Coming out of my closet?

In life, mistakes or weakness come as a part of the parcels. Ignore or denying it is like living in a cocoon, or similar as building a sand castle, no strong foundation in our life. So, I want to admit my mistake or weakness.

I realized that at times I might have sound too pompous, almost like unreal person when declaring my love for reading likes there nothing that I would do besides spending my whole life reading, as if I was borne to read. I am the good girl who stays home, reading.

I want to come clean, just like the Ricky Martin.*wink*

The secret is that I love tableware and cookware as much as I love reading.

There goes my biggest weakness. People close to me might have known about it, but I just felt that I wanted to say it out loud.

There is a room in my apartment that I’ve dedicated for tableware and cookware. In my mother’s house, a part of unoccupied room upstairs was occupied with my precious collection, purchased while I was working, before coming to Japan. Not exactly the real collections, just few things that I thought would look good and nice to use, for my future house. *smile* *dreaming*

I believe that it all started when I received my first set of gift; as a little girl I was given a cooking set. I can’t remember what had happened to them. I can’t even remember the set; it was my mother who told me about it. It cannot be my fault of not having any memory about it because I was very very very young at that time. Anyway, I do believe that the somehow the impression of receiving the gift had registered somewhere unconsciously in the memory banks.

Whenever I take a look at food, real-life or net-life, it was the plate, spoon, bowl, cups or whatever the serving utensils used, those are the first things that catch my eyes.

Stressful heart can easily be mend if I stroll along the shopping areas full of those two things. Nowadays, it becomes easier because of the web life. I will be breezing through Yahoo JP, Amazon JP or Rakuten websites during the hard days at the laboratory, after school.

Apart from that I can’t thank Google enough for providing the Google language translation. It makes my shopping spree much much easier, which means that I have to be more careful with the monthly budget. I don’t want to end up penniless at the end of every month. Or should I say, yenless? *wink*

Yes, dear. I am guilty as charge!

Rabbit's rides

I was born in the year of a rabbit, according to the Chinese horoscope. Rabbit’s person was said to be lucky, as my foster mother of Hiroshima mentioned to me during one afternoon.

Nevertheless, since horoscope is not my forte, none of my comment will ever justify the statement.

Rabbit or not, I always believe that God have been very kind to me. The roller-coaster rides are just a way of Him to remind, show and push me forward. I’ll pray for the best! (^-^)

Ode to an old man

At the end of the day, we are all just human.

He is a human, full of flaws, as any man in the world would. As much as I sometimes loathe him, there are parts of him which I shall always be grateful for. No human is perfect. Positively said, the life here could have been worst.

He was a handsome ambitious young man who wants to make a place in the world by putting his work before the family. But, it never cross my mind that he would let the family down because he provided them enough, at time I thought it was more than enough; both money and love. If only he was not the old generation of Asian parents, then he would probably  say ‘I love you’ more.

The man was borne shortly after the Second World War, with a dramatic family background that can make any woman shedding a tear or two. Yet, determined to be a gentleman like his father was, through education he mastered his way up.

Now, at the edge of retirement, he is an old man, who needed much rest.

As much as the science is moving forward, and so are his mind and knowledge. Nevertheless, our body will never keeping up with those two.

Though he is not as sharp as he used to be, no one can take away the pride, dignity and the experiences. I believe that I am now dealing with his pride.

P/s I saw him fallen asleep sitting in front of his computer desk during yesterday's lunch break. I wish he would take a day or two to recharge his body before coming to the lab after a long journey out of country.

The rain vs cherry blossom

This week the flower named sakura started to bloom (cherry blossom season) in Tokushima, the two weeks time during spring that are awaited by almost everybody here. It is supposed to be a good season, but then again we can only hope as nothing can predict what nature has to give. Since the last few days, rain poured heavily non-stop. The temperature dropped again, around 12 degree Celsius, cold weather for Tokushima considering this season is spring.

We can just wish that the sun will show his face at the end of the week. I want to have hanami, picnic under the sakura’s tree with friends, the final one before I say goodbye to the land called Nihon.

The experiment

One thing that I love about doing the experiment, we can repeat the process until succeeds, that’s the spirit. And as Einstein said, “Doing the same thing over and over but expect a different result is stupid”.

In research, we repeat the experiments but each time, we will use a slightly different technique. And these processes of repeating the similar experiments have benefited the human race, e.g. to be able to write at night under the 'bright electric light' was end result the repeatable work of Thomas Alva Edison.

