so much more than a destination...

I spent the weekend in Bali. We arrived on Friday afternoon, and in the cab on the way to our hotel, I was looking out the window and I said, "I think we might have to come back...". I had barely been there for two hours, and already the place had captured me. The big fancy mall (Discovery) with the likes of Marks & Spencer and Topshop was so beautifully juxtaposed with little prayer offerings in containers made out of leaves, placed outside every shop and inside some cars. Walking down the little streets, we constantly had to look out for these, and the way in which the shopkeepers reacted to our swerving to avoid them ("never mind, it's okay!") told me that they were completely used to people walking into and over them, which didn't bother them at all. The contrast between old and new, modern and traditional, reminded me of Thailand, as did the people, who could seriously give the Thais, famous for their hospitality, a run for their money. Taxi drivers wait patiently and never use their horns, except to warn animals who wander into the street. Stuck behind a horse carriage (I think it's called a doka)? They wait until overtaking is possible and not a moment before. Tourists walk around shirtless. They drive motorcycles barefooted (and shirtless). The McDonald's in Kuta has a rack for surf boards outside, and instead of the usual pose on a bench, Ronald is catching a wave.

All of this made it seem like Bali is really more like a lifestyle than anything. I loved it. Details soon.

capsicum - yuk.

One of the things my mother made for dinner today was capsicum with potatoes.

I hate capsicum.

I was having nachos with Kevin the other day before watching Transformers, and he was watching, amused, as I picked the capsicum bits (and onion bits) out. I explained to him how capsicum is just nasty, cuz even when you pick out every single bit, you'll still know it's there. You can tell that capsicum has been hanging around cuz it contaminates everything it comes into contact with.

On a brighter note, I spent most of today in pj's cuz it was all cold and rainy, so after having a shower that's what I reached for. There's absolutely nothing on tv, so I'm dealing with the pictures from our trip to Bali. That'll be up soon-ish.

21

I turned 21 a little over two months ago. I promised details, so here they are.

For the longest time, I've been telling my mother I don't want to do the whole have-the-whole-world-over-and-parade-around thing. That's not really my sorta thing, and partying would have to wait till people were actually around. I said that I don't want to be here, and I wasn't :D

I had my suspicions a few months before, but even when you know something is up, you don't really believe something is going on until you know for sure. It bugs you for a while, then something else comes along and it gets chucked to the back of your mind. Anyway, when I got home on Wednesday, I was told that we would be leaving the next evening. I wasn't told where, which made packing a bit of a bitch. It shouldn't have, really, cuz I knew we weren't leaving the country, but still. I was only told to take "something nice for dinner", so other than that, I just took random things out of my closet and tossed them all over my bed, then tried to figure out what to put into my bag.

The next evening, I chose not to find out where we were going until the last minute possible, which was pretty much at the gate when they called for the flight - we were going to Kota Kinabalu. I still didn't have any details.

A two-hour flight later, we were picked up by my cousin (who lives there), and we went back to his apartment. Dinner was at this cool waterfront place just across the street from where he lives, and I was told that we would be "going to the real place" the next day.

from cousin's apartment. waterfront place is on the right.

After breakfast, we got into a cab and set off. I didn't know where we were going until we got there - Shangri La's Rasa Ria Resort, and holy mother of god let me tell you that they don't call the place the Shangri La for no reason. I still didn't know what we were doing there (no complaints, though...) until my mother told me that two years or so before, I had read about this place and told her I wanted to go there cuz they have a nature reserve with orang utans you can adopt!

the view from the lobby

I swear, the whole hotel knew it was my birthday. We were greeted with a bang on the gong, then as you walk in the musicians start to play music. It's the coolest thing. They just sit around until someone arrives or walks past, then they start playing.

musician fellow

The manager person was there, too. They gave us cold towels and iced peach tea while they were checking us in, then showed us around the place. We went to the Activities Desk to plan what we wanted to do, and after that we went to check the rooms out. Gorgeous. Completely gorgeous.

Then we went exploring. The pool was gorgeous, and the grounds are completely massive.


On one end are the stables (more on this later), the wedding pavilion and a very cool restaurant. Then it's the pool, an outdoorsy food place, the bar (more on this later, too), and further down is the nature reserve. We went to have lunch at the outdoorsy place, and while waiting for the food to arrive, my brother and I went to check the playground out, and we found one of the most amazing things - a trampoline! A few hundred bounces later...


