Naeem's shameless advertising....

Ok, so I haven't been posting for quite a while, so sue me. Been busy with assignments, but unfortunately I'm not proud to admit I've been kind of wasting my time doing other 'useless' things like watching too much tv and more recently, playing games. I got kind of addicted to MSN games a few weeks ago when I challenged my friend Jenn to a game of Hexic on our messenger...then when I wanted to play Hexic without the hassle of having to challenge an MSN buddy, I stumbled onto www.zone.msn.com, where I discovered a whole new world of other fun games to get addicted to. My current fav is TextTwist, and a few other word games. And thanks to all these wonderful time-wasting distractions, I've been procrastinating on other things I should be doing, like say... assignments? It's so sad. I was always so proud of myself for not being so dependant on the idiot box and wasting time on games, and now I'm doing exactly that. I must make better use of my precious time!!!! *Naeem beats herself on the head and goes OUCH*
Anyway, the MSN games are NOT what I'm promoting here.... I'm here to promote an upcoming Youth event at my church in October, where yours truly is going to be putting on a play! I've just recently been asked to help write a script for the play, but I've been putting it off for the past week (coz' of you now what, and also assignments and was going out a lot last week...had worship practice, and then a friend's birthday to celebrate, and then some church people's birthdays to celebrate, and then a small high school reunion dinner. I was going out so much, I decided to skip out on cell group so my parents won't start nagging me about it. Sorry Kelvin! :P) Anyway, I just started on the script last night, and have written about four pages already. So far, it's looking pretty good and I'm sure it'll be quite hilarious, particularly since the guys at my church are all such great actors. I haven't written a script for a real play since I was in pre-U five years ago, so I'm pretty excited to be writing and directing this thing...and acting in it too! Hehe! Can't wait to see how it turns out in a couple of months. Oh yeah, anyone who wants to come and watch my play, you're all welcome, ESPECIALLY the NON-Christians, coz' the whole event is for all us young folks to bring our friends there and get to know each other. Also got FREE DINNER, so be kiasu a bit and come laaaaah..... :D My skit will be vely vely good...trust me! 100% Carol Ng guaranteed! Ok, maybe 85%. Haha, ok, enough advertising for me, time to get back to work!

After many moons, my Tioman pics! First part, anyway...

I distinctly remember that I promised to put up Tioman pics some time ago, so before I get up to my neck in assignments again, I might as well get to it! So here's a rundown of Carol's four day trip to Tioman during her semester break, with Kathryn and Su Li, some uni buddies. We left on Monday night, the 11th of August, spent five hours or so in the bus (asleep, of course) and reached the dock at about 5am or something, but the boat would only leave for the island at 7am, so we hung around the mamaks there for a while and got to know the local wildlife...

That's a moth on Kathryn's leg.


And another one on Su Li's head! A lot of these little buggers around.


The moths didn't seem to like me too much, but I met up with a friendly cat....


...which Su Li didn't like too much either, so she told it to scat.


After hanging out with feline friends too long, I emulated them by begging for treats


Finally, it was almost time to hop onto our speedboat to Tioman, and here's a pic of us three gals at the jetty.


A long boat ride later, and here we are again at the jetty of Salang, the northern part of Tioman Island.


Look at all the fishies saying hi to us!


First thing to do was of course, get ourselves a cozy little chalet for three!


...with very nice scenery to go with the chalets...


Just so you know, that's the name of where we stayed - the Puteri Salang Inn


Anyway, after our long journey that lasted so many hours, you would think we'd all be pooped and wanna rest for a while, right? WRONG! First thing we did after dumping our stuff was hoping onto a little speedboat and go for a day trip around the island...


...with a boat driver who gave us the ride of our lives (read: super bumpy!)


Our first stop was at a very nice beach...


...where we walked along, enjoyed the sights...


...and came across a nice lagoon-like area...




...which offered us some nice photo opportunities....




...as well as a chance to cool down before heading back to the boat for our next stop on the island.

Our next stop was at a very pretty waterfall, where we got a little bit wet...


A LOT wet...


...and a little bit nutty...


