you both bothered to write because you care for my well being. Both have given me the green light to express how I feel freely because I am no different even though I am a child of a church pastor. I am after all, a human with emotions… like you are.

Funny how the word ‘imperfect’ surfaced in the comment above, because I’d like to speak about it. “The imperfect Lydia”. As much as all of us are imperfect beings, yet so often at times, people only want perfect things, including me. I made a perfect list to find the perfect one. But the tables have been turned on me. I’m not “perfect” enough. Quite a difficult statement to believe, since I am a perfectionist myself (my (ex) housemate would totally agree to that!). Anyway, I shall not dwell on this too much for now. I have to be a little careful with what I say about this. Very personal. But who knows? I might reveal personal matters here soon. Til’ then, everybody, take care and stay safe.

Pleased to meet you, WordPress

Welcome to my humble home. I see you had not taken long in your journey to arrive here. Just a click away. It’s a simple place. Please… make yourself comfortable. I hope you will stay longer than you planned to and will return whenever you want. If you have not changed your bookmarks, RSS feeds and links to this new weblog address, perhaps I could advise you to do so now. You won’t receive any updates back there at Live Spaces anymore.

Yup. As you would have guessed, or rather been forewarned, that there’s nothing new or extravagant here at WordPress.com (which I didn’t realize was completely different from WordPress(.org)!). But then again, I’m only at the beginning stages of getting to know WordPress and becoming familiar with him. It has taken me awhile though… perhaps because of a lot of shortfalls which I did not realize I would meet from this blog service provider.

The biggest obstacle of the move at the start was figuring how to bring all my furniture, luggage and ‘memories’ from the old place to this new one. I couldn’t find an option of transferring all the past entries and I felt it would have been such a waste if I left all my thoughts from the past few years to die there at Live Spaces. All WordPress.com could do was transfer from the more famous sites such as Blogger. It was a miracle that I found a code written by a genius and the other part of the miracle was figuring how to work the code as it was written in a completely new programming language which I was unfamiliar with (Anybody ever heard of Python scripts?)! To those of you who are thinking of moving out of Live Spaces to WordPress, I highly recommend you try this out. The code may be found here. Here’s a screen snapshot of what I had to do. Yup. I had to work it from our good ol’ fashion Command Prompt. It’s amazing how I still remembered my computer language back from primary school.. with all the cd/ and dir and all of those little codes!

Now I had all of my past (good, bad and all that) brought here, it was time to decorate….until I found out that WordPress.com blocks out all Javascripts! Argh! Does anybody understand how crippling it is to make anything look good without Javascript or Flash? Apparently, by allowing these scripts, it creates a loophole for hackers to enter and mess up every site within WordPress.com. Oh well, I made a commitment to move here, I figured I was going to stick with it and come here anyway… with or without my beloved Javascript. Therefore as you can see, all the applications in the sidebar are extremely simple. Basic boring HTML image type of simple. Oh well. I guess the best security system for my blog will have to be my consolation.

And there you have it… my new home. I’m still working on beautifying it. Difficult though since I’m limited to only simple HTML…but I guess that will have to do. Moreover, you’re not here for all these fancy things, are you? You’re here for me… and I thank you for all that.

Can’t think of a good title

I haven’t been in the mood to write… well, actually I have, but so often at times I wished that I had made an anonymous blog instead so that I can write whatever I want about whatever I feel concerning so many personal issues instead of having it known that this is written by… a Christian, a doctor… a pastor’s daughter. Sometimes I just want to burst forth with all the frustrations without having to care less what image I’d give out! Then the senses start knocking in and the urge to write and rattle everything dies. Then I’m left with nothing to write. WELL, actually I do. A lot of things happened in the past few weeks that are worth writing about, yes, even some good things. But I couldn’t show that all is well by posting up good things. Things could have been better, that’s for sure. WAY better. A lot of ideas didn’t go through as planned. Sigh. But what can I do? I’m stuck in this crippling position and left to survive. See, don’t you just wished that you’re reading this without the pre-conceived idea that this was written by somebody who’s in church now? Shocking isn’t it? Pastor’s kids should write happy jolly goody stuff. Not about dark experiences, hurts and horridly saddening bits.

Right now. I don’t quite care.

Another piece of news to note. A houseman from Seremban Hospital died in a car accident. Post-call. Probably out of fatigue, fell asleep at the wheel, crashed behind a lorry transporting chickens. Died on the spot. That could well be me. Knowing my not-so-great driving skills, the inevitable post-call hours, the much needed drive back home… the possibility of that doctor being me is high, I’d think. Oh well…

Zero four zero four zero eight are significant numbers. Remember it.