I didn’t enjoy the first class.  My sense (teacher) doesn’t look like she speaks much English, and it was hard for us (there’s 15 of us in the class) to pick up if she doesn’t explain in English.  I found it really miserable to keep up.  I mean, what does nan desu ka or kochira wa mean?  She only explains for example oshigoto means “job”.   And she writes on the board, “Oshigoto wa nan desu ka?”

What is nan desu ka???????????????   Arggghhhhhhhhh!  And suddenly she pulled three students up and asked them to ask each other the kochira wa thing.  They looked baffled; I was baffled; everyone was baffled.

I made a mental note to self:  “Get additional help.  Need dictionary.  Need Kinokuniya.”  I told Dad if I have to sit through another class being baffled, I would go nuts.  We are talking 2 hours, 2 times a week, for like 7 weeks!  He agreed (because he was baffled in class too hahahhaa) and he dropped me off at Kino the following day on his way to Gleneagles.

Hah!  I got a Japanese-English, English-Japanese dictionary from Berlitz and another book which explains way more than what my textbook (provided by school as part of course) does.  Oh yippee yay.  Yes, you could actually tell how enthusiastic I am about this.  Not.

I spent part of last night trying to memorize the hiragana table, failing miserably.  I wasn’t really concentrating actually.  So mentally drained.  And I have class tonight.  Sigh.  Finished shukudai (homework) last night.  Sigh.  Another two hours tonight.  Sigh.  I’m bored already.  Sigh.

Me @ 4:20PM

I suddenly felt stinging in my eyes and knew I had to rush to the bathroom on the pretext of nature’s call.  I knew those tears would fall… and I didn’t want my colleagues (or Dad) to question why was I crying, at 10:30am in the morning, for no reason (so it seems) at all.  I didn’t sob, I didn’t feel all the emotions that comes with crying, the tears just fell and fell freely.  It took me quite a while to compose myself, well, the world outside could think I’m on a BIG nature’s call.  As I’m writing now, I can still feel the tears forming in the sacs of my eyes.

As I sat on the throne of grace tearing, I suddenly had a bad wish.  I wished that I had died under the parang two weeks ago.  Yeah, that is bad.  Why am I not appreciating the second lease of life God has granted me?  I don’t know.  I don’t know what I am thinking right now.  Maybe I’m just talking rots because I’m unhappy today.  I used to laugh at KW thinking of ways to die, but found myself thinking that today.  Today is just not a good day.  Or perhaps, this year is just not a good one.  Nothing to laud on thus far.

This year… this year.  I’ve pretty much had it with this year.  This year pretty much sucked big time.  Well, last year wasn’t that great either but I never felt this sense of depression.  Enough suay (bad thing) already, I don’t think I can handle any more.  And I wish great things for DS and BK too, looks like we three are super suay this year.  Must be a dragon thing going on.  All three dragons in our group suay tak habis-habis (non-stop bad things).

And I know, I really need to go back to church.  I’ve been getting that nudge now and then (I assume from up above) but have been procrastinating endlessly.  I think being surrounded by God’s grace will definitely put me in a better perspective.  This Sunday?  Yes, this Sunday.

Me @ 10:54AM

TG and I arrived at the sale on time, and proceeded to our duties at the General Store.  One of the things I had to do was to sort out new clothings (probably donated by a garment factory) and put them on the hangers for display.  The only thing that slowed me down was having to check for dirt and well, ripped garments that we obviously would not able to sell.  There were at least 4 or 5 boxes in total, and boy were they dusty!  I had to hold myself from sneezing countless of times.

The whole place was packed with volunteers and the visitors trickled in soon enough.  TG and I were disappointed though, that our painted items, were priced way below market value.    I believe I had mentioned before that we would donate some of our painted items to be sold at the charity.  Little did we know that our artwork would be grossly underappreciated and underpriced.  We had given to them, the cost of the raw wooden pieces, without even costing in our time and our paints.

As a comparison, a handpainted tole piece would easily be priced 6 times the actual cost of the raw product itself.  What did they price us?  RM2-4 above the actual cost (excluding time and paints).  My beautiful heart-shaped piece which costed me RM11 to purchase, was priced at RM15 at the store. 

