New Year Eve

A new year is approaching while bidding farewell on the last half an hour of 2013.

What are you thinking at this moment? The past year? Checking and reflecting how much of your plan work on the past year? Thinking forward, marching in the new year already? No matter where you are at, take a deep breath and get ready to welcome the new year. It left half an hour to the new year on my time zone. One of the best fireworks celebration is going to happen! Breaking into the brand new year in complete boldness. 

Let's make this short and sweet, I would like to wish all of you who are reading this a wonderful year filled with love, happiness and freedom. Pray truthfully for the less fortunate to have an improving life everyday in 2014. 

HAPPY NEW YEAR! 

Christmas Eve

It's the 24 December!

For some reason it always feels more exciting on the leading up day, the eve. It's the hope of fun and happiness and surprises and a tinge of mysteriousness that gets people excited about. Getting ready for the best time to pour all over us.

I had been working on the Christmas event months before December, it felt a bit distanced from the actual festive but the fun were there. It's awesome to celebrate on normal days.

This year Christmas has been a wonderful festive season for me. It was filled with family & friends get together, Christmas luncheon, dinner, laughter and accompanied with unexpected fun presents. Feel really blessed.

I am Looking forward to a better and wonderful new year to come! Wishing everyone Happy Christmas and a fantastic New Year.

Holidays Reading List

While counting down for Santa to arrive or holidays break, have you work out how to spend your holidays? Going overseas or not going anywhere doesn't really matter, make sure you have some fun and some quality time for yourself.

I will be spending my holiday under hot summer weather, so beach time with friends and a couple of drinks sounds like a perfect plan for me. Nevertheless, a good reading plan will make my holidays more meaningful. If you are a bookworm like me, here is a list I would like to share with you. It doesn't really matter what age group you fall under, I think these are some fun read.

Don't we all want to live our best in life, get some great inspirations from this bite size, well written book by Alan D. Thompson a professional life coach, the book is called Best - A Practical Guide to Living Your Best.  

I picked up this book The Secret Life of Pronouns by James W. Pennebaker, while shopping for other books, the title is very interesting, can't wait to find out how words play a big part in our daily life.

The Happiness Project was a beautiful encounter while I was looking at other stuff during my lunch break, it happens to resonates a lot with what I was getting through and has a lot of handy tips.

Photography for the joy of it is a book loan from a friend, it will be a good book to read in the afternoon with a cuppa and pick up some new skills about photography.

Welcome to share with me your reading list and also welcome to check out my reading list, hope they will bring you great joy.

Happy holidays and enjoy reading!

Discovering places in your city

On a Monday afternoon, I met up with a few friends for after work hours hang out. One of the girl suggested this place, Lobo Plantation. The name of the place made me suspicious and I went online to do some research before saying yes. The website turned out to be quite well designed, that kinds of ceased my worries. So I met them and we walked to the place together. There were no signage to indicate where the place is, only the street number and entrance was tucked in a corner of a building, underground. When we walked down the stairs, the scenery changed, it was a different world under there. Oh well, there must be a reason why it was voted the best bar in Sydney on Timeout.

The bar has a very quirky interior, one side of the wall at the bar was a wall paper of multiple currency notes. It was thoughtfully designed and decorated, however very welcoming.

The staff members were very attentive and friendly. The food and drinks were surprisingly tasteful. 

I had The Nepolean and we ordered a few different food items on the menu, we couldn't resist the good taste and had the crackling pork twice!

The menu design is my favourite. (see below)

Knowing a place like this in my city was fun and delightful, making my Monday evening interesting. 

Sometimes we are so consumed in our daily routine we forget there are so much out there to offer. Make a date with your friends or just yourself, walk out of the routine to enjoy and have some fun!

Just for your information, you can check out their website: thelobo.com.au

Ho Ho Ho!

It's Christmas in two weeks!
Doesn't matter your Christmas is happening under the big hot sun or covered by snow, you won't miss it. Everywhere you go you are constantly reminded. Everywhere is decorated and dressed up in prepare to welcome this happy festive season.

To make the festival more exciting, this year the famous Sydney Martin Place Christmas tree gone to a whole new level, it's a interactive tree! You could send festive text messages and it will appear on the tree within 24 hours. http://www.sydneychristmas.com.au/whatson/tree-brightness/

I was at four of the Christmas concerts with live bands on stage, Santa arrived on fire brigade, shaking the bell in his hand. Kids ran to him, hundreds of little faces lit up instantly, it must be a dream come true for the little mind. Especially at the photo booth while the young faces were having a secret chat with Santa before taking their photos. The smile and happiness on their faces were priceless! It's fun watching joy to the world. 

Have you make your wishes yet? You better hurry, it's two weeks out! 

Enjoy the surprises of opening presents, great food, the laughter shared with love ones and have great Ho! Ho! Ho! time. Merry Christmas. 

