Thanksgiving ..

Yesterday was Thanksgiving Day.
Not having the slightest idea about it, we somehow 'celebrated'.
It was evening when my hall-mate called for an invitation to dinner at Bella Italia.
Sounds posh, huh. Usually I wouldn't even consider going, knowing roughly how much it's going to cost. But somehow I agreed without much thought this time.
But the conversation that took place was the funny part,
Ring* ring*
(In Cantonese)
Alex : Hey, do you want to go dinner together with us ?
Me : Oh! Who's us?
Alex : Me, Chris, and Becky ...(Before i even have the chance to answer ..) You come la ..you are working already right, it shouldn't be a problem for you, come la, once in a long time right? ..
Me : I didn't say no also! See you guys later he he he

I guess I give the impression of being STINGY??? I would say it's because I'm COST SAVING all the time that makes people think I'm calculative.
Situations where I don't follow them on a weekend trip because of the train fare, several times. LOL
I'm working abit now, so I guess i can flex my budget (^^,)

We ended up in a dimly-lit-with-candles Italian Restaurant. Romantic huh?.
The food was nice, all except for the carbonara which was a lil' plain and tasteless.
Overall it was alright.
When we decided to call for bill, Becky suddenly said she has a Multi-store Discount Card for students and Bella Italia is listed in it, 20% off! YAY! Unexpected gain!
So the bill was bearable, we all forked out equal amount.
*will not reveal the price, he he he*

Happy Thanksgiving

Implied action ..or not ?

Not doing/saying something, doesn't imply the opposite.
Doing/saying something is implies whatever the action/speech is.

But if you were doing something regularly to the effect that has positively or negatively affect people around you, once you stop doing it, it implies otherwise.

e.g. Relationship.
Situation 1
'Nice guy' gives 'girl' a hug and a speech of love everyday. One day he stops doing so, she thinks he stop loving and caring for her.
Situation 2
'Silent guy' never knew how to express his feelings to 'girl', never showed it in action. Miraculously, out of the blue he felt romantic and bought a bouquet of flower for her. Girl feels out of the world.

e.g. Friendship.
This applies to the beginning stage of friendship, whereby 2 individuals are getting to know each other better. It takes one active and one passive to arise in those 2 person, probably switching in turns. Somehow I believe in a certain personal contribution of some sort in order for a friendship to progress . Once one of them stays passive all the time, it hardly moves from where it is anymore. ''It takes two to tango''. But of course, it only takes more effort at the beginning, like every other thing we do. After which, you cling on to each other like link-chains effortlessly.

e.g. Family
...........whenever we are with them, I guess I can speak on behalf of everyone that, we never imply anything through our actions, or at least never thought of it, because it's just pure sincerity. They are afterall, the reason why 'we' are 'we' today,right ?

HAHA just a thought that I had while walking to squash court today (something must'av triggered it, don't know what), but i'm sure everyone already notice this fact lol.

o.O or i don't even know if it makes any sense ..

Bladder Express ..

CNN EMERGENCY!
I would like to take the opportunity to highlight this issue.
Public Toilet facility is insufficient in Manchester.
They are sooo stingy in providing public toilets. I don't know whats the idea.
In Malaysia, public toilet is as good as ATM machine on its availability, wait! Even better!
Every corner of the street, wherever there's coffee shop, there's toilet.
It's quite a common sense to know places like Mcdonalds, KFC, Starbuck, Burger king, etc etc whatever that falls under the category of 'chain-stores', has public toilets installed as part of their service.

Here's the contrary, Manchester City Centre.
A place where one would imagine or expect high facilities services such as, pedestrian walking, efficient bus system, cash machines, etc etc. To make the place even more attractive, they have decorative like gardens, statues, benches to relax, horses to take picture with, all these plus a floor fountain. Who would've thought that they don't support the freedom to let out faeces and urine.
Nobody said it, but at least it's implied so.