Work done:  5-6 layers of basecoating each front AND back, countless times of sanding down, endless minutes/hours of opaque-ing the flowers, floating work to highlight and to shade, 4 layers of varnish, almost 9 hours of work in all.  For ONE piece.  Yup.

I didn’t really mind it because it was for charity.  But I was heartbroken when I realized that we were underpriced, mostly because we did put in a lot of hard work for it, and told them to price it a minimum 3 times the price of the raw product.  It would have been easy to sell even if I were to price it up 4 times.  And this was for charity!  We were confident that if people were willing to pay 6 times in a regular store, our asking amount of 3 times was not overkill.

When TG questioned why did they underprice us by so much, one of the association’s (organizers) members noted that “People here don’t know how to appreciate art, and if we priced it more expensive, people wouldn’t buy.”  Well, go stroll along the other side of the sale and you would find a tole painting booth.  The lady there sold a simple piece for RM12!  A small, 2.5″ wooden paper weight holder with ONE painted flower.  And as a perfectionist who criticizes my own work like hell, I can’t help but notice that TG’s and my work were, in comparison, much more detail-oriented and finer.  If people were willing to pay RM85 for a simple tray, I don’t see why they wouldn’t pay RM40 for my pretty heart-shaped plaque.

Thankfully, someone DID appreciate our art pieces… TG’s old friend who had seen all her other pieces at home, and knew how much each piece would be worth in the market.  She questioned too (she too was part of the association) why were our items priced so cheap!  She grabbed every piece that we had — basically all except for one small piece that TG had painted, and which they priced RM1.50 above cost (groan) and which was sold earlier in the day before we arrived.  She said she knew how to appreciate them, and that they would make good gifts.  There you go.

When we left at about 1-ish pm, my snowflakes were still unsold.  How much were they priced, you ask?  50 cents above the cost of raw product.  I did not even cost in the Canadian-bought artificial snow paste and the rhinestones.  Sigh.  I was very tempted to just buy them all back (would cost me RM27) but I was already too demotivated from seeing my painted items sold for cheap (worse than pasar malam [night market] – lah).

As we were making our way home, TG too expressed her disappointment.  I told her, that although it was charity, painting those items was really not worth my (our) time.   I mean, I might just as well donate the cost of the items in cash!  Since it is going to be priced only a coupla bucks above cost, I don’t think I want to spend that countless hours of work on them!

Oh well… here are the items I donated… before and after my paintwork:

I tried to place them in the same position as I did in the “before” photo, but I didn’t have the pic with me to compare. 

Nieway, over and done with.  Let’s see what happens next year…

Me @ 2-ish PM
5 November 2007

I happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.  The shop I was in, was held up by two parang-wielding men (later we found out there were two others right outside the shop pacing back and forth as watchers) at 3:25pm.  I was in there for only about 2 minutes before it all happened.  Timing.  There were three customers (including self) and one child of about 4 years old, two female workers and a male worker.

Long story short:  We were unloaded of our cellphones, jewelry (I hid my watch in time at the shelf behind me), and buggers took MY handbag.  Yup.  Just mine.  Probably because I was the closest to him.  When I went to lodge a police report, the workers came in too (can you believe the police station was just a stone’s throw away) and the girl asked me if this was mine:

She said she had found it on the floor.  I remember removing it (by force so that he would have no use of the chain anyway), and putting in into the palm of his hand, before he took my handbag.  I could only come up with two theories:  that he dropped it on the floor by accident, or, that he saw that it was a cross and daren’t take it and threw it on the floor.  I personally think it’s the latter.

It was a huge hassle with the police report and stuff, and by the time everything was done with, including picking up a new cell and SIM card, it was 7:00pm.  The silver lining in this very dark cloud that was I didn’t have much money on me (around RM30), and that I had actually left my ID card and drivers’ license at home (which is a pain to get if I had lost it).  However, my total lost came up to RM4k.  I had a few designer items in the bag, and JK bought me the Gucci strap for my cell for last Christmas.  The bag itself wasn’t expensive, fortunately.

