yay! 2013 reading challenge completed. proof that not all malaysians read 2 books a year :P

dope

oh santa!

"i swear i've been good all year long"

blue is the warmest color : pre-watch

so i was going to brows through a particular torrent site, coz, you know, not downloading anything kinda fill me with dread.

anyway, the first page, i came across a movie titled 'blue is the warmest colour' and 20% of me is sold. 

then i watched the trailer. it's actually a french movie! another 20% sold. coz i'm quite a francophile. haha.

and i quite liked the story. coming of age stories never fail to tear me up. especially when it's dealing with lgbtq issues. 

I JUST REALLY LIKE THE TITLE. 

CAN THE TITLE BE ANY SWEETER?

I WANT A PATISSIERE NAMED LIKE THAT.

haha. 

and now i'm going to be 23 T_T

...

eleanor & park : my thoughts

after Lolita (which is to me, quite a heavy read), i wanted something light, so i chose to read Eleanor & Park. it's a YA (young adult) fiction that i guess from the title, revolves around two characters, eleanor and park. ha. talking about the obvious.

anyway, from the first page, i was hooked. i mean, HOOKED with capital letters. i finished reading within a day. 5 hours tops. just couldn't stop.

the book is lovable. 
read it. 
read IT. 
READ it. 
READ IT. 

this is one book that i'm going to buy the physical, real-paper-and-everything book because it's that good. 

this is one of the books i'm gonna want my kids to read when they are young adult themselves.

this is the book that i'm gonna wanna reread one fine day when the sky is too dark and the ground is too wobbly to stand. or any day i'm feeling bored.

but coz i'm a sucker for happy ending, this book kinda... blew me... is it 'blew me away' or 'blew me off'? i dunno. the ending kinda turn me off.

but at the same time, it adds another layer of meaning inside the book. so it wasn't necessarily bad that it has 'that' kind of ending. still hating it, tho. T_T

so, coz i really love the characters, i kinda draw them. so this is the drawing. i really liked the raw one, but to give it more connection to the characters (Eleanor's red hair and Park's affection for black attire) i kinda had to put on some colour. 

tho being the amateur-moi, the end product of colored version is kinda messed up. 

another Norman Reedus fangirl post

THIS

AND THIS

 I COULDN'T AGREE MORE

gloomy day poem, c'est moi

It’s dark out there

Clouds-a-swirling

Winds-a-twirling

Rains-a-pouring

Suns-a-hiding

But it’s okay

Inside this car

We’re safe

Hidden

Warm

You

&

I

Dante

"Sometimes it's best to just let go of the past. Literally. You know, like, just go somewhere else. Somewhere people don't know you, and you don't know them. A place where your past won't matter to you." Dante mumbled as he stared at the open sea before us. I watched the wind blew his dark brown hair, the strands covering up the sad glimmer apparent in his eyes just seconds before.

"Is it? Is that what you're doing now? Running away from your problematic past?" He laughed at my question, promptly turning his dark pools towards mine. I stared back, challenging him to answer. 

"My past was not problematic. It was rather... bland, if I must say. I came from American dream family, white picket fence and all, you know. I'm grateful for that, but I felt like something was missing...." He paused, taking a handful of the dry sand, letting them slipped through his fingers bit by bit. His silence was getting to me, wearing down my already thin patience.

"And here you are? This small fisherman village across the world, of all place? To search the missing piece?" I joined him, playing around with the white sand, writing our names together. Dante grinned as he started adding little details to our names. Hearts, starts, little animals. It was minutes before he answered.

" I've been to many places. This is just one of the stops. I don't even know where I'll be next week." He turned to me and brushed the golden strands away from my face, our eyes meeting for the nth time.  

"Take me with you, Dante? To the lowest of hell, the hardest of purgatory, the highest of heaven... I'd rather be with you than just left, you know, alone." 

"Though I really appreciate you Divine Comedy reference, but life out there is just that, you know. Sometimes, it's really hard, could be really interesting, may be really painful. You're a gentle soul, and it will press you even more being out there than just staying here, Lem, for now."  