And also got to make friends with a friendly local Lepidopteran (a.k.a. butterfly. :D)






Next, it was back on the boat, where Kat got a nice hairdo


And I was getting ready for our first snorkel!


And here I am in action :D


Ok, so after the snorkelling at a few more places, we head back to Salang, get washed up, have our dinner and laze around on the beach for a while


And also happen to get our hair stuck together!


The next day, we were all so busy snorkelling around the whole day at the beach at Salang, I couldn't be bothered to take many pics that day. BUT we did buy an underwater camera, and here's an idea of what we saw in our underwater escapades. Believe me, the pics do no justice to the real things....



















Hmm...very interestig fish, this one! By the way, the fish in the pic before this....it was a BIG fish, probably more than a metre long. Was pretty cool swimming along that humungo sized fish!
Anywayz, all that snorkelling made us hungry, so we had our lunch and a little rest where we played a game of good ol' fashioned Batu Seremban!



...which attracted the local shopkeepers, who wanted to play with us too!


Fast forward to later that night, when we had our dinner...


...where Kat's dinner seemed to be looking at her...

Well now, me thinks I've had more than enough pictures for one post and I need to get round to doing some uni work, so I shall continue the rest of my pictorial journey some other time. Do knock me on the head if it takes me a long time to finish it off. :P

H.A.Z.E. - Hazardous Air iZ Everywhere!!!

What the HAZE means to the scientists:
Haze is a phenomenon or occurrence caused by the accumulation of fine particles in the air which are barely visible to naked eye. These particles may occur naturally or may be an outcome of human activities like open burning or smoky discharges from factories and exhaust of motor vehicles. When these particles accumulate in large quantities and suspend in the air, they can lock out sunlight and visibility will be greatly reduced.

What the HAZE means to Naeem:
"Don't these Indonesians have anything better to do??"
"Giant got sell oxygen mask or not?"
(From second-floor classroom at Monash University) "Wah liow weh, kenot even see Sunway Pyramid from here liow!"



The latest technology in H.A.Z.E. protection. Also serves double function as a fashion accessory. Retail price - usually very cheap, but recently prices have doubled due to a sudden rise in demand. So hurry, go get YOUR H.A.Z.E. protection device today!

A cool opportunity!

I got today what is probably the most exciting leaflet ever handed out to me by some kid standing around the cafeteria of the Monash-Sunway cafeteria. It was a leaflet promoting a work and travel program to the U.S. by an organization called CIEE in partnership with a Singaporean travel company. It's a program for full-time students only to go to the United States during the summer holidays (or winter holidays, in the U.S.!) from November to latest April, and travel around while doing some work in order to earn money to pay for the travel expenses, as well as to gain a cultural experience, make new friends, and all that other good stuff. Best thing is that we can list down what jobs we prefer, and CIEE will ask around for suitable placements while we're there. Asides from the usual boring jobs like waitering, clerk jobs, resort and hotel work and so on, there're also chances to work at theme parks (a certain Disneyworld pops to mind!) and national parks, which is what I'm really interested in. Would be good experience if I wanna get a job later on doing environmental stuff! :) And of course the best part is the travelling around and seeing the sites of the States and meeting people from around the world. I definitely definitely DEFINITELY wanna sign up for this and hope I can get into the program. I don't know if I'm eligible though coz' this is my last semester, and after this I might considered graduated and hence, not eligible since it's only for students. But I hope since I still AM a student, I'll be accepted. I SO want this! I told a bunch of my uni buddies about it too, and they're all just as pumped up about it as I am, so we could all end up flying off together to the States in a few months time if all goes well. For now, the organization is holding a seminar about this program this weekend, so I'm definitely going for that and see more of what it's all about. Yaaarrggh!!! I hope I get it I hope I get I hope I get it!!!!!

Do unto others...

