April Thus Far

I know, I know, for the 4398th time, I’ve successfully neglected this blog for quite a while. I’m a medical student, cut me some slack! #excuses . But yeah, I’ve had to prepare for some tests that drained me soo much, I ended up complaining to just about everyone that I’m so fatigued. I even spent a couple of days sleeping 6 hours at night and 3 hours during the day. No worries, I’m back to normal. Just a slightly terrible mental lag during that period.

So. To make up for the lack of boring (maybe?) posts, I think I’ll make this a photo entry, just to highlight some things that have happened this month, thus far. With accompanying explanations of the photos, of course. :) If your connection is terrible and the photos are taking too long to load, I sincerely apologize. Go get better WiFi somewhere!

We went for a picnic by Wawel Castle!

...where we saw a dragon breathe fire

We saw beautiful swans and little ducks out on the water

We ate chocolate Easter bunnies. And a lot of other things. Yum.

Some of us even climbed trees!

Of course, we rode bicycles around the castle.

And messed around with some of the sunglasses that were in our possession.

I got myself my beautiful baby!

Tadah! Mine, all mineee.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is my guitar. MINE. All of it. After going to about 6 or 7 different music stores all over town, walking under the searing sun with two different people on two different days, I finally went for it and bought that beautiful sunburst darling up there. It was supposed to be my birthday gift from my parents, but I decided to put off buying it until the Easter break. It cost me quite a bit, but I am sho happy! :D Loads of thanks to Charissa and Anushiya for accompanying me, and of course, le parents for coming up with the whole ‘guitar for my birthday idea’ :D  It definitely is the highlight of the month.

I saw fireworks!

It doesn’t make sense to have fireworks now, since I can’t think of any major celebration, but one week after Easter, I saw fireworks going off outside my window for at least 7-10 minutes. Apparently that’s when the Greco-Catholic Church celebrates Easter, but I still can’t be sure that that’s the reason for it.

An unexpected, but most welcome opportunity for me to practice shooting fireworks.

I baked!

Okay, so I’ve baked about 4 times since I came here. The first time, I baked peanut butter cookies, which IMO weren’t sweet enough, so naturally I didn’t make a big fuss about it. :P Then I baked a few more other things. I even baked sugar cookies for the aforementioned picnic, which some people said were better than something else that a friend bought from a bakery *bangga* Unfortunately, I was in a rush and so there were no photos of it. Also, I had people who flat out said that they were too sweet, so each to their own, I suppose.

But only two days ago, I baked again, and this time, even though I still got the “too sweet” remark from 2 people, I am thoroughly convinced that I nailed it. They were Frosted Chocolate Buttermilk Mini-Cupcakes, which did end up a little hard on the top because I accidentally threw in too much flour, but it was still good. It was also supposed to be some super healthy recipe (or just about as healthy as sweet things get), but I just put in all the standard ingredients without bothering about the calories. But then again, I’ve never really bothered about calories anyway, so bahahaha. I actually made them for my dad’s birthday (I know, he won’t get to eat them, but it’s the thought that counts) so I’m glad it turned out good.

Maybe it was just the proverbial ‘beginner’s luck’, but whatever floats my boat. :)

Frosted Chocolate Buttermilk Mini Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

I bought books!

No, I’m not talking about academic material. I actually bought fiction. Really glad about that too. I went to this lovely little place with so many English books and an adjoining cafe and bought myself the two books below.

A Wrinkle In Time  is actually geared towards the younger generation, but it has a sort of quality that sets it apart from other books. It discusses a few futuristic-ish issues, like a utopian society and travelling through space, and of course, as with all good books from its era, it has several underlying themes that I felt were worth pondering over. I haven’t finished the other book (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), but so far it’s pretty good too.

I welcomed Spring with my eyes and camera!

The flowers aren’t all out in full bloom in Krakow yet, but boy, are they beautiful. I can’t wait for them to blossom. I imagine they must be even more picture-perfect that way. No landscape photos because, 1. I can’t seem to find a place with good enough landscape yet; and 2. I’m kind of lousy at taking landscape shots. Not that I’m very good at taking other kinds of photos though, but below are a few of my favourite photos from this set.

A shot from the Krakow Main Square

I know this photo looks rather ordinary, but I like the trees against the contrasted blue and white sky.

