சந்தோஷமாக தீபாவளி '11.

Happy Deepavalli @ Ranjini's Place

Cambodia '07-'08

Found these pictures of my trip to Cambodia on 28 Dec '07 - 4 Jan '08. (and since I dont have anything to blog about, let me just post some pictures :P)

Below photo is taken at the roundabout in the capital of Cambodia, Phnom Penh. The thing in the middle of the roundabout is the independence monument of Cambodia.

We visited the Mekong River too. Cambodia is really a poor country. The people living at the Mekong River live in a small hut with no electricity and water supply. Some kids dont even have clothes to wear. They bathe, drink, wash their clothes using the water from the Mekong River. A lot of children are malnutrition (by looking at the lack/faded colour of hair at a very young age). Feel so sad to be there. :( According to the tour guide, the degree of corruption is very high in Cambodia. For example, to work as a tour guide in Angkor Wat, they need to forked out a few thousand USD$, just to earn USD$1/day!!! :(

The one-room huts. And I swear these are the better + cleaner looking ones already. :(

We also went to the famous Central Market for souvenirs shopping. It's true that we can get Polo Tees for the price of USD$5. Most of them have brands and it even goes to the details like the brand name printed on the buttons! o.O some says they are originally from the factory but being sneaked out by the workers. Hmmm.. They have alot of things too like handbags, watches, shoes, etc.

We bought mostly from this lady as gave us one of the lowest price we can get. :)

I remember going to a few more places like the Esplanade, we had steamboat, local food, western food in a high class restaurant. All the while using the local Tuk Tuk.

And yes, we managed to squeezed in 11 people in a Tuk Tuk excluding the driver. :P

Besides that, we also travelled via bus to Siem Riep for the most famous thing in Cambodia; the Angkor Wat.

I reached there and only to realised Angkor Wat is only one of the many ancient architecture. There are actually hundreds of monuments/buildings in that area.
There is a choice to visit for one/three/five days. We paid for 3 days pass.

All of carvings on the stones actually represents different era & meaning. Usually it follows the religion of the King who built the monument. One building might be Buddhist themed, the next might be Hindu themed. Some are mixtures of both. Each building serves a different purpose too. Eg worship, studying the religion, healing purpose, etc.

The weather was super hot on our first day visiting the monuments. Look at the picture above. We were baked under the sun! We looked for shade whenever we could. However the weather changed the next day and thereafter. It became cooling and in fact quite nice to walk around. Luckily!

Alot of trees there has been there for a long loooooooong time. They are huge! Look at the tree roots!

And I absolutely love the next photo. The tree grew on top of the building. Aint it lovely?

In fact, when they found the buidings, a lot of them were about to collapse. These tree roots are the one supporting them. Thus they could not cut the trees down without damaging the building or risked them collapsing. Aint it cool?

A tree on top of a building actually supports the building below? I FIND IT SUPER COOL! Look closely at the roof of the building.

HAHAHAHAHA below is a superly random photo which I like. Girl Power! ;)

Next is THE Angkor Wat.

Beautiful huh? :)

Angkor Wat is actually the largest temple among the rest, with the ruins encompass an area of approximately 104 square kilometers and took more than thirty years to build. It is one of the UNESCO World Heritage Site.

They have many beautiful carvings of the Hindu religion in nearly every inch of the building.

I remembered the tour guide mentioned that Angkor Wat is divided into a few levels. I think something to do with thehighest level representing nirvana. My bad if any of my facts are wrong. I have super bad memory. :S

Anyway this is the highest level of the Angkor Wat. It was closed for restoration work as the stone steps were too narrow to walk on and to make it worse, many stones have chipped off. It would be quite dangerous.

Random fact: People have died falling down while walking up/down the stairs *gasp*

Now they build steps over the original stone steps with bigger feet space and railings to hold on to reduce the accident rates.

The back of the Angkor Wat.

