Cheat Work Thursday

The Walking Dead If I haven't mentioned this for tens of times already: I can't get enough of the show. It's an addictive zombie series, which is unexpected and new to me. The showrunners, however, would make seven episodes of it, then make you wait for months for another seven. Suits This is one charming show. I mentioned about it here . Watching the show is like eating gummy candy. Smash It's hard to talk about Smash without talking about Glee. Glee the TV sweetheart was exciting to me for about five episodes, plus another couple of episodes when Blaine sang familiar songs. Then I can just scan and pick for clips that I like on YouTube. While kudos to Glee for making us forget that the show is in the same genre as High School Musical and for pushing boundaries, it needs a new storyline and drama. It now feels like just a show about a group of school kids making music videos. I only got the Schuester-Silvester rivalry for about 10 minutes. With only two episode...

chal·lenge n . 4. A test of one's abilities or resources in a demanding but stimulating undertaking. ~ Thefreedictionary . I rarely watch a movie or a TV show, or read a book, without finding out its summary or how it ends first. Those few times that I didn't were because I couldn't find the info on the internet, and those few times were not good. Sometimes I'd fast forward a DVD to a few crucial scenes, then only I'd watch it again from the beginning. It's only important that I find out the whole story before I watch anything. How else would I know if the next two hours are going to be worth it? This, everybody, has saved me from movies that I don't like for 98% of the time. The other 2%, unfortunately, includes Schindler's List, which I could only sit to watch for 30 minutes. (I wanted to quit by the 10th minute but coaxed myself not to. It's a WWII movie, which genre I like, and I heard that e-ve-ryone loves Schindler's List.) You'...

chal·lenge n . 4. A test of one's abilities or resources in a demanding but stimulating undertaking. ~ Thefreedictionary . I've been very good with exercising these days. I exercised for eight days in December and only took about three months for the next one which was this week. Oh, how I hate people who "wake up early in the morning and run as part of their lifestyle " right now. But I love tiny thighs and size S dresses too. So here's the challenge: In the next six months, I'm going to exercise for seven days in a row, at least once each month. If I slip, I have to start the seven-day count all over again. The goal is to start a new habit and fit nicely into this particular favourite clothing item again. To be honest, it's only mostly the latter. Realistically, let's not care much about what I do for the rest of 23 days, or if I should exercise twice a week instead. Because for the huge part of surviving inconveniences in my life, I resort...

Good things, this week: The five pieces of kiwi fruit I bought on Monday. The resume I made for my sister. Happy clients sending happy e-mails. The box of chocolate I sent to a client. The weekend at my hometown and playing with Baby Noble for hours. What a smart and beautiful baby she is. If not because she's now 7kg plus, I wouldn't put her down. The fact that I've lost a couple of kilos in the past few months... I have to pin my skirts now! The playlist I made for the road trip. I finally drew something and completed that four-minute-long movie of our last family weekend. I finally found someone I can talk about The Road with: my eldest sister. The Cadbury's Gold from my sister and Caramello from my brother. Good workdays on Thursday and Friday. Internet radios. The passion interest I have again towards a lifelong dream. (Being spontaneous is fun and exhilarating but) I'm growing to love pausing and thinking about some of my next actions. ...

I definitely did not draw this. Photo by Peter Olexa on Unsplash . chal·lenge n . 4. A test of one's abilities or resources in a demanding but stimulating undertaking. ~ Thefreedictionary . So I tried Illustrator this year and made one and a half drawings. Then I felt like drawing the old-fashioned way. I bought watercolour pencils, a brush, a drawing block and sharpeners(!) for this I-Think-Drawing-Is-in-My-Blood phase project. But every time I thought of starting, my hands froze and I proceeded to have a staring contest with my drawing block. So, my challenge is to start drawing. Deep down, I know I should start with an oval... which I should do a thorough research on because this is obviously the most important step in my drawing career. I have to learn to draw an oval from the best oval drawer out there. Your first oval could make or brea... so I consult YouTube. After another series of internal debates on how this isn't working, and luckily I didn't buy...

Good things, this week: One long, peaceful breakfast of delicious waffle + ice cream + strawberry sauce and coffee last Friday in an empty restaurant. A bottle of skin therapy oil that smells very nice. This pair of polka-dot flat shoes. My sister came to visit, and we spent an evening stuffing our faces with cili fish and a jar of cili asam sauce at Ampang Home Town Yong Tow Foo. Having my new favourite dessert, lompat tikam, for the second time (also in six months). Got it from the same stall that first introduced me to this bowl of magic. I cannot imagine this not being the best lompat tikam in the entire KL. This white shirt with light brown detailing. An almost empty clothes store at 10 in the morning. Admiring a line of Career Barbies at a hypermarket -- from the architect Barbie to the vet to the teacher. Totally a normal thing for a grown-up to do. A good work meeting on Wednesday, hopefully one which will create many more. Balancing work numbers without ha...

I've never told my mother this, but one of my earliest work ethic lessons that I remember is from when I was nine, taught by her in a rubber farm. (I don't know a thing about tapping rubber. I just loved following her climbing up and down the hills. Plus, I'm sure I must be berangan  being someone else the whole time I was in the farm, you know, like being a spy or something). I'll skip the details, but the point I learned that day was to "do your work properly, make the people who employ you happy". I only managed about 80 pages of How Starbucks Saved My Life . But if there is one thing from the book that stuck in my head, it is Michael Gill's advice to his daughter Elizabeth that "work is dignity".

Dallas Shaw's work makes me want to draw again. Just bought my first Luna watercolour pencils in 20 years. (Shaw is the artist who draws the illustrations for  @dkny PR Girl's Twitter account.)

I heard The Host is in pre-production now with Saoirse Ronan playing Melanie, Max Irons playing Jared, and Jake Abel playing Ian. (I made my own cast of The Host a while ago. It was Sarah Roemer for Melanie, Matt Lanter for Jared, Alexis Bledel for Wanda/Pet, and someone tanned with short wavy hair and Middle Eastern/Greek/Italian look for Ian.) One long year to 2013.

On one of the long weekends this year, the whole family and I went to X Water Park, spending the whole afternoon screaming and shouting at each other (louder than usual), going down the slides. I didn't realize how steep some of the slides were until the moment I was pushed down. But it must be nothing compared to this (via Reddit ) called Insano at Beach Park, Brazil. Man, that looks like just jumping off from an eight-storey building. I went to the market the next day with my sisters to buy fish, chicken and seafood for our BBQ and steamboat dinner that night. I do buy groceries for myself from time to time -- milk, fruits, one bag of vegetables and one slice of chicken. Buying dinner for 20, however, requires skill. And we drove to three places to find the last three bottles of BBQ sauce in town. The dinner was delicious, by the way. I wish I could eat a lot more than I did. We didn't really have any games this time (there was this new UNO game they played that I didn...