And that was my April thus far! A fairly interesting month, if I might say so myself. There are only 4 days left to go till the end of the month, so I suppose it’s safe to say that it has been a good month.

Oh, and to all you India-bound people, congratulations again on your university placements. God has His own plan for you. Believe it. :)

You Lift Me Up

Today was one of those days when I find myself in unexpected, but pleasant conversations. I somehow found myself talking to a classmate of mine who also attends the same church as I do. We went to visit a friend in the hospital and on the way back, she suddenly asked me “So how’s your relationship with God going?”

Honestly, I was rather taken aback by that question. There are only so few people who’ve ever asked me that question, and even though I was very much aware that she was the kind of girl who had a whole lot of faith in God, I wasn’t expecting it. I ended up spending a few minutes just telling her how shaken I feel sometimes, being in a foreign land where people generally don’t care for God, and don’t believe in His existence. It’s also difficult because I’ve become so accustomed to Campus Revo and Christian Fellowship in KTT, that coming here and not having a support group was rather challenging. Throw in the fact that there are only two Christians in my batch and that I rarely have time even for myself, it’s so easy to just push God into a corner and box Him up, almost like a genie.

I felt so relieved when she just interjected and said, “Jing, don’t feel guilty if you skip reading your Bible for a day. Just don’t. Think about it, when you skip a meal, you feel hungry, right? That should be how it is with reading God’s Word. When you miss a day, you’ll hunger even more for it and when you pick up the Bible and read it, you will feel so refreshed.”

There is so much truth in that. It’s good to know that God is slowly but surely helping me to stay afoot and He knows how to send people to speak to me. Not giving up on reading His Word and talking to Him because He is sufficient in all ways.

Ask yourself today – no matter what your religion – ask yourself:

“How’s your relationship with God going?”

 

You lift me up when I am weak,

Your arms wrap around me,

Your love catches me, so I’m letting go.

Lift Me Up – The Afters (video link)

My 31-hour-long Birthday

I know this is kind of overdue, but my exams ended right before my birthday and I’ve been so drained the entire week. So yeah, I took some time to chill out (which also means I slept a LOT). Anyway, because you guys have been so awesome, I’ve decided to get off my lazy bum and do a short write up. =)

This isn’t my first birthday without The Twin, but it still felt weird. The 7-hour time difference between Malaysia and Poland made things even weirder because I started receiving wishes as early as 5pm. No, even earlier, if you count my dad wishing me on Facebook wayy ahead of everyone else. haha.

So sometime on the 9th, I started receiving birthday wishes for myself and for The Twin from Malaysia. It started with Facebook wall posts and messages, and then Whatsapp messages and then there was a phone call from Malaysia! Yee Jia, I know you read this, so thanks! Because everyone from Malaysia was already wishing me, I started asking my friend if I should wish my twin (I know, super weird right). She drew the conclusion that me freaking out over what to wish my twin was akin to someone talking to their crush. I told her twinships were more complicated than those. XD I’m pretty sure I’m right on that one.

Long story short, I called The Twin. Cost me all my credit! For the record, it costs RM4 per minute for a phone call from Malaysia to Poland and vice versa. More or less.

At around midnight, I was sitting in my room catching up on all the social media stuff I’d missed out on because of exams, when suddenly I heard the light switch click and the lights went off. I was so ready to yell “Who turned the lights off!” when my housemates – Zhi Qi and Wendy – came in with two slices of cakes with two candles on them and a cardboard card. One of the simplest surprises ever. I totally wasn’t expecting that. One was a cheesecake, the other a coconut cake. And then they hurriedly tried to explain why the card looked so drab – they rushed to make the card an hour before midnight because they didn’t have time to do it before that. And they ran out of glue to stick photos on the card, and I was the only one in the apartment with glue! So they stuck them on with sticky tape. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Frankly, I thought that the card was very nice. =)

My former roomie from college, Xi Xing, also gave me a letter, complete with a Hello Kitty sticker (I’m no fan of the mouth-less Kitty, but she likes it so very much). I liked that too. But then again, I just like words. The letter and what it said sort of reminded me of why being all smiley all the time is a good thing, and a blessing, even. It reminded me why I’ve got to keep caring and loving the people around me, and the people far from me. It showed me that even little things like listening and empathizing can make a difference to someone else.