You know, I've been in Monash Malaysia for 3 years (plus another one in Australia) and one thing I've found out here is that when a lecturer here isn't very good or has a weird quirck (and most of them are either one or the other), the students are very vocal about it. And I'm one of them. It's not uncommon for me to sit around with a bunch of my fellow Monashians and 'taruh' our lecturers on how draggy they are or how they talk like they're speaking Martian to us or how incomprehensible their notes are and so on. And one day last week, during a lecture by one of the most boring lecturers in the world who takes a record-breaking 15 minutes to explain one slide of his notes that is all about stuff we already know anyway, me and my classmates were all joking about keeping each other awake and sending sms-es to each other IN the class (wasting our credit, I know) and basically just not paying attention. And at one point, the lecturer took it upon himself to tell us not to think of him as draggy or complain about the class, coz' I suppose he knows that a lot of his students from previous classes complained about him in subject surveys. And at the time, I just kinda rolled my eyes and thought "Well, if you didn't give us a reason to complain about you, we wouldn't!".
But then later on, my conscience began nagging at me, and I realized that I and the other students were doing exactly to the lecturers what I didn't like being done to myself....people complaining about me. And it's easy to think people can be so mean and unforgiving when other people complain about ME, but when the tables are turned, it's just so easy to complain about other people. I guess it only makes sense... it's so much easier for people to pick on the negatives of a person instead of the positive aspects, and I'm no exception. While the Monash admin people were giving the students in one subject surveys for them to write their opinions about that subject and the lecturer (who is one of those lecturers who speak Martian), I checked out the comments of one of my friends, and the whole section on 'bad' comments was completely full....but he couldn't even come up with one good comment about the lecturer. And I was like, WOW, surely he could think of SOMETHING good about the lecturer. Coz' I know that the lecturer is a nice guy and he IS very knowledgable on what he teaches...plus he asks the students to let him know if they don't understand. It's just that he's not too good at explaining stuff....and the bad thing about Monash students (at least the Malaysian ones!) is that no one says anything if they don't understand, coz' we've been 'trained' since primary school to just sit down, shut up and listen. But like I said, it's easier to complain about others behind their backs instead of thinking of how we can talk to them and help them improve. Of course, I'd feel a bit funny going up to my lecturer and giving him advice on how to improve, but at least I could start to change myself by not being so generous with my negative comments like I used to. So yes, I've learned a good lesson in "Do unto others what you want other to do unto you". :P

The funniest bulletin I've seen on Friendster...

Disclaimer: I know I shouldn't be supporting this idiocrisy, but I can't help it.... couldn't stop laughing with this one!!!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Just type name of the song you're listening to, then write "in my pants" at the end. Copy and paste it to people with your own songs in your pants.

rupee - tempted to touch in my pants.. OMG!!

siakk`kathleen - 1, 2 step in my pants

kenny - pump it in my pants -HAHA!

jiexin - end of me in my pants.. huh wtf? lolz

fiONa - do something.. iin my pants.. wootz..

FITRINA- beverly hills in my pants??????heh?

Deborah = Love is only a feeling in my pants

Shihui.! - I Want You in my pants

dan - I Don't Wanna Be in my pants :D

nicol- all the small things in my pants

nicol- oops i did it again in my pants

gabby- I Can't Get No Satisfaction in my pants

prash-baby -when your gone in my pants

Navin-devil in me in my pants(aint soundinright)

Andy-she's no you in my pants

Benny-she will be loved in my pants wakakak

Hugoz-She's so high in my pants.. kekeke..

alex - the taste of ink in my pants..LOLZ..

bengsoon - mayonaise in my pants ...urgghh..

steve - Rum is for drinking not burning in my pants

Alex - Spongebob Squarepants in mypants

Cher Hong:- Toxic in my pants

cck- Get Low in my pants. lolz

-kevz- Hollaback Gal in my pants?

crystal - skater boi in my pants??

annie- 'Lonely no more' in my pants

NiRoShA -'Beautiful Soul' in my pants(???!!!)

pInGqInG - welcome to my life in my pants...(wat da??!!!)

cHiNgz - my goodies in my pants.

jing - KaRma In My PanTs

maymay - let me go in my pants . urm .

xPYihLing- we believe in my pants??!!hilarious!!

yi may- goodies in my pants... lol

esther - (crossfade) cold in my pants.. -.- lol..