Let me enlighten you. In the entire city centre, I only know of 2 available toilets. One is a container located somewhere at the corner of the garden. Where you have to pay to use.( I don't know how much because i don't intend to pay)
2nd, is located in the building of supposedly highly promoted and recommended for tourist and locals - Manchester Arndale. The UK's largest inner-city shopping centre and has 240 stores.
Sadly only 1 toilet in premise. I'm in awe.
There was once where I needed to use the loo badly, from afar I spotted burger king, I ran for its rescue, only to curse frantically.
Can you imagine, Burger King. And No, there isn't any toilet in Starbuck, KFC, subway etc etc.
Since then, I know well enough that I should empty my bladder before going out.
Conclusion is, due to the fact that there isn't enough pee pee facilities, many resolve to pee-ing on any street corner/alley they can find. (not implying that I did! ..not denying either HAHA)

Reporting Live from cow's bladder crying in agony, bethecow.blogspot.com!, Manchester UK

Today's weather forecast shows ..cloudy ..

..

Weekend to weekend ..

I cant keep track of time anymore. I know it's occuring to everyone that Chinese New Year 2008 just happened not long ago, and now you're lookin forward to replenishing your lil' piggy bank content containing your $$ you've received in red packets and used up from this year. Quite unfortunately for me, away from home, away from family, this is the 1st time in my life I'm not about to celebrate Ho! Ho! Ho! and Qong Hee Fatt Choi . (This is not self-pity,lol)

*I'm straying away from what I intended to write*

I was saying, that time passes so quickly it's scary. I think it's because of the effect of having a routine. Much similar to one I have in Malaysia. Either it's pathetic or people don't change much in a span of time, the fact that I havent changed much. Still, time flies.

here's what motivates me to look forward to tomorrow without much effort ..

• I look forward to mondays, for squash games with the squashy gang.
  
• For tuesdays, A day with no class (HELL YEAH!). A new episode of Heroes. And chance to cook myself a nice dinner =)

• For wednesdays, I would have Squash matches against other university (we're up against Uni of Liverpool tomorrow) - Either side is gonna get their ass kicked, bet it's theirs ^^
  
• Thursdays, the weekly series are ought to be out by now. A weekly dose of japanese comics, anime, sitcoms, house MD.
  
• Fridays - Just the fact that its a friday causes you to scream WOOHOO! This is part of being a commoner like myself. Ecstatic form of relieve really, just to know it's weekend.
  
• Saturdays & Sundays - This is the 2 day you look forward to, no reason needed. Ha ha
  

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Last weekend ended quite differently. For a change, to get a feel of the culture here, I decided to go out with Ben and Shereen for a drink. We've now redefined the Malaysian term ''yam cha'' from having teh tarik in mamak stall, to having a pint of lager (a cup of beer)(btw, those who didn't know what pint of lager is, I didn't either)

Saturday

First, we headed down to Student Union, where it's cheaper to drink. Had a pint. Played pool with the locals there. Me and Ben VS Guy 1 and Guy 2 (whatever their name was). They were much better players, there's no need to further mention the outcome of the game :( They were funny enough though, we took pictures, one of em' took out a semi-pro camera out of nowhere! Picture is with them and i'm tryin to get it asap.

Student Union closed at 12.30am. We decided to adjourn to another place called Footage. Ben's been there before and said it's reasonable to drink. So there we are. We had a lil chat and then moved on to a toy machine. Something happened. Ok, Shereen fell on the floor at the end of the happening. As she gracefully fell, the bouncer was walking by, and he thought me and Ben was bullying her, only to realise after a split second that we've just lost the final stage of winning a minor prize from the toy machine. Yeah, we bellowed in disappointment that it could be heard within 10 metres radius, people stared. Remember the music was blasting, blame the lagers.

The minor prize was - a tamagochi. Shereen wanted it sooooo bad, she fell (truth is she tripped) in disappointment when I lost the last level. Of course she wouldn't blame me, I was the only one who reached that level. Heh.

We then made friends with some people from Uni of Salford there.

This is how they say goodbye. Cheers.

Sunday

Verve, the recruitment agency I currently work for, to be given jobs like waitering in a hotel whenever there's an event , and being stationed in a kiosk at football stadium handling till machine-selling burgers, beers, and snacks etc etc.

