Anticipating 08/08/08!

05/03/05 : first date to Princess On Ice
25/03/05 : officially an item
08/02/08 : officially engaged
08/08/08 : *drums her fingers not-so-patiently on the table*

MySpace Countdown

i wish the clock would tick faster. i wish somebody could speed me to august. it’s two-months too-long!

oh alright, alright, i’ll behave now.

Not Just Another Fairytale

I was going through my private blog that I used to share with my cousin Haniza, and came across this post I posted wayyyy back, when I first started to know aien. It was about our first date actually, and I thought it’s time to share with all of you out here. :)

a lovely evening, lovely event, lovely ending. :)

dear diary,

last night was one of the nights when everything was so right, you didn’t want it to end. it was magical, almost perfect. went out earlier with dee dee to buy a new dress for me for last night’s event. it did cost me a fortune, but it didn’t matter. i wanted last night to be different, i wanted last night to be something that i could remember my whole my life ; i wanted to be a princess. and it was worth it. i felt like a princess, and was being treated like one last night, infact. :)

aien [the guy who took me out] picked me up in the car that took my breath away. and since we barely talk in class, i thought the journey was going to be an awkward one. but boy was i wrong. there was so much to talk about, it felt like we've known each other for like, years! and then, we reached the place. org ramai gila mmg tak ingat la kan. the show had started. saw mickey and minnie waving and skating on the ice. chomels gilaaa! the show was like a short sketch of Aladdin's story, Snow White, CINDERALLY [the best!], beauty and the beast, Little Mermaid, Mulan, the list goes on. i kept squealing, that at one point, i forgot that the person beside me was aien, not little pony. heehee =P but i couldn’t help it! they were ever so priddy, so graceful on the ice, i couldn’t stop myself! =P owh and the popcorn! sakit hati gilaaa.. they sold the popcorn for 10 bucks okay? GILA TAK? it was my mistake that i ASKED for the pop corn dulu, baru tanye the price.. habes, when org tu dah handed the popcorn to me and asked for 10 bucks, takkan nak kata "ehh bang, tanak la.. mahal la pulak" kan? so we decided to split 5 bucks each, and i swear to God, it was the tasteless popcorn i’ve ever tasted! GSC punye popcorn lagi sedap okay. eee sakit hati gilaaa.

but besides the popcorn, everything was just.. right. went for dinner after the show, and i learnt a whole lot about him along the way. i don’t know why he opened up so easily to me like he did last night, but i felt honored. :) and when he sent me to my block, we said our goodnites and just as i was stepping out of his car, he asked in a very cute way, "eh kejap, you nak present tak?" and i went like.. "HUH?" then he turned and took something from the backseat anddd... handed me a box which has... a princess Barbie in ittt! heee.. =D okay so im not gonna lie. i was flattered, and touched. hehe ;) eh surprise surprise ni gua mmg suka bebb.. apa lagi bab bab prezzie prezzie ni.. lagi la meloncat! haha =P and of course it didn’t just stop there. D'UH. =P he got back and msged me and we spent the next few minutes msgin each other until we both got sleepy. ;) i don’t know where it leads from here, but it was indeed, one of the best nights in my life. :)

and as all you might have guessed, 2 weeks later, we got together, and it has been 3 years 2 months ++ since! :)

Do You Love Your Job?

I do! I love it so much, I even do a hula dance every morning before going to work! Ok, that’s a lie. But really, I love my job! As all of you might know from my previous post, I work as a Creative Writer in Exabytes Network, the top webhosting provider in Malaysia. It has only been a month plus since I first entered Exabytes, but I find myself fitting in so well here, I feel that I may have finally found my supreme comfort zone, at last! :) It probably has got a lot to do with my love for writing, but I have never felt this way about a work place before!

I have worked as a graphic designer with the great Studeo Grafix, a branding company. The reason why I find Studeo Grafix great is because I have never known such great bunch of people, lead by an even greater leader, Wesley, in my entire life. They deliver super service, professionally too! But I could not stay long – all because I could not seem to find any time to myself while I was there. It was hard for me to leave them, though. I found that somehow, there was a bond created between all of us even if it was for a very short time. But I will be getting married soon (ngehehe, jangan jealous!). And if half of my day is spent in the office (I used to go back at 10pm every night. Sometimes at 1am in the morning), I thought, who would be taking care of my lonely husband at home? buatkan dia pegi carik tina laen kat luar? tak gila aku? Hehe. But I don’t blame them, though. It was the nature of the job actually. I have asked around, and it seems that working really late at night is memang normal for graphic designers. Besides, they have even asked me way earlier when I was interviewed if I was ready to go back late at night, and I said yes, but I guess I was wrong, so yeah. I have always had high regards for Studeo Grafix and the people in there – and I still do! And if it wasn’t because of the long hours, I might just be on my way of becoming the next great graphic designer there. But fate has other plan for me, and so, here I am, building my career as a writer in Exabytes, hopefully for good this time! :)

I’ll be honest. Before I started with Exabytes, I was pretty nervous. Not about the job scope – about the people there! I went to their blog before, and noticed there isn’t a single Malay employee in there! It is not that I have anything against those of different races, but it’s just that, I do get irritated when they start speaking in their mother-tongue language, which would in the end, cause me to “watch a very bad badminton game” stupidly, and so I worried that I would face this problem in my new working place! But still, I put up my brave face, gathered every ounce of confidence I could muster, and went to the office, hoping that my new collogues would be as nice as those in Studeo Grafix. I entered the office (I was actually late on my first day at work btw!), scanned the office as quickly as I could, and sure enough, not even a single sawo-matang skin detected by my retina.