"Wait it out. For your heart to harden a bit, and by then I'll come back to take you with me." He patted my shoulder, ever so gently, with a weak smile on his handsome face. 

I nodded meekly, as bit by bit Dante started to disappear into thin air. His last touch remained warm on my bare shoulder, his last smile embedded on my brain. 

Someday. 

Someday I'll be good enough for him to take me out there.  

beginning of sleepless ER night

tonight, i went to Sup Meletup at Bandar Sri Permaisuri for the second time.

and of course, i had two bowls of soup AGAIN, and this time i opt for 
i) sup daging
ii) sup perut

this time they separate the sauce so that we can adjust the spiciness of the soup. of course, i keep on adding the sauce till my soup take on some kind of reddish hue with added viscosity.

best soup i ever had. 

next time, i have to remember the road so that mr.f can take me there :P

and thank god, i successfully managed to fight against the temptation of nasi goreng kampung. probably coz i only bring rm12 with me. rm10 for the soup, and rm2 for the iced milk tea. 

(i'm really sorry for my insulin level and ketosis, but iced milk tea is not something that mere resolution can fight off)  

but in the end, it doesn't matter, coz someone actually planned to give us a treat! XD thanks to Humairah, my beloved roommate. hahaha

and woot for Julia for the idea to go there, and Iqram for the short preach on hadith and Amrican accent, and his petrol.

:)

p/s: i thought of taking some pictures because i want to blog about the trip this time, but... but... hunger wins, as ALWAYS.

light rant

yours are just  faces that'll disappear in a year

there's no point getting invested emotionally

to some people who i know will forget me too

#excusemybluntness #icanwriteanythingitsmyfuckingblog

#fuckidontneedthis #acquaintancesarenotfriends

good?

i know i'm never good enough for them.

they're beautiful, creative, artsy : everything i'm not

i guess i'll just get through this shit

coz i know someday i'll look back 

and say

"wow, that's one shitty semester. and a lot of shitty courses, and even fucking made-in-inferno-level-shitty ONE useless "T" course!"

(i guess the "T" means turd. yeah. useless, and tiring to even think as you've gotta clean the mess. like shit.)

my future self will thank me for getting through this.... you guessed it: shit.

i just want to leave this university.

i'm sick of her sneer, her insults, and her very good acting of being nice to me. when i know she doesn't even like me.

people like her breaks me. 

and the sooner i leave this university, the sooner i'll get rid of her. 

also,

i 

hope 

whoever 

the 

fuck 

put 

"the T" in TESL rot in hell.

Tim & Kay

I could stay awake just to hear you breathingWatch you smile while you are sleeping
While you're far away and dreaming
I could spend my life in this sweet surrender
I could stay lost in this moment forever
Every moment spent with you is a moment I treasure

aerosmith 'dont wanna miss a thing'

when i was in lower secondary, i really liked creating stories in my head. of course, being me, there were drawings, and even written stories of the tale i weaved inside my head.

alas, i had lost all those precious pages. but one story stick with me.

the first story i ever written in English.

i still have some drawings of the main characters; tim and kay. yes, at the age of twenty-two i still could dreamily dream about dreaming of these guys i had in my head when i was fourteen.

and sometimes i drew them from memory, like they are two long-lost brothers.

creepy, i know. 

they are two guys, and that was why whatever i wrote about them i put under the 'confidential' tag 

(i was grateful my little sister still couldn't read in English well at that time). 

well, it was confidential to everyone except a best friend who knew about my obsession with shounen-ai and whatnot. she didnt thought anything weird about me. so i shared this part of me with her. 

thinking back, i am really freaked out. even now i couldn't write shit. imagine what kind of crap i was writing when i was fourteen. oh well... sorry BF.

what drove me to write about two guys, you say? did the yellow culture caught me up real bad then? hmm.... i gotta say i wasn't an advocate of something like that (i knew the limit) but at that time i was 'accidentally' exposed to creative writing produced by... these group of people. and these stories just kinda caught hold of me. i was head over heels with the love stories (i was a romantic then, and pretty much a sarcastic now). 