BEAUTY

Hello there! I just linked this blog to Google+

This blog was around since year 2007. It was a experiment for me to own a blog and store my writing but it hasn't been very active. After contemplating for a few weeks about the consequences, I decided to link this blog to Google+. 

In the beginning the idea scares me a bit, because linking your blog to Google+ meaning creating more traffic, getting an audience to read the blog. I'm not quite sure the blog is ready to show the 'world' yet. All these questions went around my head, is the writing mature enough, is the style of the page attractive enough and will people really read the blog? After all that self questioning, I thought if I don't try I will never know. In addition, the book I was reading said trying something new actually make people happier, the unknown, the not sure what to expect make people nervous but also bring excitement. It sounds like something I will look forward. So it all sounds kind of positive and tempting, and here I am. 

Making this blog public encourages me to take my writing more seriously. I want to write something people will benefit from reading and remember. First of all, it needs a theme, a direction. Travel and photography came to mind, but already so many experts posting about that, I don't want to feel pressured from the start. However I would love to include those topics, because I too enjoy travel and photography very much. So! I need to write something meaningful and will make people feel good thus happy. 

Recently, I did a personal strength assessment, my top value turned out to be Beauty to my surprise. I like the idea so much and that will be my blog going public theme BEAUTY! It makes me feel vanity and I like that. Now I could proudly announce: my top value is BEAUTY! (laughing happily out loud) 

Anything beautiful and inspiring are possible to be included here and we should feel good while we are reading them. Yes, we, including me. Beautiful things should be shared.

Enjoy your read! 

Choices 選擇

We constantly making decisions instantly on what we want. What to wear, what to eat, who to send messages to, to have coffee or tea. But when comes to bigger decision, such as who to date, which property to purchase, where to spend Christmas holidays, they seems like a different ball game. We contemplated harder, longer, sometimes avoid thinking about it altogether.

Why is it so? 

What is the fear? 

Afraid of making mistakes?

It is understandable that people have doubts. But I think we do need passion and spontaneity and feeling excited when making those bigger choices. Those processes make us take bigger breaths too. And most importantly you have to feel comfortable and happier after making the choice.

I used to worry so much about my decisions and choices, so scare that I stuck with them for the rest of my life. But thank God that is not always true. Life is so fluid that you don't know what it is going to offer you the next minute. So stop worrying and live happily everyday. 

*we are what we choose to be.

What is the next best thing to happen to you?

My coach asked me the question on Sunday, two days has passed, I'm still toying the question in my mind.

Why is it so hard for me to make a wish or promise to myself? What am I afraid of? Do I not trust myself? What do I really want, really...

I'm afraid of disappointment. The more we wish for the chances of being disappointed is higher. So maybe the safest way is to follow the flow. Interesting enough today's horoscope said the following: "There's a trajectory of truth to maintain today. If you try to go against the flow, you'll have a difficult time achieving your goals. You're much better off setting your sights on something downstream so that you can utilize the incredible force that already has a great deal of momentum behind it. There's no need to reinvent the wheel on a day like this."

Sometimes it might not be a bad thing to have others to control the wheel. I've more time to enjoy the sight when I'm not behind the wheel.

Listening to my favourite album by Chyi, completing the love language test, finding my peace from the songs and feeling grounded that I am responding to my heart. The perfect way to conclude my day. 

一天中会遇到很多不同的人、事、噪音、让我们的视线模糊，几乎忘记了自己的方向。

不要急，下班了记得留一些时间给自己，归正。把头发、眼睛擦干，把杂乱琐碎拨开，静静的听听你的心。临睡前灌溉心中的爱和热诚，早上醒来带着她出门！美好的一天在等待着你的出发！

对自己说我爱你 xoxo 

Travel parties! 结伴同游 1

Visiting places or most people call it travelling is always in my system. When I was younger and travelling seems like a rich men lifestyle I could only read about places from books or from travel channels on TV.

So, in 2011, the urge of such longing desire kicks in, the year marked the beginning of me doing the rich men activities! And I wasn't even rich though.

We:



Cat Pang (in the middle), a person I met from school, has great traveling experience and has also picked up photography because of her baby girl.

Charles Jong (on the left), another person I met ages ago, teacher cum close friend, studied photography in college and has been clicking away whenever he packed his bag to travel the world.

Got together with the idea of exploring the other part of Malaysia that we know very little about. We drove from Kuala Lumpur we go to Kuala Gandah, Pahang - The Elephant Sanctuary, then continue to Lembing. After Lembing we moved on to Kuala Terengganu.

This picture was taken with a strange camera setting, but it looks great from the screen at the time.

Easter 复活节

Easter has became a holiday breaks and family get together event. This year, with a last minute decision we spent some time together. It's quite an unusual event with enjoyable conversations and delicious cuisine presented by a husband and a father of two.

Here are some pictures to share.