GE aftermath

The day I arrived KL, my heart and mind felt so unsettled...I guess it's because it was such 'rush hour' for  me since the time I woke up vote. I didn't get the chance to say goodbye to my cousins and even my dad ( who suddenly disappeared right after I reached home from voting pfft). Had to rush to the airport since my mum had to catch a flight to Tawau and I had to catch a flight back to KL an hour after her. That feeling was just...I don't know how to explain it. You're in two different places at the same day so you just don't know how to settle down yet. Even when I reached KL, my heart and mind was still in KK and that kind of feeling is just...confuses me and I felt like I just wanted to sit still and not to speak with anyone at the moment haha. The reason I had to rush back to KL was also to catch Andrea Bocelli's concert which was held on the very same day where the GE13 is going on. But because of the 'unsettled' feelings that was crowding in my mind, I don't even know how to react when I saw Andrea Bocelli making his appearance on stage. But, he was amazing...like he can be one of the singers that can blow your mind, seriously. But again, it was pretty hard to be in the zone during the concert as my mind will start wondering around so I had to use my entire force to focus on Bocelli and be amazed by his voice :) That's probably the reason why I kept quiet most of the time too. 

Anyway, the GE is over and done, but truth to be told the result was not what I expected to be and that's where I truly realised that the politics here are played dirty. Really dirty. It feels like the effort on people participating in Bersih rally in the hopes of a good clean election was a waste because at the end  of the day, people are still playing dirty and the corruption still goes on. Then, the news went crazier the next day when the Chinese were blamed hence the 'Chinese Tsunami' happened. How can the Chinese not hate this sort of statement right? Even I was pissed at this. I've mentioned that I don't talk politics here in my blog and I may not look like the most patriotic Malaysian but I do want a change, especially when there's so much corruption going on and when I personally felt that I am not truly satisfied with the current government who's governing the country. I believe a lot of us wanted to see a difference and most importantly to see that this 13th GE is gonna good and most importantly, clean.

We can't give up just yet. If we know what we need to fight for, then we should continue fighting...I mean Rome wasn't built in a day right? Let's just hope and pray that eventually we will see changes...it might be really slow but you never know what's gonna happen next. The Blackout rally held recently in Kelana Jaya Stadium did proved that a lot of Malaysians wanted to change and are united to make the change.  Kudos for those who attended...I wasn't one of them since I really had to do some work at home at that time hehe~

As for my hometown Penampang, I am hoping for the best as well. I believe a change in Penampang is good albeit there are still people who probably don't like it. But...let's just see how it goes. It might be a good thing, it might probably not. In my opinion, if we don't let the new 'people' a chance, we might not be able to see any changes. The newly elected MP need to stay strong and work hard. I know that I have families involved in both side of the parties, but I gotta know how to separate family and politics. Plus as an individual, I also need to know where I stand and who should I vote for at the end of the day. After this GE is over, my family is still important to me. So it's all good yeah? Just wanted to convey my best wishes to the newly elected Penampang MP Darell Leiking, I hope you'll do your best. It seems like when he won in Penampang, everyone's claiming that they are related to him haha...I guess I should join the bandwagon as well. But if you look at my family tree, I am related to him...first cousin to be exact :D

Voted!

I've done my part and went to vote today :) My voting station was in my old high school, St. Mike...man I miss that place and the classroom that was used was my old classroom when I was in Form 4. I went together with my dad and Merl as early as 8am and it took me almost an hour to reach my turn. All in all, it was indeed a good experience for a first time voter haha. It's nice to be able to see a lot of familiar faces and make instant friends while I was queuing up as well. Love this kampung life here haha. Anyway, my time is SOOO limited, I need to pack and head to the airport real soon. Seriously hate this feeling because I don't feel like going back to the Peninsula yet! But I've no choice, dang it. Anyway, see you on the west side. Hope everything's gonna be A-OK once the result is out tonight.

 

Dayumm I miss my school!

