نقاشی صورت

yesterday, someone typed نقاشی صورت as a search term and got directed to my blog.

can anyone tell me what نقاشی صورت means?

oh well, whatever it is, and whoever you are, happy نقاشی صورت to you. i hope you found what you were looking for. :)

*SIGH*

came back home this morning at 5am from a very frustrating champions league finals to an even more frustrating sight:

this is the 2nd time in 2 days that this has happened. the 1st time they came, my 2 other neighbours were not spared either…

it all began when recently, my brother received a strange phone call from singtel telling him that someone who registered a phone line in his name had made over 1900 calls in a short span of a few days and singtel was just doing a routine check. we found out that someone had been using my brother’s I/C which he had accidentally dropped 3 years ago to register phone lines in his name and have the bills sent to us at our address. we lodged a police report immediately, but the police told my brother that they were probably unable to do anything about it. we got singtel to investigate on their end and refused to pay the $200+ bill chalked up by god-knows-who in a few days, with calls made to bet on 4D & toto…

a few days later, starhub called to inform us of the same thing. all of us grew extremely concerned, and a 2nd police report was lodged.

another several days later, loansharks from out of nowhere came to make a mess at my door and at my neighbours’ door. this was done in the wee hours of the morning and my dad woke up to a shock when he opened the door to grab the newspapers. they scribbled the usual stuff that loansharks do on the walls around my level, indicating my unit no. and a phone no. which neither of us recognised. we immediately connected it to my brother’s lost I/C, since none of us borrowed or even thought about lending from loansharks. again, we called the cops and they assured us they would step up the patrol in my vicinity (utter bullshit).

this morning, when Ju sent me back, they had already come a 2nd time but the red paint was still fresh, which meant that they had came not too long ago. this time they left my neighbours alone and the paint was shrewn over my doorpost and gate and they decided to further embarrass my family by scribbling our door unit on the walls of the lift and at the ground level.

armed with a bottle of thinner in one hand and a cloth in another, my dad and i quickly erased our unit no. to avoid greater embarrassment when everyone woke up and started heading for work. the policeman who came to take down our statements kindly helped to clean up the mess. dad has already been looking into installing a CCTV outside our door the last few days, just that we have not been quick enough to do so to capture evidence and hand over to the police this morning. mum and i have already been losing sleep since the 1st spate of vandalism and have been waking up at intervals to peep through the doorhole to see if any strange characters are lurking at our door. and the neighbours upstairs don’t really help matters by making so much noise throwing/dropping things about on the floor in the daytime when i’m trying to catch up on my rest, causing a din which often makes me wake up in fright. my house no longer feels like the safe haven which i come home to everyday anymore. it is a battleground every other night that we need to guard ourselves against and the only thing that protects my family from full confrontation with the people who are ‘attacking’ us is my wooden door and metal gate.

i really don’t know why my family is suffering such undeserved harrassment and persecution and there seems to be nothing that we can do about it. i am reaching out to everyone who is reading this post to please say a prayer for my family that none of us will come to any greater harm, and that the vandals AND the guy who has been abusing my brother’s I/C will be caught soon.

to all the friends that i had intended and am supposed to meet up over the holidays, please excuse me as i’m in no mood or state to hang out and catch up, with all this and more happening.

for now, i can only let go of all my anger and hold God true to His promise in isaiah 54:17 – “no weapon formed against me shall prosper”. Lord, i don’t need to understand why all this is happening now, but i know You’re in control and trust that You will take over in my family’s situation.

crashing into bed now, although it is 8am. totally exhausted from cleaning up the paint over the last couple of hours.

another kind of bonding

there are many ways that a family can bond. and the recent spate of events connected to my bro accidentally dropping his I/C 3 years ago, uncannily bonded us together in a most unusual way.

my body’s aching from the last few hours of cleaning up a huge mess made by an unexpected visitor together with my family, and i really want to thank Ju for specially driving over to help out too…

to cut to the chase, this school holiday is turning out to be more eventful than i wanted it to be, keeping me so busy in ways that i least expect. am crossing my fingers that nothing more ‘exciting’ happens, or my life’s morphing into a hongkong TVB drama serial at this rate.

taking a good break

have been busy helping out one of the professors to set up a website, database and research platform for a new centre for international law that will be opening in august. exciting stuff, although it is harder work than i had expected. i’m taking it as a good learning experience and putting the techy stuff that i have learnt in my previous jobs into good use. my reporting professor has been fun to work with, occasionally taking us out for meals and chatting about random stuff over beer and sharing many good laughs. he has inspired me to want to get myself a male ang moh boss in future – at least they know how to relax and wind down with the subordinates after work; instead of the typical male chinese boss who behaves like there is something stuck up his ass permanently – uptight, anal and always reminding us that he IS the boss even after office hours.

in between my busy schedule (as always), i managed to squeeze a day-trip to JB with sarah and eileen, stocked up my skinfood products and dabao-ed kfc chicken back across the causeway (apparently the girls said that malaysia’s kfc [original] tastes so much better than ours and it’s really true!). brought my camera along, but realised that i left the battery at home when i took it out to snap pictures – damn! anyway, all 3 of us were supposed to get out of JB by 5pm, but only managed to drag ourselves to go back at 8pm, feeling unsatisfied that there were so many other shops we wanted to cover in city square, so we’ll probably take another one of those day-trips back sometime soon.

