Fattening myself

Imagine, one cold monsoon night you're studying (and cursing) for the end of posting examination which was postponed for one whole month. Suddenly you feel like junking. And in India with Lay's selling at Rm2, you just cannot resist the temptation to get to get hold some of them to chew the night off.

But, like everybody says, junking is not healthy, especially with Lay's.

So you just sit there staring at your book thinking should-I-should-I-not while flipping the pages.

AND!

You heard someone stomping up your stairs that you thought that Stomp is in the town. And you heard your name.


"You can finish this. It's cold. since you like it cold"


Banana Crumple!!!!

I went OMG OMG when Lai Yin delivered her final piece of banana crumple to my doorstep. Like I said, I felt like junking.

Remember last time told you all that I have an auntie who loves baking, and here in Manipal, I have a friend who loves baking too! and she's my neighbour. It's good to have a neighbour who likes to make food.

Two days back Lai Yin told me that she wanted to make banana crumple.

I'm like, "ok!"

Cause I have no idea what is a banana crumple. At first I thought we have to eat the banana with some crumpled stuff, for example, crumpled paper, crumpled tissue paper, crumpled newspaper.

Never knew what's banana crumple till Lai Yin made it on Thurday. and it tasted like nothing you can find in Manipal. and it was found that day.

It's nice!!!

That's all I can say other that "should add some raisin" "should eat it cold"

(told ya I don't know what is banana crumple)



In no time, I finished the little piece of banana crumple.

and I went out to buy Lay's


------------------------------------------------------

By the way, Lai Yin knows how to make Shanghai Mooncake which was, like, OMG awesome!!!

and I kinda did my endposting exam badly today. bad me!!!

Terrorist attack

niCk to NIS (sms) "Terrorist attack com med department. End Posting exam in my house"

NIS to niCk (sms) " @#%#@ come fast la, don't be late"

niCk to NIS (sms) " why would terrorist attack com med department?"

NIS to niCk (sms) " because nick tai has bush in his pants and rice in his tunmmy"

niCk to NIS (sms) "no no. because even if they can't kill medicine, they can kill the community"

"Hands up!"

Final attempt

I never knew how to cook and never really take the initiative to learn until one fine day I suddenly craved for mummy's fried spaghetti. Instead of cooking some canggih sauce to pour on it, she stir fry it with oyster sauce. Simple and nice. And you know, leaving the Land of Beng-Lian to the Land of Tempe-s, anything that's home-y will be nice.

Ya, so I decided to cook it by myself.

My very first exposure to spaghetti was some years back where my 3rd auntie cooked it. In my family we address our aunties by numbers, eg: 3 auntie, 6 auntie and 7 auntie. So here's this 3rd auntie of ours who loves baking and cooking western food (my 2nd auntie cooks chinese food. ok it's complicated). So one fine day, she said that she wanna cook spaghetti. Coming from a chinese background, that sounded English to me.

Her whole preparation was complicated to me. If I'm not wrong, 3 auntie cooked the sauce by herself instead of using those ready-made paste like 5th auntie, which is my mummy. It was my first experience eating "mee" by pouring sauce on top of it. How jakun.

And it was awesome!!!! Still remember the mushrooms that I chewed that day. I'm serious!!

So from that time onwards, 3 auntie's spaghetti is the standard for all the spaghetti I eat. I'll just compare them with 3 aunties spaghetti. And till now that was the first and last time she cooked spaghetti for us. (3 auntie, can cook spaghetti for us when I go back this time?!)

Ok, that's 3 auntie for you. Now mummy also cooks well. Just that mummy doesn't cook complicated stuff. All her cooking is simple, healthy and I-love-it. The very first thing that I remember mummy cooking for me is what she called it omelette. It's basically omelette with fish past in it. And I love it so much. That was the first time I hear the word "omelette". I was 3 years old then.

Like I said, mummy's cookings are simple.
Here's what happen at home.
We come back from school and, mummy, from work, we'll sleep all we want until 9pm, somebody will wake everybody up and say "hungry!!!"
Then mummy will wake up and say "let's have spaghetti"

And within half an hour, dinner is served. and everyone gets activated for the night.

Ok, that's an exaggeration. We don't usually do this but at times mummy gets really tired after work, so we'll have a nap first before dinner. And it's amazing seeing how mummy prepare and cook the spaghetti. She cooked it the way chinese cook "mee" and just that she's using spaghetti. What a great combination, I think.

So here's my attempt.