and POW i came across shounen-ai pages. that's like putting pictorial meaning to a vocabulary i just learned. 

the rest was history

anyway, the song above

i can relate very much to tim and kay. 

their love

that was how i imagine 'love' would be

 when i was young and naive. 

that it was soft and pleasant

never rage and never force

and it never fails

but growing up, i lost sight of that meaning of love

all i can see is how much evil can come from it

how much sadness it can cause

how it can broke into million shattered pieces

i really hope that i can feel that kind of love

the kind of love

when tim looked at kay when he was asleep

and kissed his forehead

yes, that kind of love

Marceline, the Vampire Princess

Marceline is one of my favourite characters from Adventure Time. 

(Actually I kinda like everyone in the series, except the Lemon Guy who keeps yelling in that annoying voice.)

I was kinda blown away by the fact that vampires in the series don't actually consume blood, but rather they suck the color of red from anything that are... well, red.

I'm still fascinated by that trivia until now. 

Well, the drawing is not my favourite, though. Marceline's back is kinda flat, the posture is weird, and I could use a lot of help in the hands construction.

Since there's no friends' scanner to be used, I used CamScanner app. It actually works quite well. I'm considering to buy the full version. 

17th June, and I've read....

yay or nay? 

hahaha not that i really care.

i just love peeking into others' lives reading .

anyway, i took this from Goodreads.com, a site that works magnificently if you want to track how many books you've read or if you just want to show off how much you've read.

i think i'll have my students sign up for this thing... and... yea, that just come across my mind. perhaps they can post their reflection about a (notice the singularity. with malaysian's attitude of reading 'yang masih di takuk lama', i don't expect much.) book that thay've read. 

"miss elle, i've finished my online assignment." 

online assignment.

sounds grand, huh. :P

let my future self figure out how to check the reflections of 

a class of 40 students.

anyway, on a different note, i owe ALL my reading, and my increased pace of reading (i think i read nothing between 2007-2011) to my Kindle Paperwhite.

 taken from http://ebookfriendly.com/

i love that thing. 

all my future daughters/sons will have that device (or any other ebook reader model they shall have invented by then) as their 5th birthdays. 

also taken from http://ebookfriendly.com/

cute ain't it?

coloring craze. when i finally understand the concept of layering in gimp. yep, bitch is slow learner.

this is a drawing i made some time ago.

and this is the colored version. still suck big time in shading, and zero knowledge in special effect, but for now, i'm cool with this :)

daenerys targaryen and daario naharis

i may not do the characters justice in this. they're not even my ideal pair, and i think they're not even end up being together? nonetheless, i kinda like the pairing... so..

up and down days...

it has been a little over a week since i decided to seriously follow the alternate-day fasting diet. to be honest, it is not easy, you know the times when we REALLY want to do something when we're not supposed to? that's me on my fasting day. 

LE FOOD ARE SCREAMING AT ME TO EAT THEM!

and when it's my feed day, yeah, i eat like usual. but sometimes i was like "tch, i have to eat... coz i can't tomorrow..." OR "gee, i'm still full! can i NOT eat?" okay, now both mentality are WRONG. and i hope i can get rid of them soon.

i) "tch, i have to eat... coz i can't tomorrow..."

  come on, you still have the day after tomorrow, and another future feed days to eat. come on.

ii) "gee, i'm still full! can i NOT eat?"

   EAT! at least until you fulfill your calories need for today! you know if you eat too little everyday, your metabolism will slow down... 

but because today i'm at home, my down day automatically goes down the drain. 

first, my mom made mutton soup. HOW COULD I SAY NO?

second, my parents bought food from pasar malam.

third, my sis-in-law brought food from her house's kenduri

fourth, my bro brought still-sizzling potato wedges with cheese!

fifth, the cheesecake i bought yesterday is still in the fridge, and i was tempted to take another bite. i did =_=

as a conclusion, i love this diet. not only it encourage me to save money (LOL) but it also makes me realize just how i've eaten like a VERY HUNGRY PIG everytime i'm home. plus, i've seen the weighing scale's spinning a bit less when i stepped on it hehe. :P so i'm gonna continue with it....