Finished the Angkor Wat building. Back to other stone buildings. :)

This is random, but I just like this pic. Seldom have picture of 3 sisters nowadays. :)

Oh, and I like the following picture. Like promoting some Indiana Jones/National Treasure movie. LOL

Tree and building again. But this time, the branches of the tree are poking out at all sides of the building. Make it look as though the building is the tree trunk.

Look closely at the next building. See the roof of the entrance are all crooked and about the collapse? Look at how the tree roots helped to support and prevent them from collapsing! Ah, the beauty of mother nature helping us! :)

The next building is very cute. Grass grow out from all over the building. Makes the building look hairy. lol

Next building is different again. Something about different stones used to build the building. Can see by its colour. Cannot remember the facts d.

We watched 3 sunsets from three different buildings during the three days. And it is usually packed with tourists like us taking photos of the moment.

Squint your eyes and see the number of people climbing up the stairs to watch the sunset.

The end of stone tour! :)

On one of the day, our tour guide also ta pau-ed some local food and took us to a waterfall place for picnic lunch. The place was quite ulu as I remember passing a very bumpy steep road to reach.

We had a pondok to ourselves. There's even a hammock in the pondok.

And I celebrated my 18th birthday in Cambodia too. The tour guide was supposed to just bring out the cake to my table for the surprise during dinner, but it turned out that he made the big buffet dinner restaurant played a birthday song over the speaker when the cake parades out from the kitchen, and the guests in the restaurant sang along. WOAH~~~~

Super embarrassed at that moment! LOL but well, at least it is memorable! <3

the numb story

Two days after I'm back from my Singapore Trip, I began to fall sick. As usual it starts with fever. And most of the time, when I have a fever, I will have nausea too. Which means I eat minimal food and vomit all of them out half an hour later. I'm pretty much attached to my bed 24/7. The fever+vomit lasted for two days.

Saturday morning, I woke up feeling much better. No longer feel nauseating, no more fever. Body still feel a little heaty though. But I even got the 'mood' to go out in the morning to purchase a new phone. I begin eating normally. The whole day was good. Until saturday night when my fever comes back. So I stuck 'cool fever' on my forehead, eat the two panadols and go straight to bed.

The whole day of Sunday, my fever was on and off. But at least no more nauseating! At least I can eat, which makes the whole day 10000x better! No need to lay down on my bed the whole day. Hehe

Monday arrived and I still have fever. I went to the clinic, as it seems like panadol is not working effectively. Maybe I need some antibiotic. Then the drama begins.

While waiting for my turn in the air-condition waiting room, I started to feel slightly numb. The type where we remained too long in the same position then the numbness comes. So the numbness was from my elbow to my fingertips, and also from my chest all the way up to my nose. When I mentioned it to the doctor, she says it might be due to coldness to bones. She gave me some medicine for my fever, antibiotic and vitamins.

Then on my way home, my fingers begin to feel 'more' numb. Slowly my fingers begin to 'freeze' and it was unable to move by their own. First it was only the fingers on the right hand. Half an hour later, fingers on both hands sorta 'freeze' and start having spasm (thiu kin in hokkien). As I'm still experiencing mild numbness from my chest to nose, I begin to ask my mum, 'what if it's stroke'. LOL

fingers curled up in a weird angle and i'm unable to move them without help!

So we decided to go to the hospital. We headed straight to emergency. The nurses begin to put a plastic on my face and asked me to breathe in it. The said slowly it will ease the numbness. They measure my fever too.

After a while, my spasm did ease slightly, and the numbness begin to go away. The doctor came and checked. Then she explains that this happens when our body is in anxiety, then we will breathe in more oxygen and releases more carbon dioxide. Thus she putting the plastic on and breathing in back our own carbon dioxide will slowly ease the numbness in our body.

But weird... my body is in anxiety. Up until today, I still cant think what makes it happen? LOL

The doctor recommends me to stay one night in the hospital to check my blood for dengue as I have been having fever for a number of days.