So moving on. I woke up the next morning to more text messages, phone calls, tweets, Facebook messages and wall posts. Most of them were really nice, and very heartfelt. I appreciate things like that, that seem so sincere. And my mum had to text me to say that they were having lunch with The Twin. T.T

But then my housemates insisted on cooking me lunch! They cooked bak kut teh, steamed egg and broccoli! Okay, broccoli isn’t that awesome, but steamed egg! I’ve definitely missed that! Bak kut teh too! Zhi Qi remembered that I mentioned some time ago that I missed having steamed egg back home, and so she tried her best to make a nice one for me. Fantastic. =D

Later that night, I went out with 4 other friends to the cinema. We were supposed to watch John Carter (in 3D!) but we got the wrong time, and so we had to change movies. Ended up watching The Vow, which is a romantic movie. I’ve never been one for watching that genre in cinemas, but I had a good time. We were stifling laughter throughout the movie for all the oddest reasons, and I’m pretty sure we ruined the other couples’ dates. I’m definitely the worse person to bring to a romantic movie. Ever. I say the lamest things at the oddest times (oh look! It’s winter again, which means that one year has passed. Now if this was set in Malaysia, they’d have to print the year onscreen because there’d be no seasons to see *whole row stifles laughter* ) .

Oh and I got more cakes when I went to the movie! A friend baked cheesecake for me, and he was so thoughtful about it. Another friend likes the crust more, so his cake had a thick layer of crunchy crust. Zhi Qi doesn’t enjoy cheese, so he cut out a teeny tiny piece for her just so that she’d still be able to eat it. And he cut me an extra large piece because I like cheesecakes so much. And I got to bring home another slice, all for myself. =D That brought the amount of cake I had to four delish slices.

Well, then I went home, thanked a few more people for their wishes and a good birthday, and then I checked Google Reader (which, btw, is a pretty neat way of following blogs and news portals. Which keeps me updated with what’s happening back home.) I literally grinned from ear to ear when I saw this. A blog post! About ME. Terharu giler. Thanks Corn! I miss you loads too! And I’m still waiting to meet your twin.

All in all, I had a pretty good first birthday in a foreign land. There weren’t any fireworks, but it’s still special. I guess it’s just so good to know that the people back home and the people here wurve me. Good to know I’m not making people hate me too much. haha.

But really. Thanks so much to my family and friends and acquaintances for all the effort and care. Thanks for all the cakes, food, phone calls, texts, Whatsapp messages, wall posts, Facebook messages, tweets, cards (this includes those I have yet to receive, hurry up postman!), letters, blog posts from literally 5 different countries. Just. Thank You. God bless and keep you in His own little ways. =)

Thank you! <3

Oh and if you haven’t already figured out. my birthday lasted 31 hours because I started counting from 0000hours 10 March, Malaysia time and ended at 0000hours 11 March, Poland time. =P

Kecinaan Tercabar

Another long overdue post.

I took a train from Krakow to Warsaw with 14 other Malaysians last Saturday to attend not one, but two Raya open houses! Open houses equals food, and I lurve food. I like seeing my friends in Warsaw too, but hey, good Malaysian food two days in a row? Absolutely fantabulous.

We did take some time off to go sightseeing in Warsaw. They have an Old Town which doesn’t look old. The reason? Feel free to read on your own here. It’s a very short article, so no excuses for not reading it, unless you already know the history of Warsaw’s Old Town.

I’ll let the pictures do the talking now (more pictures on Facebook). And yes, I’ll explain the cabaran my kecinaan faced when the right photo appears. I have several recordings that I thought of editing and uploading, but I’m far too lazy to do that. We’ll see if the hardworking bug kicks bites any time soon.

My compartment buddies for the ride there.

The view from the train on the way to Warsaw.

Touch-down in Warsaw!

The first open house we attended. Oh, Nasi Lemak!

All the Malaysians from my batch who made it to Poland.

The Palace of Culture and Science. A gift from the Soviet Union to Poland. It was quite a sight in the midst of all the modern high-rise buildings. Read more about it here.

FREE HUGS! No, I didn’t get one.

Warsaw Old Town

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the stadium for the upcoming Euro Cup!