...we went back to have lunch.

my lunch - fish and chips with ketchup in a little jar...so cute!

After lunch, we walked to the stables to get our horses for a ride on the beach. Each person gets a guide, but they let you ride your horse by yourself. You're totally in charge...or it's between you and your horse, rather. I walked mine right by the edge of the ocean, and it was completely beautiful. Oooh and on the way to the stables, we saw a little snake! I named him Steven.

For half an hour in the evening, you can have whatever you want from the gorgeous outdoorsy bar and not pay anything for it. I had a margarita while we played petanque, and then we hit the pool.


We watched the sunset from there, and later went down to the beach. It was unreal. Saying it was beautiful doesn't even come close to describing it.




After that, we went over to the gym place cuz in the locker rooms, they have a jacuzzi and steam room. It was the perfect finish. Then it was back to our rooms for showers, and then it was time for dinner at the hotel's North Indian restaurant, Naan. The chef came out to talk to us, and the food was excellent. Then, we went for a walk by the pool and just chilled. We went for a walk to check out the other gorgeous restaurant, and the place is crazy cool! It's got all these cool light things.


We went back to the room after that, and I had a gorgeous bubble bath. The water was really, really hot and there was heaps of lavender-scented bubbly foam. I settled in with a book and it was bliss :)

When it was 12, I was in the little garden outside our rooms. My family thought I was quite mad, but it felt so good to be outside and underneath the stars. My brother and I went back to the pool area and lay around on deck chairs. We had the most random conversation while I was looking up at the stars.

The next morning after breakfast, we headed to the Nature Reserve. My brother and I volunteered to do this ranger thing, where you help cut fruits and make milk for the orang utans, and you get to see them before everyone else does. We walked up into the jungle and at this clearing, there they were!

About six of them, and they were so cute! Swinging and playing and rolling down the hill :)

It was quite impossible to tell them apart, which I needed to do to chose who I wanted to adopt for a year, but right at the end of the tour, I chose one of the really cheeky fellows named Alan. A few hundred photographs later, we headed back down, and when we reached the Nature Reserve place, I (and a whole bunch of tourists) was surprised (again) with a cake and the hotel staff singing Happy Birthday, with a guitar player too!

After that, we went for a traditional boat ride on a nearby river that leads to the open sea.

part of a golf course

On the way back, we passed mussel farms and the like, and there was this little boy on a little boat, who was just paddling along and checking his traps for crabs. It was the coolest thing to watch. We had lunch at the outdoorsy place again, then we went to chill on the beach.

lunch - shirley temple and pizza

Chill, actually, might not be the best verb to use - it was intensely hot. The hotel staff came around with pieces of fruit on a skewer and to sell ice-cream. I went to the edge of the water for a bit, and cuz the sand was HOT, I couldn't take my flip flops off. The result? A flip flop tan :) But the water was sooo clear. I was in the evening before, and I saw a little fish and lots of seaweed things.

We left later that afternoon, and on the way to the airport we stopped at a craft market.

So that was my 21st.

guilt

I haven't been doing a thing - and I feel very, very guilty. I should be getting started on my thesis. I really should be.

Monday, my mother wanted cake so I made one. Tuesday, I did absolutely nothing, and we had dinner in Antonio's with some family friends. Today, I was with Vee and Sue Peng. We had breakfast (roti canai for Vee), watched Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, had sushi (for Vee), went over to Sue Peng's and learnt how to play a beautiful, beautiful song called 9 Crimes by Damien Rice. Then was dinner in Decanter with everyone (and Jun Guan and Ling from England and Australia on the phone). The food was really, really good (Thai Crispy Chicken, Sizzling Tofu and Prawn Fritters), and there were lots of laughs :)

I've taken two polaramines since I got home from Sue Peng's and I just had Swiss Miss, so the only thing I can do now is sleep.

Not good.

everything changes

It's been forever, hasn't it...but I confess, the main reason I'm doing this is cuz I'm on a sort-of-not-really holiday for the next two months or so, and I really, really don't want to lose track of the days.

A quick recap of what's been happening over the last month and a bit. Summer semester is now over. My two subjects were Cross Cultural Psychology (which can be summed up as - there are intercultural and intracultural differences as well as similarities...but seriously, this was a fun class) and Ethics (which can be summed up as - when in doubt, consult ethical guidelines/colleagues/laws, but at the end of the day, none of them will give you an answer. It's all relative...).