So, I go for my first hospitalization.

Not to forget, the first time my blood was withdrawn from my body for blood test.

The numbness only fully went away late at night.

What do I have to say for my first hospitalized experience? Well, it was super bored in the hospital. Time passes so s...l...o...w in there. Luckily I have my phone with me so I can go online and play some games with it. It's nice when people come and visit because at least time can pass at that time. I was also looking forward when the nurses come and give me medicines, measure my temperature, inject antibiotics for me. LOL

When the test results for my blood is out at night, the doctor says it's not dengue (*fiuf*), and not H1N1 (*double fiuf*). If my fever goes down tomorrow morning, then I can be discharged with medications.

I think my body listens intensely and since then, my temperature dropped and the next morning, I'm fever-free, numb-free and spasm-free! :D That's when flu and cough comes in.

So happy to be discharged and so happy to be at home!

Until 1 week later, the bill came.

RM1,261.96!! WHAT?!?!?!

ACCA Graduation

Graduation....again!

A lot of people has been asking, "havent you just came back from a graduation and now you're going for another graduation?"

Yes. The one I attended in August was for my Oxford Brookes Degree of BSc (Hons) in Applied Accounting graduation, and this time is for my ACCA. I get to wear the graduation robes and mortarboard twice! How cool is that? :P

The ACCA Graduation took place in One World Hotel, Kuala Lumpur. My parents and my Ah-Yee are down to KL with me. We left our hotel in Bukit Bintang area as early as 6.30am, which means we woke up as early as 5.30am to get prepared.

We reached One World Hotel at 7am. However, to our horror, the registration counter was not even properly set up yet (despite the schedule that they send us earlier says we can start collecting our graduation robes at 7am). The lady at the registration counter said, "please come back in half an hour's time to let us set up our counter". SWT! I just continue standing in front of counter (indirectly giving pressure for them to faster set up the counter lol). After about 10 minutes or so, I registered myself and took my graduation robes and mortarboard.

Then the next ques, how do I wear them? LOL the robes were different from the previous graduation I attended (furthermore, they actually helped each of the graduates to wear the graduation robes and mortarboard in my previous OBU graduation). So I stood in front of a mirror and tried to my best to visualize how my robes should look like (feeling slightly frustrated with their disorganized event which I've paid RM305!). I looked around trying to steal a glance on other graduates but none of them has worn their robes too. So I went back to the robes counter and asked for their help.

After all the hoo hah, finally i'm in my robes, ready for... photos! :)

yours truly

mummy and daddy

with liphoo, sookchen and kangleng

with liphoo, chekhwa, kangleng and melissa

group picture - Disted College

Group picture - EY

The graduates were being ushered to the ballroom for group pictures. Parents and guests would have to wait outside, thus I dont have the group picture.

After that parents and guests were invited into the ballroom when the ceremony begins. As the graduates are not seated according to alphabetical order, me and my friends managed to get the whole stretch to ourselves. Erm, actually 9 of us were seating on 7 chairs. Haha

Oh, and guests would have to pay RM150 per pax. My parents decided not to enter as it was quite pricey. So they hung out at the hotel lobby during the ceremony.

After the ceremony, I quickly went to the studio photo taking area to get my passport photo taken, as my photo will be out in The Star Newspaper on 27 October 2011. So please stay tuned! :)

After that we went for the refreshments. More to lunch as there were many food. After food, my family and I went back to the ballroom to take photos at the stage.

the stage

with Ah Yee

Then I returned my robes and got back my deposit and certificate of attendance. The end of my ACCA graduation! :)



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The Graduation Ceremony costs RM265, including :-
- Snack/Refreshment
- Certificate of attendance
- Rental of 1 set of Graduation Set (black robe, colourhood, mortarboard)

Optional package which I took :-
- Photo package A - RM40
* 1 set of 4R, 5R and 11R size photos receiving certificate in full with VIPs (1 pose only)