Kopi sejuk for breakfast. :D

The time is now

In case you don't already know, tomorrow is the day where the General Election will be going on. Malaysians, including yours truly will go and cast their votes and after that...we will just see how it goes. I am a first time voter and I know I don't talk much regarding politics in my blog, but it doesn't mean that I am ignorant of the things that has been happening in my country. So I am glad that I'm able to go back to my hometown and exercise my right to vote here. I can feel the Penampang spirit  where the kampung people are participating all the campaigns on the party that they are rooting for. It's just great to see this kind of 'motivating spirit'. Looking at the posters, flags and banners that are placed everywhere made me felt like..."THIS IS IT! It's time!" I told my mom that I gotta help and fight for the people in Penampang haha. Anyway, whichever party you choose to vote, I am hoping it will be the wise and best choice for you. May the force be with all of us and may God bless our country for a good and clean election tomorrow. Keep calm and vote on! Penampang here we go!

Happening in my kampung last night and today.

Coffee time in Seoul

I don't normally take leave from work unless I am travelling or going back home. It's usually working all day, everyday for me here but since I have 4 extra leaves to clear before it gets forfeited, I decided to take two days off from work on Monday and Tuesday. Today is Labour Day so basically I've got 3 days off from work! But then I came to realise that, not being at work can be a little boring...I totally felt like I've no idea how to spend the rest of my off days. Maybe because I am so used to working and being surrounded by my workmates hence I am not used to staying at home on weekdays without doing something productive. But to have off day(s) from work is not entirely bad...you just gotta find things to do so that your day will be fulfilled and not wasted. The first two days during my leave,  I made a visit to the income tax office, finished reading a book and did some revision on Adobe InDesign so...I guess I didn't really waste my off days heh. It's only today that I woke up at noon (yikes!) because I was out till late the night before and decided to sleep in without turning on my alarm. I'll be going to work tomorrow but I'll be on leave again on Friday since I am flying back to KK! I'm very excited to go back but my trip is TOO short! Well, I can't complain much instead Imma try to spend time with my fam and cuzzies over there because starting next week, I'll be hustlin' all day, errday again haha. 

I can't believe it's already MAY! Like seriously, I haven't really savour the month of April yet and now it's already a brand new month? Actually, I've got TONS of things in my mind right now and I've also been overthinking on a lot of stuff to the point that my mind can't even shut down when it is time for me to sleep. I gotta learn to take one step at a time and not let the people/things that are around me influence all my crazy thoughts. But it's just so hard... *sigh* Anyway, let's not talk about that for a moment and I shall continue posting on my Korea trip. Today's edition of my Korea trip will be about cafés. Thinking about cafes, it totally brings me to this song by BIGBANG called Café :) It's a nice song cos T.O.P's voice is like super deep and combined with GD's falsetto = AWESOME!

There's a strong cafe culture in Seoul, just like when I visited Melbourne last year. Everybody seems to love coffee a lot and when you visit Seoul, you can find cafes everywhere you go from franchise cafes like Cafe Bene, Hollys, Twosome and also a lot of indie cafes as well. I made a point to visit some of the cafes in Seoul since I friggin' love coffee and my colleague (who travelled with me) also suggested that we should take our time to visit the cafés while we are there as well. Thankfully she's also a coffee lover like me :D Most of the franchise cafés here are quite big and has two floors to accomodate more people.  The interiors are very nice too and if you observe the indie cafes, the interiors can be one of a kind and more different compared to the franchise cafés. I kinda wondered how these indie cafés can survive though since there are so many cafe competitors out there. I didn't managed to go and visit a lot of cafes to be honest...most of the time I just passed by the cafés but didn't went in and tried their coffee. But among all the coffees I had in Seoul, I would say I love the Vanilla Latte in Cafe Bene the best. The taste is just right and smooth. Oh, the hot cocoa in Lotteria tasted good as well! 

By now, you should know that I always favour coffee over beer/liquor hehe. I mean it's not like I don't like alcohol but I guess coffee clicks with me better which is why I won't say no when my friends ask me for coffee session...but I don't really get much chance to have coffee session these days but in a way it's a good thing too because I can save up money plus too much coffee is not exactly good right? I think it must be one of the reasons why I had nose bleed when I arrived back from Seoul. The next time I visit Seoul, I'd definitely want to venture to more of the indie coffee shops especially those in Hongdae and see what each of the cafés can offer :) Well, enjoy the photos! I'll see if I can find the time to blog while I'm in KK :D

Left: Hot Cocoa from Lotteria & Vanilla Latte from Caffe Bene
Right: Latte from Paris Baguette, Vanilla Latte from Twosome+ Coffee & Latte from Dunkin' Donuts. 