The very first time I tried cooking it with my housemate's oyster sauce, it turn out to be as black as Hokkien Mee and so salty that people thought that I cooked it in Dead Sea. It was a failure. Thanks to Lai Yin who gave criticism so gently in order that I could improvise a bit without feeling discouraged.

My second attempt was good! I came out with two flavours. Chinese BBQ (i curi Yew Kong's sauce) and Tomato. Lai Yin and YY was hungry that day. So it was apparently good. But I did enjoyed what I cooked.

My third attempt was with some chillies and tomatoes. Min Ming thought that I was joking about cooking and she was amazed when I brought her what I cooked. And she enjoyed it.

and yesterday I cooked one last time to finished off the spaghetti I bought.

the stuff that I used:


After so much of attempt, I'm pretty much know how much to put and how long to cook stuff like that. and most importantly, I feel like at home.

After much boiling, stirring, mixing, oil popping, frying, the outcome:


And it's awesome!!! I-like-it.

No matter what other people say. I enjoyed it, and I like what I cook! *grin

and what is more indulgent than having Indian Malika mango cut and waiting for me in the fridge while I'm eating my home-y spaghetti?!
Nothing!!!

Ending dy...

"OMG! our com med posting ending dy. I super like this posting la. Like so
fun!!!" - Tyng Sam (after ComMed class)

Community Medicine generally made us lazy. Seriously lazy and unproductive. Unless you consider non stop watching movies, updating blog and change its outlook, reading Book Thief all night long and sleep in the class (Josephine!!!) is productive.

Compare to other clinical postings, com med theory is not hard to understand and more of a memorizing subject. Everything makes sense and related to our daily life. We get to visit a lot of places to see, well, the community. It's community medicine after all. It's fun going around looking at people's houses, finding our poo poo in the sewage treatment plant and see how the water is recycled back to the fountains where we used to had water fight during Holi. Yeap, water fight with poo poo water.

The most interesting part of the posting is, our morning classes end at around 1030 and our afternoon classed end at around 1530 to 1600. How can I not watch more movies and sleep more with the extra hours I got?!!!

Ok I think that would bring me on a guilt ride next week during End Posting examination. And that indicates that our Com Med posting is ending soon!

Besides going around Manipal like a traveller, we were also asked to organize an event for one of the orphanage here in Manipal. I've never been to an Orphanage before and orphanage sounds like Neverland where Peter Pan comes from. But this time were going to a Neverland which consist of only Wendy. Ok, Wendy was never an orphan.

The all-girl orphanage that we went was situated about 20mins bus ride away from Manipal. It consist of girls ages between 6 to 16 (something like that) coming from all around Karnataka. Being supported by the government, that place is considered well furnished and the children look happy.

We went there twice. First visit was to get ourselves familiarized with the people and the place so that we can plan for the real event during the second visit.

Neverland, here we come!!!

By the way, this is the very first time I'm visiting an orphanage. So kinda excited.

Once we reached the place, Mr Ashok, our guide from the Community Medicine department, gave the children instructions and at the same time doing translation for us since we can't speak Kanada and they can't speak English.

" you guys better prepare something good for us!"

When it comes to India culture, we all know that most Indians, if not all, loves singing and dancing. So few of the children tried to and did impress us with their talent in singing and dancing.





After that, we had a Q and A session so that we know what we were expected to prepare for them. Thought of stealing Jun Han's idea of showing them a movie, I asked them what kind of movies they like to watch.

And to my, and everybody's, surprise, they answered harmonizingly "Titanic!"

O_o





Planning started right after the first visit when Josephine who was in-charge of the gift packs got super semangat to do the paper bags. Lot's of cutting, folding, packing, repacking, counting, and repacking, and more repacking.

It's really funny to see our reactions when we found out that one of the gift bags doesn't have a comb or a pencil or whatever. We will go "oh no!" and start opening the gift bags one by one. cacat.

"where is my lollipop?!!!!"

It's really awesome by looking at how the whole process of making the gift bags came into place. All thanks to Jose (Pronounced by NIS as Jo-say)

The real day came and that's when all the excitement, frustration and OMG begins. There were food, games, performances and water bombs. By the way, we were asked to contributed some anti-lice (anti-kutu) shampoo for the orphanage. Yeap! and water bombs.

Kutu meet water bombs, water bombs meet kutu.

First of all, they were asked to draw a flag which represents each respective team. It's funny how they perceive what a flag is. There were sun, coconut trees and birds with some crocodile in the river in their flag.

c-o-c-o-n-u-t coconut tree!!!

