It's 1.45am. I should be sleeping, but I'm wide awake. So I thought, "Oh well, might as well blog about something."
I was watching '27 Dresses' last night, and there was this part where Katherine Heigl was asked about her favourite part of a wedding. You go watch it for her answer.
Most people would say the wedding starts when the guests are seated, the groom, best men and priest are ready and waiting, the music starts, and the beautiful parade of flowergirls-bridesmaid-maid of honour-bride walks down the aisle. If you asked me, the wedding starts before that. In the dressing room. When the bride takes one last look at her dress and hair and make-up in the mirror. One final look before she turns around and says, "OK, I'm ready. Let's go."
That woman in the mirror is the scariest person I've met in my entire life. More than God actually. All because I know if that girl does not like who she sees, bad things follow after. The best moments in my life came when that girl loved me. The worst times, oh well.. you get the picture.
11 years ago that girl was happy that she was doing well in school and sports, she had a guy to look up to, great friends and very little worries in life. 3 years after that, she couldn't trust anyone, and no one trusted her, not even her own parents. She couldn't even trust herself. 2 years and many more mistakes, she found happiness in best friends and gained her parents' trust again. 5 years ago, all she wanted in the world was to be in the background for she thought people who craved attention were just insecure fools. 3 years after that, she realised that the real insecure fool who was too afraid of getting out of the background was herself. Now, she looks back at me saying, "You have so much in your life now. What's this emptiness I'm still feeling?"
Maybe that's why I'm awake at this hour. Too much thinking. No, this is not a sad-so-pity-me post. This post is not even about weddings or marriage. It's just a thought that came to my mind that I'd thought I could share. I've learnt so much from that girl in the mirror. If I stare long enough at her, I'd realise that even though I find her scary, I liked her messy-just-woke-up hair, her big eyes, the tiny mole on her chin, even the pimple marks on her face. I might even look at her a bit longer and see her spirit. A spirit that wants nothing more than to live life with love, integrity, purpose, adventure.. Slowly over time, that emptiness gets smaller, but it hasn't disappeared. It's the thing that pushes me to be better. So really, I might not like feeling incomplete, but I like the feeling of knowing that there are still things to achieve and the challenge of finding out what that is.
So I hope, on my wedding day, if I was so lucky as to have one, I would look at myself in the mirror, check my dress, hair and make-up, look at the girl's eyes and say, "After all the pain and joy you've been through.. You go, girl."
I can only hope the man I'm marrying is not having different thoughts in his dressing room. Haha.
p/s: Bear with me. It's just a post I'd wanted to keep so that I can come back and look at it in the future.
How do you define a good trip? One worth the money you'd spent? The time you took to explore a new place? The things you've seen, heard, eaten, touched, experienced? The people you had the opportunity to spend time with, getting a glimpse of their life and temporarily being in their shoes? Items that you'd brought back home to show off, whether from a great shopping experience or just simple things like a photograph? What about a trip makes you go back home thinking, "Wow.."
View from Mount Coot-tha
It's hard to describe my recent trip to Queensland in one, reasonably-long post. I'm a lazy bum, so I'm not going to be writing about my trip in several posts, one after another. Short, simple and sweet, is how I'll do this. Hope you get an idea of how 'wow-ing' my trip was.
Posers by SouthBank
One year I'd waited for this trip. One year I'd saved money. Just for one main reason, to see my best friends. Yeah, I planned my trip over the one year as if I was going to explore the whole of Australia and possibly New Zealand. But in the end, that didn't work out, but I consider myself lucky enough that I'd finally spent some great times with my best friends. Just to spend one night, updating one another, being able to give a hug after so long, to laugh together, was wonderful enough, what more with 10 days?
Pancakes & Friends :)
City Cat ride.. Warning: The breeze can be freezing..brrrr..
Brisbane was a great place too. After you've experienced Seremban and Batu Pahat, trust me, Brisbane, as boring a place as my friends there tried to tell me, it's really nice! Oh well, I'm the tourist, of course I'll say nice things. I went to West-End for pizza, fillos, nachos, lasagna and wine in Three Monkeys, SouthBank was wonderful to watch 'Step Up 2', eat Cold Rock chocolate ice cream mixed with marshmallows, walk by the river, visit the museum and eat Turkish food; shopped for dresses at great prices in Chermside Mall, Queenstreet Mall and DFO (Direct Factory Outlet); ate yummy steak with calamari at Hog's Breath, pancakes in a 24-hours pancake house and chinese food 'lebih' ajinomoto at Cyber City; took a ride along the river on the City Cat; visited animals in the Lone Pine Sanctuary; caught a great view of Brisbane fromMount Coot-thaand finally going all the way to Gold Coast to check out Surfer's Paradise & Movieworld!
Surfer's Paradise & Movieworld
I was a happy, fat, satisfied, blessed, exhausted, and I cannot stress enough, happy girl after that trip.
All because I was blessed with friends who were more than willing to skip or 'cabut' from classes just because they wanted me to enjoy my time there.
THANK YOU! I LOVE YOU!! *hugz*
Stupid thing I did in Brisbane:Tried taking the public bus alone to Queenstreet Mall. The smart-overconfident-ass in me thought I was street-smart enough, next thing I knew I missed the stop I meant to get off, ended up across a long bridge, and got off at the Cultural Centre stop. I was so lost after that because I had no idea which bus to take to get back, so what did I do? Walked across that long bridge in the hot sun, calling myself an idiot, and finally finding myself in the right place. Haha.
Scariest thing in Brisbane: I was feeding a kangaroo, when this emu suddenly appeared. It wasn't staring at the food in my hand, ok? Even with my palm closed it kept coming closer, so when the kangaroo near me jumped away, I took that as a sign to 'Get away from scary bird!'
Feed the kangaroos at Lone Pine Sanctuary
Yummiest thing in Brisbane: Haiyo, this is tough. But in short, anything with bacon. *my best friends are probably fainting at this point*
Most exciting thing I did:Superman Escape! Aaaaaarrrrggghhhh!!!!
This is the view you'd get on the ride.. just imagine it going really fast..weeee!!
A 10-minute video I found about the ride that I thought was quite funny.
Most breath-taking moment: Being surrounded by so many flying loreekeets at feeding time. Goosebumps, man.
Biggest regret: Truthfully I had no regrets until I was seated next to 2 chatty Malay ladies in my plane flight back, when they asked me about my shopping experience in Brisbane. This is what they said, "Haiyo! You didn't go to Harbourtown?! Waa.. next time you must not miss it! We were shopping everyday over there! Haiyo, the prices there were so goooooood!! We beli so much barang!" Sheesh.. you know when Malaysian women tell you that you'd missed a great shopping experience, 100% they're probably right. Dammit.
Oh well, no such thing as a missed opportunity, just a good reason to come back.
p/s: Thank you to AirAsia for giving out free seats to GoldCoast :p
