One Day by Sissel

Here I am, on my own again
All alone but not afraid
Here I stand, nowhere near the end
Time to go a different way

Cause another day will come to those who dare
Believe in something new

When you follow your shining star
Leave all your fears behind
You will find love no matter where you are
And all your heart will say – one day

When you’re down, and you haven’t found
Where you think you want to go
Do you search for higher ground
Deep inside you really know

Cause another day will come to those who dare
Believe in something new

When you follow your shining star
Leave all your fears behind
You will find love no matter where you are
And all your heart will say – one day

I know it’s hard to leave
The future seems so far away and,
Believe that all you need will come to you – one day

Follow your shining star
Leave all your fears behind
You will find love no matter where you are
And all your heart will say
You will find love no matter where you are
And all your heart will say – one day
***

A mass mail told me about this singer Sissel. I'd never heard of her but I was curious and followed the provided link and dutifully downloaded the sample songs that were available there. She's sounds quite nice actually. I have yet to see her albums anywhere in the local stores but then I haven't been really looking. Anyway, I really like one of her song called One Day. One fine day, I'm going to burn all my findings onto a CD so that I can listen to them over and over again in my car, at home, in the shower, ... etc.

So, mass mail can be a good thing sometimes ... but they're usually rubbish most of the time. One in a while, you find a gem.

The Pianist

Unbelieveable! I can't believe I just spent almost 2 hours on the piano. I've never practised so hard when I was learning to play that block of wood and ivories!

All this due to Nocturne No.19 which I heard on the site for Roman Polanski's new film 'The Pianist'. Heard that piece and I wanted to play it. Downloaded it from the net and brought it home to try playing it. Try!

For all that time I've put in, I only managed to play the first 6 bars with a semblance of what it should sound like. Gosh! Will probably be able to finish the whole piece in oh ... maybe six months? if I spend the same amount of time practising every single day. :) Would be cool if I could play it. :)

Nice feet

No not in the fetish manner.

Someone commented that I had 'nice feet' after a trial adult ballet class on Saturday. Yes. I'm yet again forraging(sp?) into the possibility of getting back into ballet. Anyway, back to the feet, saying that someone has 'nice feet' is really a compliment. What is a constitutes 'nice feet'? I haven't the faintest idea. I hear it often enough in ballet movies (eg. Center Stage) but I never knew what it meant. Was never told be my ballet teacher what it was. *shrugs*

Then the next trial class on Monday at another studio, the teacher said I have nice point. Now THAT I understood although I find it quite odd cause I did not have a good point when I was doing ballet. Has my point improved since? Can lack of practise actually improve a condition? Or was it just the split sole jazz shoes that I was wearing that gave her the illusion of a better point that it actually is?

Nonetheless, all very encouraging comments for me to restart my ballet passion. Now all I have to do is find a suitable class to take. Those trial classes were for beginner, as in those who've not taken ballet before. I was a little bored during those classes, maybe not the Monday one cause the teacher did so some not beginner moves and I feel sorry for the other two girls was in the class; the looked at a loss. Might try that studio's major classes but they're rehearsing for their annual concert and won't be done till May. Does that mean I'll have to wait till May? Maybe, I'll wait for their call. The teacher said she'll talk to the studio owner and then call me.So, I wait.

Quotable quotes

I've learned-
that you should never tell a child their dreams are unlikely or outlandish.
Few things are more humiliating, and what a tragedy it would be if they
believed it

I got this off an email a friend of mine sent. Emails should have been invented when my parents had children. Then maybe they would have gotten this mail and wouldn't discourage all their kids of their 'outlandish' dreams. I did believe them and it is indeed a tragedy! I still believe them although I know I shouldn't. Maybe it's due to the fear of failure or maybe it's just me being realistic but I do not dare pursue my dreams. And they are très outlandish.

prozac nation

Just finished reading the book.

I really don't see what the big deal is. The entire book is so basic. There's really nothing much going on. Only about how the author is depressed all the time and her telling her what happened during her time of depression. I guess, if you are able to describe that whole experience in over 300 pages, one could consider it an achievement.

Maybe all this reading on depression has gotten me depressed as well.

I have not felt motivated to do anything; anything at all since I got back. Mel got a dance gig and asked me to be in it. I accepted, although I'm not jumping for joy at the opportunity. The DFP (Petronas Philharmonic) is working on something for April and needed more people in their chorale; I tagged along with some of them who've been in one of their production last year. Again ... not jumping for joy.

All I feel like doing right now is to stay at home. Lie in bed. Read a book. Watch a video.

I can no longer muster up the energy required to finish the project that I so desperately need to finish sometime really soon; at the end of this week or maybe beginning of this week. However, if I don't do any work, the project will never finish and that would probably make me feel depressed?