"should i draw a smiling sun?!"

Next came the outdoor game. One word = CHAOS!
I was the one organizing the whole game and my whole planned was altered because we just simply couldn't give proper instructions to them. No matter how simple a game might sound, it could be quite confusing for them because we couldn't explaing it properly.

The food served after games was just awesome!!! Kuih Batik by Sofia. FUIYOH!!! and what made it nicer is the performance after that. We performed a Malay song - Belaian Jiwa (since they watch Titani before, so it's ok), and two english songs. Not sure how much the kid enjoyed it but we did really enjoyed the singing.



Narain came out with a dance after that before they, again, impressed us with some traditional dances and singing.

Charlie's angel

And the most exciting moment came. The kids were happy because we were giving out the gift bags (consist of anti-lice shampoo and stuff). We were happy because mission accomplished!

Really hope the kids were happy.

and oh no!!! com med posting is ending...

reconcile

it hurts when people offend you. worse still if the person is someone whom you respect. all you could do is to step back and keep quiet.

Matthew 5:23-24 says: therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. first go and be reconciled to you brother; then come and offer your gift.

i've meditated on this verse twice because of two different occasions. i just simply cannot serve God or worship God with something going wrong between me and my friends.

and of course, i must learn how to apologize and/or forgive.

sylvia once told me, "say the magic word: sorry"

so when you offended people, say the magic word; when people apologize, forgive.

one significant thing that i learned during the trip is from Jun Han when he said that "each person must have something good for us to learn from", so no matter what, try to learn from the good qualities of a person no matter how bad or how good the person is to us.

so forgive, and learn...

chill la! life goes on...

us in Cochin

thank God for friends.

ahem

not bacause of exam stress
not because anybody challenged me to do so
not because it's too hot in India
not because the barber was sleeping

tada!!!

God is awesome!!!

we have a looooooooong weekend here in India for Divali.

have been enjoying so far and "gosh! why am i not studying?!"

went to Jog Falls on thursday. it was awesome!
jakun me, cause in malaysia we can't find waterfalls like that.
you know? those tall tall one, with rainbow one.
yeah. so i was kinda amazed by what God created.

it's just awesome! cause God is awesome!

Selamat Pagi Manipal

it's 5am now. being a nerd since noon.

gonna sleep now. good morning people!

loooong weekend

yey! have a long weekend this week starting on Friday. wuahahaha!

gonna make full use of this three days.

gonna buy a saree. yeah! trying new stuff, new fashion.

siao! i can't imagine (don't want to imagine) i myself wearing a saree.
Gosh! reminds me of those saree-wearing guy that we met in the trains up north that brought about our emetic reaction. 's'he even touch my leg while begging me for money.

that brought about syncope.

buying a saree for my sister, since she's so interested in saree. gonna get her a grand one. wuahahaha!

heniway, this week i've seen an example about leadership. being a leader is not easy ler. i wonder how did Moses in the Bible could manage to lead the isrealites out of Egypt to the land God promised them.

well, of course, to those who rebeled against Moses, God punished them.

learnt alot this week.

encouraged two people this week. part of my "change" is working.

inspired by life

today worship practice was short and sweet but the dinner took very long. reached home at around 11pm. all birthday boy's fault. haha! he chosed Seif Palace.

Lester turned 22 today.

niway, during worship debriefing, i shared about how i was inspired by Amanda when i was leading worship last week.

spiritually i wasn't really up for last week's worship session, but when i saw the congregation worshiping, especially when i saw Amanda worshiping, i was inspired.

yeap! worship leader needs inspiration too!

after worship practice, Pastor came up to me and told me that we can put Dinesh and Jonathan for worship leading on the following saturdays.

a "huray!" from me!

after that, Amanda joined us for dinner. i told her the same thing what i shared during the debriefing.

her response: "inspired by life?"

that sounds so Manipal.

hello... i wanna pay

today's PBL was ultra long. everybody wanted to present everything. overall it was good. digged deep into alot of unnecessary stuff, especially the one that i presented with Ismail - treatment and management of diabetes mellitus.

after so much of saliva-splattering from me about insulin therapy, the lecturer said this in the end of the class, "in Pathology we don't deal with treament."

in another the words, it won't come out in the exams.

henyway, time for dinner. it was five then. went to snack shack with vincent.

gosh so many people.