Therefore, being the only Malay in Exabytes, I thought I was going to be treated differently. But boy was I wrong! I was actually given a warm welcome by all the staffs there even on my first day at work! Once I was stationed at my place, I was surprised to be greeted by at least 5 bleeping MSN chat windows at my screen, welcoming me! And a week later, I was selected to be in one of the board members for the weekly marketing team meeting! Which, ehems, makes me one of the important figures in Exabytes, of course! ngehehe. My nature of work in Exabytes covers almost everything that has got to do with writing. I write press releases, newsletters, articles, meeting minutes, memos and blogs! – the reason why I started to have my own blog! And me being in the marketing team gives me the power to voice out anything I feel is necessary besides contributing ideas to the company! :D Anyway, here’s the list of some of the reasons why I just loveee being in Exabytes!

• I am doing something that I love. So going to work does not actually feel much of a chore, but more of a fun way of filling up my time instead. :D
• I get to have my own personal HP laptop.
• I get off work at 5pm daily! (but since aku ni budak baik, aku keluar jugak la pukul 5.20pm everyday. heeee)
• I am surrounded by a bunch of laid back, friendly young people, most of them around my age!

And no, I don’t have anything against the.. uh, elder generations either, but, kamon lah. takkan laa aku nak borak pasal nintendo wii or facebook dgn pakcik makcik yang kadang komputer pon tak reti nak “on”. kan? haa. :D

But yeah, I just love what I am doing now for all the reasons I mentioned above and more! :D You can check out more of our fun-filled family activities here to know what I mean! :)

Here’s a picture of the big family and I on the last Earth Day celebration. Uh-huh. We all went green the wholeee day just to show our dedication to "saving the Mother Earth"! a’ah, sampai cenggitu skali kitorang punya sayang kat alam sekitar ni nyaaah. Hehe.

And oh yes, you can never rock in green as well as we did! nyeehee. Needless to say, I don’t find working in Exabytes as a job, but more of a career instead! ;)

Until you hear from me again.. Long live Exabytes! ;)

She Blogs!

I’ve always had a passion for writing. I started writing my very first poem in Malay as early as the age of 8 (as I can recall), and it goes something like this : (Ehems ehems. I haven’t even started reciting the poem, and already I’m blushing to roots!). Ehems!

"Kapalku, berkilat berseri,
Hingga seorang pon ku tidak kesahi,
Jangan jangan, jangan kau sentuh kapalku,
Ikan ku tarik-tarik, hingga habis,"
..

IKAN KU TARIK-TARIK HINGGA HABIS? Ikan ku – WHAT? What the hell was I thinking?! I must have had one of the wires loose from my brain socket or eaten a bowl of boiled frog eggs and gone retarded - I DONT BLOODY KNOW! But yes, I was that creative, I could even make A. Samad Said cry if he ever stumbles across this brilliant masterpiece, for all I know! Heeeee heeeee.

Even after that horrendous (but brave!) attempt on the Kapalku poem, I still kept on writing. And I have managed to compose a few more poems after that, even a novel! In English this time lah tapi. Hehe. I wrote my first romance novel wayyyy back when I was 17. (eh, mistilah romance novel nyah. masa tu kan dah pandai jadik ulat bulu sket, so.) I do not know where I got the inspiration to write from, probably from all those mushy novel junks those eeeeevil authors have successfully fed into my brain, (the Sweet Valleys, Love Stories, and Full House – Stephanies), but I managed to write one of those too-good-to-be-true romance novels myself.

Here’s to prove it! :D

I’ll be honest. All the while I was writing the novel, I was imagining the main character was ME, and the life she has, was.. well, the kind of life I want to have. Ehehe. I must have been fed to eat the frog eggs alive this time while I was sleeping for even dreaming for that to happen, but hey, a girl’s gotta dream, and she’s gotta dream big right? :D

Even back in campus, when we had assignments to do, I made it sure that I would be the one to handle the documentation part as much as possible, just because I know I can at least contribute something rather than typing the codes madly, not knowing there are heaps of errors waiting to be debugged. Oh btw, I suck in programming, so don’t even dream of asking me anything about programming or all that you will get from me is, cout<<"go get a textbook and get lost!"<<endl; Wehehe! :D

And then one day, I was introduced to this BLOG-thing which is supposedly to be the IN-thing since the last few years. But I never wanted to blog – at least not for the public to read. I was always against it because I never really believed in exposing my whole life drama for the world to know. Until.. the day I became (get this) the sole Creative Writer in Exabytes Network - No.1 Webhosting Provider in Malaysia which needs me to do a lot of blogging - that I started to blog! Hee hee. Yes, dears. The Creative Writer in Exabytes now is the same budak beringus that got laughed at when she first wrote her "Kapalku" poem which she composed with.. much pride and determination, actually! hmphs. But yeah, blogging for Exabytes blog has somehow encouraged me to have a blog of my own, and so, here I am! Ranting my heart away! nyak nyak nyak :D

Although I did not take up Journalism during my study years, my love for writing has brought me this far. And even though I know my writing skills isn’t as half good as some of the people I know, (you should meet my cousin, Haniza) but I’m contented and thankful for what I am today. :)

And so, how did an IT graduate turn out to be a Writer again? Hehe. Like they always say : All you need is love! ;)