-JaNeY sEaH- put ice in my pants ... lol.. "-.-"

~EdWiN~ - SHE BANGS in my pants !!! =p (rickymartin / william hung )=)

vRiLLaY(= everywhere in my pants? gee...!michelle branch... =)

wintersweets.....caught up in my pants...>.<...

Tiff > Fly in my pants..hahaha..

min hui a.k.a joan - the tide is high in my pants!!!!!lol!!!!

Aaron- lau shu ai da mi in my pants...a freaking mouse is making love in my pants

aLex_rEtArDeD - "we belong together" in my pants.. =P~...

[julz] alicia keys - rock with you in my pants..wow..S

haheera- 50 cent - P.I.M.P. in my pants

Liyana Fauzi - Janis Joplin - I'm leaving on a jet plane in my pants... huh?? 0.0

~* aLiSya *~ - Josh Groban - You Raise Me Up "in my pants".. h0lly m0lly!

Arif_G - BabyFace - How Come, How Long...in my pants?...:p

DecIll - Enigma - Metamorphosis in my pants

WolfGirl-BodyRockers- 'I like the way you move'..in my pants! (Ooooowwww yeaaaahhhh!!!)

kYm - Home Sweet Home in my pants (wooooow)

brian - Feels Just Like It Should in my pants(wahahah!) Jamiroquai

Nicksoo: Listen to your heart (in my pants!)...whatthe hell? - Roxette

RuS~ Norah Jones- COME AWAY WITH ME in my pants.*hint*hint* ahahahah... 0_o

Cher - Foo Fighters: 'Best of you' in my pants*hehhe*

trev - Green Day: Jesus of Suburbia "in my pants"

trev - Green Day: Give me Novocaine "in my pants"

BackKrys - Pick Up Sticks in my pants (hmmm...)

Suann - I'll be there for u in my pants..(watching Friends.. ahhahahahaa.. )

Yong - The All American Rejects - It ends tonight "in my pants"! (Wah lau weh!)

Carol - Centre of My Life in my pants (song is from Hillsong London....this is exTaremely wrong!!!)