KMC is having the new intake. no wonder. saw alot of chinese, and indians, and indians and more indians.

everything went fine until i went to pay my bill in airtel.
as usual, i took a seat since there's a customer at the PAYMENT counter (see that? PAYMENT!)
i was waiting and waiting and waiting and i over heard the customer at the PAYMENT counter asking thousands and thousands of questions about this calling plan, that calling plan, MAHE plan, Manipal plan, USA plan, NASA plan, UN plan and even Taliban plan....

they were asking about calling here calling there how much, sms here sme there how much. then they repeat the same questions over and over again.

it's a PAYMENT counter that i was saying. there was this they-think-they-are-rich-try-to-annoy-people-by-sitting-at-the-PAYMENT-counter-doing-non-paying-stuff couple with their son, KMC junior i suppose, were finding out the best plan for their o-going-to-study-in-KMC-so-great son.

so i fed-up dy, i stood up and stand right in front of the PAYMENT counter. the lady in the counter also fed-up dy, turned to me and asked me what i wanted.

"i wanna pay"

payment was made.

upon leaving the office, i heard them again,

"do you give us any VIP number?"

how great!

now i am...

"wow! amazing! you still can write chinese!" -Yee En (sms)

many people assumed that i've already deleted every single bits of chinese in me after almost one and half year stay in Manipal since i never like chinese. like what Vincent told me the other day, "you've not been updating yourself on chinese social activity la... now this one dunno, that one dunno".

ok, that i admit. since i only read The Star newspaper.

but i still write chinese!!! i still can read! even scientific terms. huh!

ok ok, exaggerating. i can only write normal day-to-day-use chinese only. the reason is, my grandfather insists that i should write letter to him in chinese instead of calling back so often. firstly, he doesn't want me to waste money on calling home. Secondly, he doesn't want me to forget chinese because he says that we'd spent so much on chinese school, so it's not worth it to forget the things that i've learnt, especially chinese culture.

the very first time i heard this from my mom, i was like, "oh man!". i have almost forgeting how to write my name.

well, to please my grandpa (he's 87), i decided to start writing chinese letter to him.
man! the first letter almost killed me. with the help of my handphone (yeap! now you know how i write chinese), i spent almost an hour or two to finish it.

he was happy. mom told me that he literally kept my letter under his pillow and read it over and over again.

mission accomplished.

"I said i saw you online la not Mid Valley, LAME!" - Yee En (MSN messenger)
"Nickson is LAME!" - Lai Yin (Ilyani's voice recorder)

(the list goes on and on)

Did Manipal actually made me lame? i always wonder.
na! i still can walk!

still remember last time i used to be very shy. i didn't dare to even speak out my thoughts, forget about cracking jokes. i enjoyed listening to Jared Ang and David Lim's lame jokes during our Sabah mission trip. that's all i remember about people being lame

well of course being lame is not something good to boast about. in fact i shall repent and stop doing that. but i always wanted to make people laugh.

"i scared blood and dead body la" - niCk to mom (deciding if i should take MBBS
or Biotech)
"you came back form the mortuary and you haven't bathe? you know how dirty is the mortuary? ... yada, yada... stay away!" - Lai Yin (after scrubbing her skin so hard to disinfect herself after watching autopsy)

i always thought that i would faint on my first dissection class. nope! i passed! and i thought i would faint during my first autopsy. well, i passed that too! (dissection and autopsy ain't the same. there's blood splashing all over in autopsy but not in dissection)

still remember there was once i rat died in from of my house. i tried as much as possible not to step on it when i go out for dinner that night. when we came back, i volunter to open the gate. once i stepped out of the car, i felt something slimmy was underneath my slipper. in a fraction of second, i jumped up knowing that i stepped on the poor rat.

gosh! after that i jump around shouting as thought someone has shot me with a rifle.

so i can say that now i'm pretty much brave to deal with blood as well as dead body. so don't mess up with me!
otherwise inn shan will use his forensic knowledge to perform a murder that is so confusing enough that nobody can find investigate the case. haha!