This dog’s owner walked into the shop to get something and the dog faithfully waited outside till its master came out. Then it obediently trotted along behind its master.

See the angmoh fella in that blue windbreaker? See the excited face of my friend at the side of the photo? That’s because the angmoh. Speaks. Mandarin. Fluently. He could hold a proper conversation in Mandarin, albeit with a funny accent. Very frankly, it made me feel less of a Chinese than I am. Hence, my kecinaan was challenged.

Second Open House at the Ambassador of Malaysia’s official residence

The very delish satay style chicken. Yum.

All in all I had a good time. I’ll probably be visiting Warsaw several times during my time here in Poland, so then maybe I’ll get bored of it.

Warsaw’s a nice place, definitely more modern than Krakow in terms of architecture and infrastructure. Not that I’m complaining. I like Krakow more because I didn’t come this far to live in a place which looks too much like a small developing town in Malaysia, albeit with blonde haired people and a difficult foreign language. On the upside, the people in Warsaw speak more English than the Krakowians, which would definitely make life a lot easier for non-native Polish speakers like Yours Truly.

Anywho, I’d still choose Krakow over Warsaw.

Frisked

I know this is a long overdue post, but I’ve finally gotten around to writing it. I’m here! After all the preparations and meet-ups and everything else, I am here in the B-E-A-Youuuuu-tiful city of Krakow, Poland!

So. I was at Kuala Lumpur International Airport at around 4.30pm on the 28th of August, 2011. Dallied around a bit before checking in my luggage at 5.30pm. Remember how I said that my luggage limit was 20kg for check-in luggage and 5kg for hand luggage? Well, my check-in luggage eventually amounted to 24.5kg, hand luggage more than 10kg. Thank goodness they allowed us to bring a maximum of 25kg for check-in luggage, and they did not weigh my hand luggage. So guys, when you fly, just bring 25kg with you. XD

Between the time I arrived at KLIA and the time I boarded the plane, I received so many text messages, and as i later discovered, tweets, too. I can’t list all of you, but you know who you are, so thank you very much. Many thanks to Rachel, Lynton, Joan, Anna, Yee Jia and Bibiana for calling me. And how could I possibly leave out the people who came to send me off (apart from my parents) – Joshua, Deborah and I-Vonne. And most of all to my family who stayed till late at night just to see me off, and then drove back to BP in the wee hours. Thanks everyone. =)

We took a MAS flight from Malaysia to Frankfurt Germany. The flight lasted about 12 hours with the aeroplane reaching about 31000 feet. And as expected, I had to deal with a terrible bout of motion sickness. Aeroplanes have never been kind to me, but I’ve never had to rush to the bathroom just to vomit 3 times on a single flight before, probably because I’ve never had to take such a long flight. After we reached Frankfurt at around 6am (Central Europe time), we got our boarding pass printed by using the machines you see on the right.

We then proceeded to go through a rather stringent check by the custom officers. We had to remove our blazers and place them in little bins, take out everything in our pockets, take out our electronic gadgets from our bags and then put them through the scanner. As I walked pass the body scanner, I think my necklace set off the alarm and I had to wait for my turn to be frisked. No kidding. These people are serious. As the metal detector thingy went pass my neck it beeped like mad. I guess the officer was pleased with that (maybe because it proved that I didn’t have anything on me that wasn’t allowed in) so she just scanned a bit more and let me pass. Some other people even had to remove their shoes to be checked.

After that we rushed to the boarding area and got on a smaller flight to Krakow, Poland. I still wasn’t feeling too good from the previous motion sickness, so I didn’t eat anything at all on the second flight. The effects of motion sickness then plagued me for a little more than a day, leaving me feeling slightly sick and dizzy at times. I guess you can only puke so many times before your body goes haywire.

Despite all that, we arrived safely in Poland with our luggage intact. We were greeted by our seniors, Ming Lee, Charissa and Piravin, and two school office clerks, or something like that. They assisted us throughout our check-in at a student’s dorm, called OLIMP and took us around to introduce us to beautiful Krakow. It involved a LOT of walking, and I hope I’ll get used to all that walking soon, because the soles of my feet are begging to ride in a car instead of walking from one bus/tram stop to another.

For photos of the dorm, please visit this link. My room looks exactly like that. It’s small but nice. I’m hoping to find my own place by this week’s end, so just pray that everything works out fine.