So, if a colleague ask me to just simply let go of something, I will have to say, ‘I need to digest this because I believe that once I understands the processes, will also understand what when wrong, thus it can be accepted and finally, I can let it go. If I want to repeat this, I will not take the same route again.’

The churning processes take time but in the near future, I shall try to make it easier and faster. I could use Sis Naz advice; take it easy and one step at a time. Am I right? Or I got it wrong again? Hehehe!

She was here

She was here last night, just before the first light of the sun shined on the land of Tokushima.

I was very delighted, excited and happy to see her tough in my mind; I knew that it was impossible for me to see her again. She, in her white school uniform was there, standing and surrounded by a few younger girls and she seemed to be teaching them of something.

I took a hard look at her just to confirm that it was her. I knew her short hair style, just above the shoulder, and that familiar round face. She then looked up, saw me and flashed her winning bright smile.

I asked her, what she’s doing here; her presence puzzled me a bit. She, out of everybody that I knew, was here. It was a long time since I saw her, almost two decades.

Smiled, that’s all her replied.

Anyway, I wanted to hug her and told her that I missed her a lot. But as I approached her, she was fast moving away, smile and gone in a second.

That was when I woke-up.

Kak Pah, as she was known adorably amongst our batch in SAS. She left us 19 years ago. We were friend since Form One but after SRP I went to MARA College. Since the school holidays between MARA school and government school differed, I made an effort to go and see them all at school during a MARA school break.

That was the last time I saw her. About a month later someone told me that she had passed away.

After her death, some friends did mention that she acted strangely few months before her death. She was sick but nobody knew exactly what the disease was.

Me at that time was a very self-obsessed-person whose goal was success never took notice of anything beside myself.

However, during the visit a friend did say something that I thought weird, ‘Kak Pah wanted to see you, go. Don’t let her wait, she’ll get angry’ but I never take time to churn it out. Knowing her as she was, her middle name was never anger. Nevertheless, I just shrugged the statement off. We met and talked before the bell which ended the recess-time rang. That was the last of her.

I still have her IC photo that she gave me. I still remember her. But I never dreamt of her, not even once.

But her death was the second death in my life which did affected me somehow. Probably, the stresses that I am going through in my life have shaken-up the memories in my head really bad.

But, if she was really here to visit me, I am happy because she looks happy.

The instinct

One quality that I have and most women in the world shares, the instinct. It does come handy at time but if I do rely on it all the time, it will become a habit. This means that I will not go out if the aura around me are all negatives, which remind me of a card reader  with a crystal ball living in a caravan somewhere in surburb of wet european country wearing a long flowery skirt with untidy hair.

Oh! How I digress.

Actually, this post is about my Professor and I, again. Finally, I think I knew the reason of me avoid him at all cost.

Even if I went to see him, the outcomes were usually leaving me with more doubts and more questions.

Though people said I am clever, but the reality is I am not THAT clever. I am a person who easily confused and hard to understand the principle of something. So, if people talk to me in a colorful words and full of wisdoms, they are actually helping in making me confused because I tend to take the conclusion the other way round. It has been prove again and again and again since my schooling day.

As the boss love to show off his American English, he used to spent a good 5 minutes to explain something that can be finished in a breath.

At the end, we always have the clashed of ideas and understanding.

So, the paranoid (and guilty me?), taking the easy way out, stay away from him. ;)

Why? Because instinct said that he would brought more problems that the ones that I already have. The truth is; it is not the 'instinct'. It's just a pattern that developed after sometimes.

And me, 'avoid conflict', a real quality of Scorpio.

The Zen way

I went to visit a few zen Buddhist temples in Kyoto.

Probably nothing much to say about the buildings or decorations since I believe zen is all about meditation and being calm and comfort with one self. It is a part of Buddhism teaching. Can look out wiki for more information.

However, I like the garden most. The zen garden was simple which reflect the simplicity of zen life and were made from rocks and trees as in the pictures. I don't know the significant of the big rocks or the small rocks but many people were flashing out their camera lights taking pictures of the rocks or the gardens. And I did that too. The simplicity of the garden mesmerized me and those few copies of pictures would later help me designed my own zen garden. I wanted to make my own zen garden at home back in Malaysia; which I think would give some nice touch to my future house....;)

The zen temples in my opinion, offered the peacefulness (the zen-way) for a person who is looking for it, by mediatating but not praying. I can see no Buddha statue or prayer altar, or probably they were hidden in some other areas which I was not so sure of. But, most of the areas were open area, facing the garden and allocated with many cushions to sit-on for meditiation.

But we, my friends and I did our own brand of zen meditiation, we did asar prayer peacefully without hassle in the temple...:)