crashed

It's been a week since the car crash. Physically, I'm feeling better. I went for a short jog yesterday evening and it was a little stressful on the bruises but it felt good to be able to run again. It was a little hard on the chest too but I'm sure it'll be fine if I learn not to wake up or reach up high using my chest muscles and shoulder blades too much. It'll actually be good for me to learn to use my abdomen muscles more. Otherwise, I'm feeling a lot better but still wishing that I don't have to look at the ugly scar right below my knees.

Emotionally, there's still flashes back of what happened but it always end right when the car is coming up towards me. Of course there's always part of me that wishes that I had not gone to work so early that morning, or that I had taken the parking permit from Steph the night before, or that I had not made the detour to that route but all I can say for now is, I'm glad to walk out of the car alive. It's still sad that I've finally got such an awesome car and now that it's just a piece of metal crap. But I'm thankful to all my angel guardians for protecting me. When I went back to look at the car again, I think it's a miracle that I am still alive. I could see the mark of the Ford Explorer when it crashes so close to my windscreen which shattered into pieces. It made me shudder with fear again but I remind myself that I am lucky to be alive so I should stop thinking about it.

But for the past week, I just didn't want to talk about it. I talked to my parents, talked to BK, talked to my lab mates for were all played a part in helping me to cope with the shock of the accident. I didn't want to talk about it anymore. I talked enough. I just wanted to move forward, let it go and just keep it as memory which will always remind me to treasure life. But friends being friends, they care and they can't help asking what happened. I just couldn't cope with it anymore so I decided to go MIA. Furthermore, it's not easy to tell people what happened when I couldn't recall it myself. All I could remember was the car coming towards me and anything after that, it was all a blur. It was like me looking from a far, looking through a blurry glass. I hope that they'll understand that I'm not trying to push them away but I just have a different way to cope with situations like this and my way is to just share it with people who are really close to me and then I just have to be by myself.

I'm sorry if I hurt any of you but I really hope that you'll understand that I'm just not used to talking about things. Just being me...

Rowdies spoil Brazilians’ wedding ceremony

I'm pretty sure the entire Malaysia has seen this piece of news by now. I saw it this morning while surfing for my daily dose of news. It is such a shocking news. True, there are lots of unfortunate events happening lately (as in the past couple of years) that happens back home but this is just now something I expect to see at all. What were these people thinking? Don't they have family of their own? Don't they remember how it was like when they got married? The celebration, the happiness, the anticipation of a whole new life?

Jorge is a post-doc in our lab and he's a Brazilian. He's been here in the States for quite a number of years and he still loves his country. I wish I could say the same for myself but sometimes, when things like that happen, I just can't help feeling betrayed. Jorge and I work together side by side in the lab. He's been my leaning post ever since I joined the lab. He's my secondary mentor, in fact, I talk to him more than I talk to my boss sometimes. He's like a great brother to me. We not only talk about work but about life in general, I can talk to him about anything. In the mornings, we often talk about the news we read about what's going on around the world. I usually share news about Malaysia and he about Brazil. But today, after reading that headline, I was speechless. For the first time, I could not just turn my chair around and say 'hei Jorge, there's this incident in M'sia...'. I was so embarrassed to read that news and I feel so bad for that couple.

Sigh, sometimes I wish that there is something we could all chip in to do. But sometimes, it feels pointless because there's always gonna be these people who will spoil it all. It takes millions to built a strong structure but it only take one to destroy it.

~disappointed~

Cream crackers

Cream crackers, originally uploaded by lilsQuirr3l.

Can you believe that they actually sell this at World Market?? I found it there a few weeks back and was so excited. It's been quite a long time since I've had this. I used to bring this to school for recess treat when I was in primary school. At that time, it was just a regular 'kiam pia' from pasar malam. There's two different kind of 'kiam pia' (it translates as 'salty biscuit' but it's not salty but cream crackers doesn't sound right either because there's no cream in it..oh well). One of them, the plain one, is oily and taste buttery while the sweet one is sprinkled with coarse sugar. I used to eat the sugar one by itself but I love the plain cracker with bak hu (chicken floss).

It also taste really good to dip it with ABC soup (tomoto, potato and mushroom soup). But the cream crackers was long forgotten when Gardenia came along. Grandma would buy the Twiggies for my afternoon snack and if it happens to be chocolate-filled, it'll finish in two days. Then it was Toast Em Banana Nut Bread but that was a little pricy and we eventually went back to Twiggies again. I miss all these snacks soooooo much. For some reason, similar snacks here in the States taste a lot sweeter than those in Malaysia.

Ever since I bought the cream crackers, I've been thinking about 'tau eu bak' but haven't got a chance to cook it yet. We used to dip it with plain white bread, those that does not have an external layer of toasted skin, the cheapest kind but the unhealthiest form of bread as it is just filled with air, but cream crackers would suffice for now.

Thinking back about all these simple food, I can’t help but wonder how can life become so complicated over what to eat for dinner when in our younger days, butter and sugar on white bread tastes as good as Dunkin Donuts sugar glazed donut.

Cheat sheet

STT cheat sheet, originally uploaded by lilsQuirr3l.

I was looking through my old statistics notes from my undergrad and I found the cheat sheet that we are allowed to bring during exam. I actually amazed myself by looking at how tiny my writing could be. I never really look at it this way since I was writing it. Now that I'm looking back at it, it really does seem small.

This also showed me how much my writing has changed over the past 3 years. It's no longer roundish anymore but a narrower and my 'a's are definitely getting smaller while my 'f's are getting fancier.

I've heard people say that one can guess the character of a person by looking at his/her writing. Hmm...is that true?