Recently, there was the B.Psych Student Council's first social event - Acoustic/Barbecue Night. That was quite a bit of fun. Before it started, Lavan, Harveen and me went to Kiosk for some fizzy vodka thing (Lavan had Vitagen), and even before we had any, we couldn't stop laughing. It was madness. I don't even remember what we were laughing about, but I'm quite sure we sounded absolutely ridiculous, cuz I was talking to Kev (who came later on) and Durvesh on the phone, and they were all, "what's going ON??".

There was also Summer Variety Concert, and even though we had no idea who most of the performers were, a few really stood out. There was a gorgeous acoustic version of Maroon 5's Sunday Morning and Pete Murray's So Beautiful. Even though the guys who performed So Beautiful couldn't really remember the words, they made up for it cuz one of them sounded so much like Brandon Boyd!

I watched a bunch of really good movies, with it being Summer and all. There were two beautiful French movies - Mon Petei Doigt M'a Dit (By the Pricking of My Thumbs), which was completely random and spur of the moment, and Hors de Prix (Priceless), which I really, really liked. There were also the big ones, Spiderman 3 and Fantastic Four 2 (FLAME ON!!!)...I still haven't watched Shrek 3, for some reason. And The Namesake, which was absolutely beautiful :) You wouldn't think that Kal Penn would've been able to pull off a non-Kumar (of Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle) type role, but he made it work. Oh, and I also watched Borat. I don't get what the big deal was. It was...not good, to say the least.

Vee came back from Melbourne. We went out for dinner to Friday's in The Curve, and she brought me Ozzie koalas, a Shrek keychain from Movie World that says "Princess" (hahah!), my postcard which she bought from the Gold Coast but refused to send cuz she didn't think I would get it...and after seeing it, I have to say I agree with her. There are three extremely foxy surfer type males on it ;) And she also brought my birthday present from her and Ling - a gorgeous, handmade purple beady necklace thing! Oooh and on the day she came back, she brought Krispy Kreme Original Glazed donuts and gummy bears!

My cousins came back, too - Khanitha (from Dunedin) and Vijay (from Perth). We went out just before Khanitha went back, to Friday's in The Curve...again. That was fun, even though it was supposed to be drinks and we ended up with a non-yummy brownie.

Priya came back from Perth, and she was here last week. I met up with her and Kay Li after my last exam on Wednesday, and she bought me a book I've been meaning to read for ages (The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, the same movie I mentioned). We walked around Midvalley for a bit, looking for shoes, then we found these huge armchairs in Coffee Bean and didn't move for hours. Until a friend of hers called her and said that if we went and found the Mix FM Mega Shopaholic, who happened to be near Dorothy Perkins, we would win RM500. And we actually walked up to random strangers and asked them!

Yesterday was 07/07/07. Two things happened - the Live Earth concerts on every continent to bring attention to global warming (I watched it live-ish on the Internet...Jack Johnson!!), and the new Seven Wonders were revealed after a worldwide vote - Chichén Itzá, Mexico; the statue of Christ the Redeemer, Brazil; The Great Wall, China; Machu Picchu, Peru; Petra, Jordan; The Roman Colloseum, Italy; and the Taj Mahal, India. I've seen a grand total of one of those wonders, and I don't even remember it cuz I was a year old and running around the grounds of the Taj Mahal. That will change.

Yesterday, we went for dinner to Tarbush in Starhill's Feast floor/area/place thing. The place is really something to see...there are all these cool restaurants, and each one is so different from the others. Completely unique and completely gorgeous. Outside Starhill is the most bizarre thing - it's a Lecka Lecka al fresco place, but they've done it all Moroccan like, with billowy organza curtains and pretty lights. A closer inspection revealed that they don't only have ice-cream, which as much as I love the stuff, would be quite mad...they also have drinks and shisha. I wish it wasn't so far away, it looks like quite a cool hang out place.

The title of this post is 'everything changes', and yet, nothing has been about changes of any sort. What I meant by it, I can't go into detail. But two things happened. I thought I was close to this one person, but I realized just how far apart we were. I was a mess for a while, but I think I'm okay now. With the other...we just got a whole lot closer.

Have you ever heard that the more things change, the more they stay the same? A part of me wishes this was really true so that things between me and person #1 would be better. But that wouldn't work for person #2 as much, cuz then there would be no moving forward. Not completely a bad thing...okay, I think I'm bored of this already. I haven't read a book in ages, and there's one I just started right next to me :D