I'm not even sure what I'm feeling is depression, just plain laziness or simply boredom.

i hate sql

Urgh! I hate this thing! Dammit! Why won't you just give me the results the freaking way that I want them.

*sigh* Told the client I'd try and give it to them but when I say that the system can't cater for it they insisted. I did say that all I can do was try. And they did say ok. But when you finally say NO. They won't accept it.

What do I do?

Just give them the version that more or less works but is not exactly like they asked I suppose.

The perfectionist in me is not happy with that but ... tough!

presents exchange

They're still exchanging presents! The committee members are still exchanging presents. :{ I didn't get anyone any. Now I feel guilty. Now I feel like I'm obliged to get presents. Which means I'd probably be hitting the shops tomorrow to see what I can pick up for nine people. *sigh* What should I get them? Buying non-functional presents is definitely not my forte.

jetlag???

My internal clock is royally screwed! The times I keep now is so weird I'm not sure if I can attribute it to jetlag. I don't fly often enough to know if this is truly jetlag but shouldn't I be cured of it by now? It's been 5 days since I got back from London. 5 days is plenty of time to recover from jetlag isn't it?

Someone needs to explain to me what jetlag is. I'll describe my situation. I get sleep at 7pm. Wake up at 11pm. Go back to sleep at 4am and try to wake up at 7.30am to 8am cause of work.

Now, what weird timezone am I in?

Saturday, 21 Dec - We arrived, my sister and I, safely after a 13 hours flight from KLIA to Heathrow, at 5am in the morning. Thinking previously that it would be quite fabulous to be able to spend my birthday in London, I was reminded by the gentleman sitting beside my sister that today was to be the shortest day. I did know that but have quite forgotten about it.

Nevertheless, we did spend quite and enjoyable, if a little tiring, day.

Directly after checking into the hotel and leaving our luggage there, we went to Notting Hill in search of Portobello Market, I think it was called, cause someone recommended that I visit it. Neither one of my aunts have been to the market before but they did have a vague idea where it was so, we didn't really quite get lost. The market was very interesting and colourful with all sort of crafts and knick-knacks on display.

When our stomachs started complaining of hunger, we went to a little basement tea shop and had tea and scones with jam and fresh cream. They were good but I remember the scones I had during the adventure trip in Australia was much better.

Next we were off to the city to look at some shops before retiring to the hotel for a little rest before starting off again to the city to meet Robin, my little cousin Fehn's godfather, for dinner.

And after dinner, my first musical at West End. My Fair Lady at Drury Lane.

The musical was very good and so was the cast and costumes. I had never imagined, however, that the scene at Ascot would be done all in black. That was quite an oddity to me. I'd always thought people dressed exceedingly ridiculous and overly colourful for the races so this was quite a change. But it was all good.

And so ended my first day in UK.

Buskers at Covent Garden


I thought the violinist was quite adorable. ;) If you know him, tell him I said so.

Happy New Year!

Still in Liverpool. Still the same routine. Eat, drink, TV, shops. Oh yes, and still struggling to hook up the 3 PCs in my aunt's place. Managed to get 2 of them to work. Only one left. That on's been giving me lots of problems. Feel like throwing it away! Bah!

Hmmm ... still hoping to watch Joseph sometime before I leave Liverpool for London before I head home on Saturday. Maybe we'll get tickets for tonight? We're going back to London on Friday so the only day left would be tonight.

Then in London, hoping to steal in one more before I go. I'm undecided as to which musical I should watch. There's Bombay Dreams, Lion King, Mama Mia or Chicago (which I have seen before). I'm leaning more towards Bombay Dreams and Lion King at the moment.

liverpool

Have been in England for about six days now. Wow! That's almost a week and I've only one more week left.

I think I like London, but I'm not quite sure as I haven't seen enough of it to make up my mind about it. What I've seen so far however, I do like. didn't manage to catch as many shows as I would have like either. Only My Fair Lady so far. Hopefully, will be able to catch a matinee show when I get back to London before my flight home.

Currently in Liverpool now. Not doing much here. Eat, watch the telly, open presents. Nice relaxing chill out time. :)

More when I get home.

money, money, money



Whoo whee ... that's the biggest stash of RM50 notes that I have ever laid my hands on. Not even when I was working in TGV do I remember that high a stack of cash.

Sadly though, almost the entire stack has an allocated purpose ... payment for flight tickets ... payment for credit card (I forgot to sign my cheque again!) ... stack to be converted to pound sterling. Don't have much left to buy the rest of the presents. Luckily, there's only three more presents left to get. For Stef, for bro and for grandma.

candlelight carols

My submission to the Mirror Project has been approved! Yay! Check it out.

SURPRISE!!!