Caffe Bene, located in Cheonggyecheon. You can find this café in almost every part of Seoul.

Twosome+ Coffee with Choi Siwon (Super Junior). Located in Myeongdong.

You'll be greeted with a huge poster of Mr. Choi haha~
He's really good looking but I'm super biased over this other Mr. Choi. I actually
was looking for Teddy's Twosome Coffee but I can't find it!

 

 

 

Hello Kitty Café spotted in Hongdae. Didn't managed to go in though.

Indie cafe in Samcheongdong. It looks so cosy.

 

 

Hongdae has A LOT of indie cafes. This street is filled with tons of 'em!

 

 

Bloom

It seems like I don't even have the time to feel the post-holiday blues because I came back to work immediately on Monday since there are tons of work (well, more like tons of paperwork) that I need to deal with in the office. After 9 fantastic days in Korea, my holidays have come to an end...and I'm kinda bummed about it because I still wish I can just go wandering around Seoul and visit more coffee shops but you know that good things must come to an end right? I shall resume to work hard in order to play hard again haha. Not sure if there's gonna be another travel trip again for me this year...well, there's Manila but I might not be going there after all *sigh* On other note, I am heading back to KK next week!!! The main reason why I decided to head home in this super short trip is to exercise my right to vote for the upcoming GE13 and of course to spend time (albeit a short one) with my fam and besties because I miss them.

Anyway, the day I arrived in KL (last Sunday), I was greeted with a massive nose bleed like...it came out through my nostrils out of a sudden! I was pretty surprised because it's really rare for me to get nose bleed that easily but I guess the sudden change of weather, from cold (in Korea) to hot (in Malaysia) has led me to get one. Yesterday morning when I woke up to brush my teeth, to my horror I had another nose bleed attack again! It was also the same, the blood flows like a river from my nostrils. It got me thinking whether the second time I got this nose bleed was because I was watching Jay Park's new MV teaser, Welcome (he was taking his top off) or maybe I was watching The Avengers because there were a lot of hunk men in the movie the night before lol~ But I doubt that was the reason cos I think my body was still probably adapting the sudden change of weather. My solution was  to drink this super bitter Chinese herbal tea in the hopes that the heat in my body might cool down soon and oh, I gotta lay low on my coffee consumption too since I've been drinking it almost everyday while I was in Seoul :P

Well, since I am back I should really put more effort in blogging...I dunno what happened because I used to post like at least 10 entries in a month but now, to even post 5 entries seem so hard. Maybe I've lost that blogging interest? Or maybe my friends seem to be able to write such good stuff in their blog that I felt somewhat pressured hence I don't even dare to do an update hahaha. Whatever it is, I'll try my very best  to update regularly but I can't promise that my blog entires might be a mind blowing one lol. It's probably gonna be those what I did daily kinda post. But for now, I wanna share about my travel experience in Korea and it'll be divided into different posts so come back and check from time to time yeah?

It's spring season in Korea at the moment but one thing you must need to know is that the weather in Korea is WEIRD. It can be all sunny and nice during the daytime but when evening arrives, the temperature might drop drastically and out of the sudden, it gets cold. But I was lucky enough to be able to witness the blooming of cherry blossoms while I was in Seoul. It was...beautiful! I mean I've seen cherry blossom trees before but I've never seen a whole row of cherry blossoms in the same place so it was a pretty good experience for me. One of the best thing I did while I was in Seoul was to ride a bicycle at Yeouido Park to see all the cherry blossom blooming around the park and also rode along the Han river. Such an awesome feeling because I haven't rode a bicycle in a REAL long time and having the chance to do so during this spring season was good :) 

There were also a lot of cherry blossoms when I visited Gyeongbokung Palace, which is only about 20 minutes walk from the place I stay. I've been doing a hell lot of walking and taking the subway train all day everyday in Seoul. Not that I mind, I love it! Except for the rush hour in the subway. Staying in KL has trained me to walk like men or maybe I just  have strong Kadazan calves haha. More updates soon!

Cherry blossoms at Yeouido Park.

Most fun thing that I did in Seoul was to go for a bike ride! LOVE it!

Spotted cherry blossoms during my visit to Gyeongbokgung Palace.

Evening view of a street filled with cherry blossoms.