Well they had an early christmas party. All staff were invited. Not all went. We did and together with Shereen's brother, Ken and his gang who has been here in UK for years. Drank quite a bit there.We went back early to celebrate one of em' guy's (CK) birthday. Had steamboat at their very posh apartment (to me it seems so) and it's slightly less expensive compared to where i'm staying.Dang.It was fun.

Check out the upcoming band. He he. Ben, William, n Me

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Oh. Oh. What happened today reminded me of what ale blogged about 'absent-mindedness

You know, things like throwing your socks into the dustbin instead of the laundry basket. Well for my case, a rather mild one, I squeezed out some hair conditioner and splash it over my face, Oooo what a feeling, refreshingly greasy. I don't know what made my motor memory think that it's a facial cleanser. Usually the sequence is - Shampoo, conditioner, shower gel, face cleanser as last. It got off-track.

Now you'll never beat this. My best friend Mr.Nicholas Quek and his out of the world absent mind (only sometimes,but when it happens, listening to it the 2nd time still cracks me up).

• hey look, it's night-time, decided to brush his teeth, Nick heads to the toilet picks up his toothbrush, spins open the cap of a facial toner and conveniently pour some on his toothbrush not realising it's not toothpaste.


• One time, he was doing face mask, so he used a bandana to hold up his hair. After he was done with it, he thought of taking a shower to clean off, only to shampoo his bandana in the shower.


• He was talking on the phone with me one time when I was still in Malaysia, he got off his car, locked it, and checked his pockets to see if he left anything. ''Oh I forgot my phone'' he said, I said ''oh okay''. He unlocked the car, searched high and low. Suddenly it struck him. He's holding it in his right hand to his ears LOL. I did not think about it either at that time, but when he explained what happen, I laughed so hard over the phone. LOL.
  

He's such a breath of fresh air. He ain't heavy, He's my best friend.

Maybe I exaggerated a lil bit ..hehe, he don't sound so bad to me now ..

Notice how he says okay as ''OCK KEH'' lol, and towards the end he stared at my friend for talking ..thats why I moved the camera away.

Virgin Post

My first attempt to blog was mentally materialized. I had an idea on how its going to be, though.
I, then took a bigger step few months later, inpired by god knows what/who, I founded myself a blog(I don't even remember the name of that old blog), but stared blankly when it comes to beautifying it. Alt+F4. Shut down.

Third attempt, I wanted to bail, yet again. No, actually not really. This time I was sure it's going to happen. Why? because the circumstances has changed. Its been two months now since I came to Manchester to do my nerdegree - Accounting & finance. 1st month was busy, getting things done and settled, time crawled like cow dragging the paddy. 2nd month was less hectic, I could use the time to blog, I thought, a new pastime.
Marcus guided me on putting up CBOX, nicky helped design my banner, it was sailing through. Here it is, a breakthrough, my virgin post. *Pat on the back*

Tomorrow(friday) is the day i dislike attending lectures and classes. 3 hours back-to-back, 2 hours of which I have to endure Mr. John keenan and his extremely annoying irish accent, which sounds like he's mocking Goofy from Disney since the day he was born. Doesn't seem like he's going to stop anytime soon. At least goofy is smiley, Mr Keenan is plain miserable.
You want prove? I'll give you proof in my next post. I'm bringin' a camera to class tomorrow.

I might be braggin' a lil', but I swear to you I was frowning the whole time for the first two of his lectures, till my forehead wrinkled. I'm sure it wasn't there before. Then I thought, i'll have to live with it for the whole year, might as well try to accept it. What I did was simply; imitate that bailey's irish creamy coffee accent. After every sentence of his, I would mutter silently to myself exactly what he said, the way he said it. It went on for about 10 mins until I realise i've lacked behind, too engrossed with his words that I didn't get its meaning, so I started scribbling notes from the person beside me. Before I know it, I was listening to him intently minus the usual difficulty and agitation. I have successfully fine-tuned myself to his lecture. We speak the same language now (^^,) Cheers mate.

The past two months has been great, no doubt. I'm cool being away from home, not the type that goes into depression (I think?). But there was at least more than several times had I stop at my tracks and thought about my beloved back in Malaysia.
Beloved

• Family
• Friends
• Food

Hey look, it's tripple F.