There is actually a whole week more before my actual birtday but since I won't be here this time next week, my friends have decided to celebrate it today. I was actually meeting up with them cause one of our ex-uni mates was coming down from Penang. The last time I saw her was months and months ago. We didn't spend much time together though. Ended up mostly preparing her for her company's dinner (the whole reason she came down) ... but it was nice to see her again. She hasn't changed one bit. Still the same ol' same ol'.

Anyways, I got the cake (a tiramisu) and a CD - Brian Setzer's Boogie Woogie Christmas. Woo hoo. Will be having a swinging Christmas. And guess what? Just in time for the choir's Christmas party tomorrow (tonight).

bitter broccoli


These are the bitter-est broccoli I've ever tasted. EWWW YUCKS! It's bad I had to trash it and I've NEVER thrown broccolies(?) away. *sigh* They are usually so yummy. Wonder what happened to these.

Hello, my name is Empress ... and I'm a shopaholic

Slowly but steadily, I'm turning into a shopaholic.

Well ... relative to my usual shopping habits that is.

I have only recently purchased a mini-hifi with DVD playback and twin deck cassette slots(?). That was less than a week? A fortnight ago? Then yesterday, I bought a new pair of shoes and a digital camera.

The shoes I can justify purchasing cause I've been looking for a pair to replace my old black pumps/court shoes that I use regularly and have absolutely worn out the heel. It's so worn out that the plastic in the inside of the heel is showing. So, a replacement was necessary. When I saw that pair of Renoma at RM70 I snapped it up. Nice gorgeous sexy shoes. I'm still surprised that I can wear a size 6. I'm usually a size 6 half or 7 depending on the cut. Renoma must make shoes for people like me. People with broad feets. Cool. Should buy more Renoma shoes now. It was quite a bargain as well cause the salesgirl said that the regular price was actually RM170+. RM70 is much cheaper than my old el cheapo Vincci shoes which was actually not that cheap in the first place. I think I bought it for about RM120.

Hurrah! New shoes!

Next, after much surveying for the digital camera, I went back to the camera shop in Bangsar, which I checked out about two weeks ago, who gave me the best price for the Olympus Camedia C-730UZ. The snobs at Sungei Wang quoted me everything between RM1750 to RM2200. Bangsar quoted RM1650.

I bought an additional 128M SM card and a battery charger along with the camera. I'm more that RM2000+ poorer now.

Wowzers! My credit card bill's gonna be sky rocketting the next time it arrives. Eeps! And the guy at the bank call this afternoon to tell me that I forgot to sign my cheque for my card payment ... again! Sheesh! Guess I'm not too good at using checques to make payments. Out of all the times which I have made payments with a cheque, I've only managed to do it properly twice! Should probably stick to cash.

So, I'll be learning how to use my camera for the next few days and hopefully by the time I'm off to the UKs, I'd be familiar enough with some of the functions to take some decent pictures.



First picture taken with my new camera. It's the mess which is my bedside table.


I'm testing the zoom with this picture. It's Joe Bear!


Joe Bear again!

Yes! Finally, finished one of the additional hacks/codes needed to get things to work with the utterly idiotic engine.

Actual use of the function is to be implemented by one of my programmers. No not the slow one, the other one. The one who finishes really fast. She's probably a better programmer than I am.

Am having a bit of a problem with the SQLs required to get the reports up. My databse guy is hating me for passing him the task of generating those SQLs. I'm thinking that if it's possible, and if they're in a rush, we'd hand over the project minus the report module ... for the time being. Then after it's finished, we load that up for them later. Hopefully the client will go for it.

Work aside, am currently contemplating if I should audition for a solo part for 'It Came Upon A Midnight Clear' for the Christmas programme. Some of them had the audition on Monday. Some people think I should but I don't know cause my voice really shakes when I'm nervous. And I will be nervous when I have to sing solo in front of a bunch of people.

Another strange thing ...

I saved codes which I worked on last night (or rather early Monday morning) onto my floppy to bring to work later and when I opened the file, it wasn't what I saved. I thought it was strange cause I specifically remember doing a Save As ... before succumming to the sandman's call. Fortunately I remembered most of what I did and it didn't take me too long to reproduce it at work.

And then a few moments ago, I opened the same file, which I continued working on at work, to work on it, whatever I saved at work wasn't replicated in my floppy. Craps! What is wrong! Why isn't anything working today? Urgh!

I hope that whatever I've changed is still in the copy at work. I'll work on something for tonight and then I'll try integrating it with the codes at work ... it that is still there. Otherwise, a whole day at work has just gone to waste.

Shoots! Have a meeting at 9am. Hope that doesn't take too long. I'm never going to finish my project. I never ever want to head a project any longer. I utterly despise Project Management. Let me remain a programmer for the time being please. Project Management is pulling my mind at so many directions I don't have time to do my part of the development!