So far I’ve seen several parts of Poland, and they are all beautiful. Absolutely love this place, but for some reason, no matter how breath-taking it is, I can’t seem to feel like I properly belong here. Maybe it’s because the people here look so different, or maybe it’s the superb climate, but I guess Malaysia’s still home. =)

EDIT: The link isn’t working. Methinks the webpage might be removed already. Too bad then, but it looks really comfy.

Pre-departure #4

So this is it.

This is goodbye, what I hope to only be an au revoir.

I know I’ll be back in Malaysia before I know it (or so everyone else says), but I can’t seem to get it out of my system. By ‘it’, I mean this ball of nerves coiled up somewhere inside of me just waiting to explode like a tightly wound spring, full of elastic potential energy. Okay, that was my inner nerd speaking.

But you get the point.

I’m not nervous, neither am I excited. I’m just not sure I want to leave although I know I have to. By now, I believe that if suddenly I was given one more month here, it’d never suffice. I’m guessing this has something to do with how we all experience a slight bout of trepidation at the sight of the unknown, which is in this case, a few thousand miles away from what I am so used to.

And from the people I love.

I cannot see myself being so far away from my family. Sure, they get on my nerves sometimes (don’t you dare say tsktsk, at some point you’ve probably felt that way too), but at the end of the day, they are most definitely the ones who will bend all the way back to be there for me, come hell or high tide. I’ve caught myself wishing that there are things about them that they’d change, but then again, no one’s perfect, and for them to love me the way they do, I really shouldn’t ask for more. One of these days, I’ll try to make them really see what I mean when I say I love them. I see a future filled with homesick moments. O the horror.

And of course, when I talk about the people I love, I simply have to include my friends. True, I do reserve more affections for some friends, but then again, you definitely do that, too. The way I see it, it’s not a matter of being pilih kasih or anything. It’s simply a matter of knowing who is closer to you and who isn’t. Some friends you connect with on a higher level, while others you get along just fine with.

Either ways, if I consider you a friend, I do love you. I understand that in this time and era the word ‘love’ gets thrown around a lot, along with the words ‘hate’ and ‘miss’. It makes me furious to see that happen, but the least I can do is make sure that when I use them, I mean every letter in those words. So now you know that I do love you, and I will miss you. I most likely already miss you, anyway. That’s how much you mean to me, even though everyone knows how fickle friendship can be.

Which brings me to my next point (cewah, like writing essay). Thank you very, very much. I appreciate all your effort, time, energy, money, resources, IQ, EQ, everything lah.

‘You’ in the sentence above refers to:

1. The people who nagged me while I was packing to make sure I don’t leave anything important behind.
2. The people who took me out to makan.
3. The people who spent money on me (mostly my parents).
4. The people who bought me gifts and wrote me letters or tiny notes.
5. The people who took photos with me, especially a certain Evonne who apparently hates being in front of the camera.
6. The people who rushed home from wherever they were just to have a few hours with me.
7. The people who made an effort to see me at least once, just to say ‘bye’.
8. The people who gave me advice on how to pack and manage my things into a little over 20kg.
9. The people who put up with my increasingly transient emotions and idiosyncrasies. Especially when I become all emo and irrational.
10. The people who have done anything at all for me, like that random text message or wall post about how I absolutely must be happy. Or whatever else you did.

I guess what I’m trying to say is it’s not exactly easy for me to drop so many things and get on that flight, but I’ll do it and I’ll be positive about it and I’ll try to enjoy it and make everyone back home proud of me. =D If all else fails, I’ll just be me.

Oh and please, please, do remember to buzz me every now and then, alright? Like I said in my first ever blog post, I’m not very good at keeping in touch, so try to play your part too. Please? =)

Before I fall asleep on my bed back home for what would most likely be the last time in a year, I’d like to draw your attention to the video below. Several days ago, I posted one here which was basically a call by this Malaysian on YouTube who was asking people to submit response videos. Below is the compilation video he made using those response videos. It’s sort of a Merdeka thing.

And then Evonne asked me to watch another video which was made for the upcoming Hari Raya Aidilfitri, but I felt that it was relevant regardless of the time of year, so here it is.

Miss me loads, yar. =)