... I just have to figure out how to say no to food on my down days, no matter where i am, well, especially when I'm HOME!

NORMAN REEDUS AKA MY BIGGEST OBSESSION EVER

seriously dude, can anyone be any hotter than you are now?

source : http://instagram.com/bigbaldhead/

a note of wisdom to myself from jacob tomsky's book.

the daily grind

last night, i went to the daily grind in bangsar village with la bestie. 

i treat myself the 'down on the farm' burger, which by far is the most heavenly patty i've ever tasted. moist and tasty. next time i'm going for triple stack = more patty wahahaha.

i ate only the onion rings, the burger's patty and a small portion of the fries. oh, and a bite of the cornbread and some of that salad. not that i don't want to, but to avoid possible vomiting in near future, i had to stick to the basic. moreover, i already hit rock bottom with my diet that night, so to lessen the guilt, i try to eat less :P

la bestie had a plate of carbonara. MOST DELICIOUS i've ever tasted. definitely i'm gonna grab a plate myself the next time i visit the restaurant. perhaps with mr. r this time? haha. 

cough oh god no he's gonna reprimand me for the costly dinner afterwards cough

as dessert AND appetizer, i have the salty caramel chocolate cake. great cake, it's just i wish the salty layers aren't too salty.. and it's HUGE! i literally have to force myself to eat the whole piece of cake. which i failed. lol.

and as beverage, i have the oreo milkshake. for rm14, it's really good. a whole glass of vanilla ice-cream blended with finely ground oreo's.

last night...

last list for january

i never actually see myself as a fantasy fan, but i love this novel. it tells a romantic story between Esmerine and Alan, a siren and a fandarsee. While siren is more to people living in the sea, fandarsee is the race of human that can fly in the sky, thus the title.

*** 

this book comprises two short stories, Girl in the Mirror and the Memory Maker. the first story is quite predictable; we always know they will be something bad living behind the mirrors, especially when they are always covered with clothes.

the second story is not up to my liking, i'd say it's rather empty and boring.

***

Something Borrowed and Something Blue is actually a chronicle of some sort, about two best friends, Rachel and Darcy.

Something Borrowed's essence is depicted from Rachel's point of view, it tells us of how she's the girl next door who is nice to everyone, even to the worst best friend in the whole world, Darcy. Unlike Rachel. Darcy is pretentious and crave winning, eventhough she was already perfect. Therefore she strive to win everything which in turn destroy Rachel bit by bit without they even knowing it. 

Something Blue follows Darcy's life after her wedding is cancelled and she was pregnant with another man's child, a man that doesn't even truly loved her. She turned to Ethan, another childhood friend, and try to change when reprimanded by him. It's a happy ending, so it's good.

and another list of books i've read.

this is my first book of our much-adored special agent pendergast chronicles, and allow me to say that this book kick ass, mine, at least. 

unlike agatha christie, this book doesn't puzzle me every two seconds with bombastic words, i can glide through it rather easily (though i guess i tapped a lot on my kindle for meaning of certain terms. the one perk of reading with kindle :P)

why i read this book in the beginning? purely aesthetic motive. one day i was perusing the forum for ebooks, and suddenly this handsome portrayal of a fictional character popped out. HE'S SO COOL. i was hooked the first time i saw him, which then trigger me to try reading the book. 

i don't know, but this time lady luck is in my side. i really want to like this book, and aside from the rather manageable language, smooth storyline, the suspense and just plain brilliant storybase, i am now another fan of pendergast series, hands down. and this book actually revolves around oddities of the world, which happens to be my favourite matter. two birds with one stone :)

and this book is actually kinda gory, especially the part of how the surgeon performs his killings. it actually gave me goosebumps. eek.

***

i read this novel because i want to understand what the hell is going on with a priest of a school performing exorcism that result in opposite effect; the students become even more associated with the force of devil (as told by the narrator). then, nearing the end of the novel, it dawned on me that the devil force is associated with another religion. 

so offensive. 

the author actually managed to insult two largest religions in the world with a single novel. 