Wacky testimony and nice uncles and aunties

I think I've played guitar on my church's worship team three times in the past month, and I'm not even officially on the worship team! Always replacing some missing guitarist I guess... not that I'm complaining, just commenting! I just played this morning and it was pretty fun coz' we had to play a bunch of pretty fast songs and I think my right arm was about to fall off after the third one from strumming at a rate of 1 million strums per minute or something like that. I guess it makes up for my lack of exercise during the past few weeks! It almost felt like being at a Hillsong conference during worship what with all the musicians blaring out music that sounds more like rock songs than Christian praise songs. Whoever has the notion being a Christian is boring would probably have a heart attack if they were at that service this morning. Kekeke! Anyway, after all the jumping up and down following by the more mellowed down worship time, we all sat down to listen to a super long testimony by a Chinese married couple. The wife was talking in Mandarin while the husband translated into English, so with the actual testimony taking up about the time of a normal sermon and the translation to boot, the whole thing took up probably double the time of a normal sermon. And yeah, I admit, I got kinda annoyed and restless towards the end coz' I felt the lady was telling us a lot of unnecessary details and sometimes repeating herself. Yes yes, I know that was a sucky attitude, so I won't make excuses for myself... *Carol kicks herself* :P Anywayz, I could probably sum up her story in a few short concise sentences: Years ago, she had a spiritual encounter with Guan Yin (the Goddess of Mercy) who promised her whatever she wanted as long as she sold her soul to her....but if the woman ever betrayed her, Guan Yin would take her soul to hell (very merciful indeed). So the woman said ok, and becomes a quick success...having three resturants with great food, being able to cure people's diseases so much that patients would line up at her door and such. Along the way, she gets married to the man who was now standing next to her and translating her story, and has a few kids. Her second son dies, but the rest grow up and she sends them to a Methodist school. The kids of course learn about Christianity in this school, where the pastor tells them that their mother has been worshipping the devil in the form of Guan Yin. So her kids tell her what he said and the woman gets angry and confronts the pastors, who responds to her anger by simply saying that God loves her. Then the kids begin to fast for two weeks to pray for their mum on the advice of their cell group leader... and once she finds out they are praying for her to stop worshipping this Guan Yin, she gets pissed again and confronts the cell leader who also simply says that God loves her. Later on, something else happens (I forget the details) which also pisses her off and she confronts a church lady who does the same thing telling her that God loves her. And so the woman is thinking all these Christians are nuts for saying the same simply thing every time even though she was out to fight with them and even challenged them to pit their Jesus against her Guan Yin, who's made her able to cure diseases. She was thinking that Jesus could never be a powerful as Guan Yin. But later on, her husband gets a condition where half his body is paralysed, and even though she tries to heal him, she can't. But her kids got their pastor and other church members to pary for him and soon he was cured. Of course, she was still skeptical, and even the husband still didn't believe in Jesus after that. But it got her thinking that maybe it was true. One day, she meets Guan Yin again, who for reason tells her to get a cup of blood from her third child (read: sacrifice her child. VERY merciful indeed) within three days or else she'll lose her powers and be taken to hell. But after thinking about it, the woman doesn't do it, so Guan Yin comes back three days later, gets into a fit and promptly drags the woman's soul to hell, where she sees a lot of pretty nasty things happening to the poor peeps in there. Then she remembers Jesus and calls out to him to save her, and voila, she finds herself back in her body... saved from the clutches of hell!!!! And so it goes that she and her husband finally does believe, becomes a Christian and is now going around the world sharing their testimony to people. And then she goes on to describes the types of punishments she saw going on in hell, but that's a graphic story that I won't go into. So that's the gist of their life story.....which I guess I didn't really summarized in a few short sentences. Haha!
To be honest, I do think her story sounds nuts. Most people who heard it would probably think that lady needs to pay a nice long visit to Tanjung Rambutan. And among all the crazy, amazing testimonies I've ever heard, this one has to take the prize for outlandishness. But these people apparently have gone sacrificed good jobs to go around the world sharing their story, and definitely risking their reputation as sane people by telling such a story, particularly if non-Christians (and ESPECIALLY Buddhists) hear about it. Why on earth would they do all that if it wasn't true? And nutty as it sounds, her story does make sense to me. Devil can take on any form he wants, including Guan Yin or any other idol of any other religion. I'm betting a good number of my Buddhist friends reading this would right now want to beat me up and you're perfectly justified for feeling as such. But that's a long explanation for this belief I won't get into here, but I'd be happy to try and field questions or get beaten up later if you wish. :P If you ask me, the most amazing thing about that whole testimony is not the whole appearance of Guan Yin, or healing of her paralysed hubby or even her little visit to hell.... but the Christians who didn't even try to argue that woman down when she was so mad at them. All they said was simple "God loves you!". And that was enough to make her so completely dumbfounded enough to finally believe there had to be something with this whole Jesus thing. Haha, well I know that if I weren't a Christian, I'd probably be a 100 times more irritable and annoyed with the world than I am now..... I've learn a lot about being patient from since I was younger, but probably not enough to have reacted as calmly as those folks. Oh well, maybe give myself a couple more decades when I'm older and hopefully wiser. :P
Anyway, got a little blessing today when I bumped into one of my church uncle's at a coffee shop after my taekwondo class today when I was hanging out with some of my other taekwondo friends. He had ordered some take away 'tai chau' stuff, and I ordered something for my dinner at the same stall too. He was really nice and we chatted for a while before I went back to hang with my friends and he waited for his food to be ready. Later on, after he left and my food was ready and I wanted to pay, I found out that he was so kind to pay for my food! Aw shucks, this is why I love hanging around church folks. :P And I don't even know what that uncle's name is! Argh, Carol...must...get...to know... names....of more.... church....uncles and aunties!!!! I just suck at remembering names....but anyway, it was really nice of him. Haiyoh, all you non-church goers should come to CBC with me sometime and meet the folks there. All vely nice wan! See, last night Aunty Mary and Uncle Simon made a nice big dinner for the youths and today another uncle pay for my dinner even though he didn't have too! Haha! *shameless advertising on my blog...*
Anywayz, I've got to get round to doing some uni work now. Good night!