But I must say that through this, my heart was jumping yes, for fear that they could have hurt any one of us.  And yes, I am heartsick over the things that I had lost in this incident, not much so my belongings, but more of the things that people had given me as a gift and that was in the bag which had been taken away from me. 

However, I am grateful, that He was watching over me to make sure that I did not get in harm’s way.  And for every dark cloud that I had come across yesterday, I actually saw a silver lining.  It took me a long while to fall asleep last night.  I prayed like I had never prayed before, singing His praises for keeping me safe from evil and wrong do-ers, and keeping the others with me safe as well.

I couldn’t ask for more.

Me @ 1:09PM

I made some minor adjustments to the original pattern, which called for pearl buttons.  I couldn’t find the right-sized pearl buttons to match, so instead, I used the buttons for the cluster of flowers.  Oh, I added the flowers too, thought that it would make it look even more girly.    In place of the buttons, I made the ribbon-tie.  I thought it looked okay, doesn’t it?  *keeps fingers crossed*

Mom actually thought this was for MiMi hahahha!    I have been tasked to crochet her one soon, too… 

Me @ 12:21PM

Finally, I get to try J.Co donuts!  I’ve been hearing about this donut for quite a while now, but the one of the two times I was at the Pavillion, I couldn’t bring myself to stand in the very long line waiting to buy just… well, donuts.

That’s only because I’m not that big a donut person.  The only brand of donuts that I was addicted to was Krispy Kreme.  And that also, from one particular Washington outlet across the border from Canada. 

And I really wasn’t willing to queue.  Why this time then?  Coz I got Dad to queue for me (TQ muchies Dad) haha!  Dad was attending a function at the Pavillion and I suddenly thought of J.Co.  Luckily, Dad was also curious the fuss around these donuts (obviously, I was raving about it the night before, without actually having tried it  ).  Curious enough (and he also liked Krispy Kremes) to stand in line to buy some

Some you say???  Some = 2 dozen donuts.   I gave a half dozen to CL and another half dozen to YT.  On hindsight, I should have asked dad to buy 3 dozen.  I initially didn’t think that we could finish so many donuts.  Boy, was I wrong.

Presenting… the donuts…

Yummy yummy slurp slurp!  Dad actually ate 3!  I think it was 3, or was it 4?  haha!  Here are the names of the donuts (as found on their website, which did not have a complete list):

The one to the right of Cheese Me Up was a  Blueberry thing.  The one in between Miss Green Tea and Coco Loco tasted like Oreo… not sure about the on to the left of Miss Green Tea, but it looks like something with custard.   

And more pictures of gooey donuts… ah… sweet!

So yeah, I think I’ve almost become a donut addict.  The instructions for reheating was to have it in the micro for 8 seconds, but I found that it was not even necessary.  It was still soft and fluffy this morning, slurps!

Me @ 11:52AM

Oh, I just discovered that the Cuba yarn is by Adriafil… hee.

And this arrived for me in the mail about two weeks ago (and I forgot all about it).

Flower motif cards by Hamanaka!  I can’t find them anywhere around here, so I got ‘em off Yoko Lab in Hong Kong.  Cost:  HK$27 each, postage was HK$25.  Haven’t the guts to try it out yet… soon… soon… with the mohair yarn I got yesterday!

I’ve also been roped in by TG for a charity fund-raising event for 4 November 2007.  It’s gonna be a bazaar-like thing, the volunteers (ala me) pay for whatever stuff they want to put up for sale, and all proceeds from this go to charity.  TG asked me to paint/craft a few items to be sold.  Her friend, will be manning a booth at the event and will craft greeting cards.  So, our booth is going to be craft booth I think.  I heard that there’s gonna be someone stringing crystal jewelry too!

These are the pieces I’m in charge of.    I still haven’t yet a clue on what to do with them but I would have to complete this little project by next weekend…

Me @ 1:36PM

The back of the shrug is still incomplete.  Demotivated from the wrong-fit issue.

Me @ 1:07PM