***

this is actually a fairly pleasant novel about an amish woman, Sara, who daringly challenge the society by becoming a midwife, which was practically nonexistent at that time, thus putting labour into a very risky phase of women's life.

through her midwifery, she met Adam who lost his wife through labour, and his motherless children. he asked her to keep them for a while, he has the secret paranoia of becoming an evil father as his own late father towards the little girls. then something happened, Adam was badly hurt, forcing Sara to live in his house while looking after him as well as the children.

that starts off their episodes of romance, which quickly escalate as the church ordered them to marry as soon as Sara was found out living together with Adam without any ties.

all in all, great novel, great characters, great story.

***     

this novel includes two stories about the magic of Christmas. 

the first one is about a man finally reunited with his old flame and a daughter he never knew to be his.

the second one is actually a cute story of a pair of twins wishing for a mother from Santa, which come to them in the form of their cousin's music teacher, Nell. They tried so hard to try to matchmake their father and Nell, in the cute was children do, and combined with fate, this story ends with happy ending.

***

this novel is quite racy, hands down.

the blurb on the cover explains it all.

***

one of my favourites, though by now i've forgotten the name of the main character. 

she doesn't know what she want to do in her life, so in the meantime, she resorts to being a waitress.

later, she realize that life is all about taking risk, making her own order, instead of taking others'.

the ending is a little staged, but i liked it, it's witty :P 

***

ya... apparently people DO ask for weird things in a bookshop.

not that funny, but a good material for light reading :)

***

another book list, well actually only two books :)

an investigation book, but with more adult touch compared to nancy drew or the hardy boys

this book tells about an old man's adventure in his quest to meet his sickly long-begone friend. he pledges to walk through a LONG distance for the purpose.

matcha tea, my favourite tea aside from the malaysian teh tarik and sweetened iced tea :D

i initially found matcha tea among the varieties of teas in Tea Bar, and along with 'just nice' touch of red beans in the beverage, i was hooked. 

i know these instant tea (bubble tea they call em?) are not good for health but it's so convenient browsing around the mall while sipping your favourite tea. making the struts fly by >_<

i happen to look around amazon for the kind of match tea they sell there, and wow, the price... i mean, perhaps i am better off looking for match tea in carrefour, jusco, or maybe cold storage. much more compatible with my bank account :P

cheerio!

after a LONG hiatus, i finally drew something.. and i dunno why, i love it :P

i still havent caught the mood for coloring, plus i honestly think my drawing looks better unlike people naked.

so i just cleaned it up a bit. 

this is as good as my lazy ass is capable of doing.

but true, i really love this one. 

oh ya, got the idea of guys with lip piercing from the novel The Secret of Ella and Micha. it did makes the character seems a bit more manly. gee sorry i cant help but drawing one of those jambu faces again and again 

oh, and i WANT DAT WAIST!!!!!!!!

thins book touched my heart

the books i've read : minus anything much to say :P

easy language, interesting storyline, but a bit too much christianity-related for my taste. but hey, additional biblical vocabulary.

oh, don't you think the cover girl looks a bit like amanda seyfried? just more creepy. haha.

________________________________

crazy interesting book. my first completed cecelia ahern book. 

________________________________

beautiful cover. i think this is my favourite cover for 2012. :P anyway, no this is not a gothic story, just hidden love between two buddies who desperately try to friendzone each other to no avail.

________________________________

this book gets kinda boring after a while. i dont know, stockholm syndrom is not really my field of interest, especially when the abductor is old man and the abductee is a 12-year-old girl.

________________________________

my first nicholas sparks completed book. i know i'm a late bloomer. really interesting, really touch you in the heart. great ending. it's just that the letters in the bottle... is a man really capable of writing them that beautiful way? i sincerely doubt that. i have no scepticism with garrett irl though.

oh, i had fun imagining pat monahan acting in garrett's place. i know he's a bit older but... meh. he's HOT.