"stand straight. when you lift up your hands, lift it up straight. sing with confidence" - Pastor Foo (holding my leg so that i could stand properly when i
started to lead worship in church)

i alway have the passion for worship and to some extend, music. always blame my mom for not sending me for piano lessons. (blame here with the understanding that it wasn't affordable for her to send me to music class last time.)
i always admire those people who can play music. i always tell people that i'm can be a guitarist, but i'm not a musician. i always want to be a great worship leader.

back home in XYZ (xtraordinary youth zone), i don't have much oportinity to lead and to play in the worship team. well who wanna choose a lousy guitarist like me when there's so many great musician in the team. moreover i have a crappy voice that cannot last me for long. well, can't help it. dunno means dunno. "not many people can be musically tuned" - Christine

but my passion for worship is still there!

in Manipal, i have the chance to learn worship leading since every week i'm doing it. so much so that i'm tired of it.
practice makes perfect. now i can even lead with guitar. thought still musically deaf. of course there's a long way for me to go to being a great worship leader. after all, worship is not just about music, it is about my devotion to God.

it's is in Manipal, medical school to be exact, that i learn how to rely on God more. it's not easy to study medicine (duh!) but with the promises of God in me, everything turn out to be good!

art of worship is not easy. it's all about having the heart of worship that worship God in all the things that i do.

does everything that i do glorify God?

"life goes on" - niCk (annoyingly)

well, Manipal pretty much made me a different person. i can't be what i was two years back ler...

but there's alot of things yet to be changed.

moving on...

i am lazy

just a short update about me since i'm seriously that lazy (or busy) to post a proper post.

• life is good!
• God is good!
• mangoes i bought was nice!
• study is... (what you expect? i'm in a medical college)
• my grandma is waiting for IJN to do her bypass
• last week concert and worship was good! Thank God i didn't lost my voice while i was leading... though at some point i couldn't control my voice and went "..o..i..o"
• want a girlfriend soon! (wait, niCk, wait!!!)
• start to think about going home for holiday! people! i'm coming back soon!
• i had a lot of points in my mind just now but i forgot what i wanted to post
• i'm sleepy...

chiaos!

Jaisalmer trip photos are coming up soon...

photos

Fiffy followed me home when i packed my dinner home one night. and i realized that i forgot to tell the boss to give me less rice, so i spare some for her since she seemed desparate. i put it on a chinese newspapre that Vincent brought back last time.

when vincent came back, he was excitedly asking me, "how will you react when someone actually sends chinese newspaper all the way to manipal?"

niCk replied, "i put it there one lar...."


saw this one the way to church. my bike-ky-ker was so dead slow that i could actually take out my v3i and snap a picture of this



TYPHOON/TORNADO/HURRICANE

pastor was saying that the wind on saturday was the worst in Manipal that he'd seen ever since he came to Manipal 12 years back. that's how bad it was.

i was sleeping and i heard a multitude of crows making Xdb of noise that woke me up. looked out from my window and there the caretaker of Acharya compound was walking round and round a carcass of a cat. i suppose the tornado brought it there.


leaves and leaves all over acharya compound


and my balcony too!


i was so afraid that my roof will be blown away... thank God i never happened

Happy Birthday Lai Yin!

it was Lai Yin's grand birthday on 30th May. she's no longer a teenage, and she has to wear her big big big big gold key around her neck and declare that she is an ADULT now!

the celebration was in my house. no mess at all cause the organizer promised to do the clean up for me... weerrrhahahhaha!!!

here are some pictures taken on that day.


a banner that we made to hang outside my house

yew kong cutting the fruits

watermelon

a key cake for her

final touch up on the banner. adding a lion (Lai Yin) on it

Happy Birthday!!!

oh ya! since Lai Yin's staying below my house, they did some splashing and flouring on her from my balcony. that's why she looks like a walking cake cutting the cake.

the banner. taken from my balcony

that's it, the banner.

had food from Manpal Canteen. almost 30 over people came to my tiny winnie little house.

Lilian, Lai Yin, Chun Mun, Sam and Josephine

Nina, Lai Yin and Thuba

KTT gang

" come come, wish Lai Yin happy birthday and get an angpao"

Nina, Lai Yin and Yin Yee with Anas' head

Yin Yee, Sanjeev and Lai Yin

Anas and Lai Yin (something's very wrong with this!)


Kwee Ren, Lai Yin and Mun Yew

someone puked in the bowl. hahaha! it's actually jelly. mango jelly. it looks really weird. but when you eat it: fuiyor-ness!!!!

but this girl was too excited that she actually licked it! so we had to bare with her saliva



Lai Yin and Yan Lian

start unwrapping her pressies... and this is when my camera started to tell me that it's dying.

some one gave her a cactus. see my flash gone. it was real bright before that

my flash was totally gone...

and it came back.

after unwrapping all her pressies, she performed a few songs on the keyboard. being a diploma holder in music, how could we let her go not playing some pieces.