jane and i also took jo out to practice her driving…was quite fun teaching her how to park and get around. hope this best bud of mine will be able to drive us around confidently soon. her driving’s actually fine, i guess it’s just the nerves that get to her…

jo giving her usual twist sign and jane on her phone…

jo hiding behind her steering wheel and me showing my ass to the camera…

camwhoring in the car by myself…

we made her drive us to onetwentysix @ east coast park, where we chilled out with the live band seranading us, crooning away to old favourites from not too long ago. definitely gonna’ go back there sometime…

the 3 Js – hanging out together since 1997

more pictures with jane…update again when she posts them up on facebook. ciao!

bali, bali…

yes, yes, way overdue entry:

pictures from my trip to bali with Ju last december (multitude of pictures splashed below as promised – please exercise every ounce of patience in you while wordpress loads my photos like an old fart…)

Ju & i at the airport, posing for the police officer whom we asked to take a picture for us before she checked our passports

posing with our sakae sushi dinner snack before boarding…

balancing the camera on the travellator for another shot on the way to the gate to board the flight

planted a surprise mmWah! on my dearest while he was off his guard

i couldn’t miss surfing with the balinese version of ronald mcdonald’s…

super cheap bottled drinks (so cheap till i wanted to dabao them back to singapore) – the cheapest we bought was like 30 cents?! tehbotol was so addictive although it was actually nothing special but bottled teh-o-peng

pics of our lovely spa…everyone ought to make a trip down to sekar jagat spa – it was the best out of the 3 massage places we tried in bali (yes, it was an ultra pampering trip!)

it was definitely pricey by balinese massage standards – US$60 per pax for 3 hours, but still well worth every cent paid to experience the rustic tradition of having a massage, facial and a luxurious petal bath done like the upper-class balinese

we were pampered at the spa boutique till the sky turned dark…

Ju & i survived over an hour’s worth of travelling down to ubud to try the famous babi guling ibu oka (translation = aunty oka’s roasted pig rice) yes, you see a piece of extremely fattening and oily pork skin there, but since it’s hailed by locals and tourists as an institution, i just had to risk the additional fats clumping up at my belly…

we had expensive grilled seafood (cost us close to S$100 for both at the romantic jimbaran bay)

enjoying the lovely seabreeze with beer and seafood

a closer look at our grilled seafood platter…there was fish, mussels, lobster and squid *drools*

we didn’t forget to eat as the balinese eat when we were bali – here’s us sitting on little stools by the roadside makeshift stores along an over-commercialised kuta beach having our breakfast…

here’s my bowl of mie ayam (which i happen to discover 2 dead ants after gobbling down 3/4 of it…heng i didn’t come down with diarrhoea)

do not be fooled by this humble-looking dish called bakso (meatball noodles soup)…it was amazing balinese streetside foodfare! i want another bowl…think it was 80 cents or something for a bowl!

we also visited nasi bali, thanks to kenny sia’s recommendation – food was reasonably priced and extremely yummy…will definitely re-visit the restaurant on the next trip to bali

too weak to smile for the cam while waiting for the food to arrive…

one by one…our dishes started arriving to my delight. this is mie goreng (yes, indonesians spell their ‘mee’ this way)

nasi ayam with pork satay…

best soto ayam ever tasted in my 24 years! it was so soupalicious i slurped up everything which Ju did not and proceeded to clean my spoon of any remains…*licks lips to rekindle its taste*

our soda gembira (happy soda), love this drink!

alcoholic fruit salad – i can’t remember what they added, but Ju had most of it…

…and he was smiling quite a bit after that…

…while i got really really sleepy…

visited the bali bomb blast area…erm, i guess i shouldn’t have smiled too happily at the camera, oops.

whole list of people who died in the bomb blast, majority were aussies partying that night

the actual bomb site, marked by a huge star in a circle on the ground – a van filled with explosives was parked at that spot where the taxi was that night and it blew up in front of what used to be a restaurant (the area behind the banner in the background, which is now vacant since the bombings)

our trip to turtle island in dirty life vests…

baby turtles

what do these things eat to get to this size man…

Ju & i wading in the turtle pool…it was super cool to be so near them…

couldn’t help it but i had to grab one of them and hug it or something…

i think i kinda’ terrorized the poor fella’ in my hands…

spotted lots of these pretty mini crabs that i almost trod upon with my bare feet

patting an ugly iguana

couldn’t bring myself to hold the bat so i made Ju do it…i think it would just fly away if i attempted to hold it

some bird posing with Ju

as you can tell, i am no bird lover and this one had to peck me on my head!!! OW!

i think this is a toucan…whatever la…i just liked the colourful beak, that’s all.

i think Ju made an eagle-eyed friend

both of us posing for the camera with our parachute gear

Ju preparing for his parachute ride…

up, up and away…

ok, my turn…

i was horrified, clinging for my dear life when i was up there, but it was thrilling! wanted another round as soon as i landed my feet back on the ground – the feeling was simply surreal…

we also tried jet-skiing…

someone’s looking so suave riding a jet-ski

we went snorkelling as well…

hey fishie fishie fishie!

some random padi field that we came across in a village area where everyone carries everything on their heads and walk about

had so much fun water rafting! i wanna do it again and again!

stopped by a waterfall on the way…

awesome trip we had together… 

lastly, to make the trip more memorable than i could ever expect…i was caught by utter surprise with Ju’s sudden proposal on our holiday, to which i eventually said yes