the gala of swimming.

Seeing, this is probably the 12312th blog post about swimming gala you've all read since Puan Azura asked us all to write about this, I have no idea what to say.

As I'm looking at Boon write his blog post, I receive waves of emotion and inspiration. Him writing nonsense about the dictionary definition of "WATER" has made me think about life. 

Life, is like swimming gala.

We all race hard, but in the end of life, it all depends on the type of swimming trunks we wear.

With that brilliant introduction, let me tell you about my swimming gala. 

The most important thing you must know, is that I beat Boon Hoe in the 50 meter breast stroke, getting silver for that event.

This can be seen as revenge against Boon Hoe for beating me to a gold in the same event last year.

Muahaha.

But seriously now, basically swimming gala was a new experience for me this year. I had become swimming co-captain alongside Yeong Shin for Damansara and thus, am thrown into the world of the most stressful captainship possible. 

It's not like a water polo captain for example where you have 13 in a team. In swimming gala, it's as if your team consists of 50 people, which is true. However, there's probably a lot of people who think I didn't do much as a co-captain (which really annoyed me to no point) which is just due to me missing out most of the trainings because I had a billion and one things especially this time of year. Water polo trainings, going back to Penang to pay respects to be grandfather, Christian Fellowship, it's an overload man. And because of that, I got left out of managing the swimmers and Yeong Shin took on the whole load of responsibility of doing the tables and lists, when I could have helped anytime. 

But I'm not here to complain, because Yeong Shin did a great job managing the swimmers, and even if I'm seen as useless, I just helped out it any possible way. By the way, thanks Jac and Mei Jing Beijing for helping me out with the paper cutting writing thing :D Well anyways, next year I'll just show them how I can do it too if I become the swimming captain.

Besides the whole dilemma, swimming gala was quite fun as co-captain and as a swimmer obviously. I managed to get 2 golds and 2 silvers which is purely a blessing because I didn't train much and my relay team was awesome. Yeah.

Oh, yeah, congrats to Seladang man. I think they really deserved it this year. It's been a good run for Beruang and Harimau but I guess it's time for others to experience it. It's all fun and games anyways in the end, not so much glory or winning. 

Alvin Soo, signing off.

ergh.

Just to add on on my previous post (go read it now in case of spoilers here :P)..I was thinking about how people always got a conception on how a person is.

It's like, people always have a rough idea on who a person is based on how they act on the outside. There a lot of jokers in our class but its not always the case that their whole personality is joker-type. People usually have their serious and joking sides of themselves. It's just up to that person how much of both sides he shows it publicly.

Just to give you an example. You guys watch friends right? You know Chandler? I remember this episode where Phoebe was dating this psychologist who got on everyone's nerves because he could say exactly how the rest were inside. Then to Chandler, who always jokes around, he said that, "Are jokes always the way you cover up your insecurity?" Chandler was really freaked out man.

So it comes down to who we really are. Sometimes we're just afraid to let loose and be both sides of ourselves when we feel like it. There was once I was so confused and a bit depressed after the wake service of Markus and yet time won't stop. School still went on, it's like one thing after another, not giving me time to be in that state for long. I was torn apart from being the guy who always tried to make some jokes and the guy who's just quiet. And yet, I'm still both. That day was a really tough day but it turned out okay anyways.

 Well, the basic thing is just like those corny things u see all the time, "BE YOURSELF." And always do your homework.

This emo-looking post doesn't sound like the alvin people usually know but I hope you guys don't mind :D

ANYWAYS I'm hungry. I'm gonna finish some left over chinese new year cookies now. 

 

heh.

Looks like I haven't really updated this blog. I was supposed to write more about chinese new year a LONG time ago but I think that's too late :P

Hmm.

Well, this might be something Alvin the joker/always cheerful (according to somebody I can't remember haha) might say. 

Err, I have no idea how to start this.

A few weeks ago, a guy from my church died. He was supposed to be 23 this year if I'm not mistaken. His name was Markus Ng. Now, when I heard this through sms, I didn't want to believe it. I mean, I just talked to the fellow a week before that. I remember I stayed back after church for this music practice thing where anyone can join and I felt kind of an outsider because it was my first time going for the practice and even though I knew everyone there, it's just that feeling you know? And there was Markus who came up to me and talked to me about playing guitar, making me feel much more comfortable being there.

I just didn't believe that he could die.

Until I got another sms from one of the adults in my church saying that his wake service would be on Thursday and Friday of that week.

Markus, who was supposed to be teaching my form 4 group at my youth fellowship had died. 

His wake service was a mix of sadness and hope. There were so many people who came up and said how Markus, just one guy, had an impact on their lives so much. Just a bit of background, Markus had just graduated from studying law and politics overseas but he had studied here in Malaysia before that. People always said he was the most patriotic guy they've ever seen. He studied politics because he believed that in order to improve our government, we had to work from the inside, understanding it and finding ways to make it better, not just sit there and criticize it. He had big dreams in making Malaysia a better place.

And he didn't want to change Malaysia just through politics, he also changed a lot of people's lives just through his constant love for anyone he came into contact with. And I mean everyone. The people who came up to talk about him said that he even made sure he thanked the toll booth person by his/her own name which is always displayed at the booth. The wake service was packed with people he had an impact on. I saw people of all races coming to his service.

A lot of people questioned why he died. But I really truly believe that his death was planned so that it could impact a lot of people. Rather than one guy having all this qualities and changing the lives of others, I think it was planned by God so that it makes us realize that we ALL should be striving to have all these qualities and making an impact on others.

I mean, I barely knew Markus and yet his death really made me think about what's really important and how we always strive to get happiness through a lot of things, but how striving to make others happy is much more rewarding and fulfilling.

I know this might not be the side of Alvin you usually see but this IS me too. But more to that later.

I wrote this post because I wanted people have the privilege of knowing Markus without really knowing him and still be able to be touched by his life. Like me.

Go listen to his songs , "http://www.myspace.com/markusng" especially blahblehblue

And his memorial website : "http://markusng.last-memories.com"

one sheep..two sheep..

I can't sleep.

Even though you might see this post posted supposedly in the afternoon or whatever, it's really 2 in the morning. This is due to my messed up laptop time thingy. Seriously, whenever I try to change the time, system preferences lags then dies on me. I've killed too many already. 

Do you ever get the feeling of being tired but you can't sleep? It's like your body's tired but you can't drift off into dream land. Agh.

Ho hum.

Hum ho.

Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to work we go. 

I never really understood Snow White. I mean the queen wants to kill her because she's the fairest of them all. One day I'm gonna force the queen to play frisbee in the hot sun then she'd be tan like toast bread. 

Why the heck am I talking about Snow White? I know people call me weird but even I know I'm not this weird. 

La dee la.

I can't think straight man. Just now I could command my thoughts properly but now I'm talking Snow White. 

...

The frogs in my pond are croaking.

You know, the first time my family heard them when we first moved in, we thought it was some huge monster birds because our frogs don't just go like : croooak. croooak.

They sound more like : mowaaaaakwaaaaaakwaaakwaaakk. 

or crokakakaaaaaaakaaaa.

My sisters and I were really freaked out that night until about later that week when we found frogs in our pond and threw them over our wall (to the neighbours heh.) , that we thought it might be them. If you ever sleep over at my house, don't be alarmed at our frogs.

Last time, I couldn't sleep with our Frog Choir singing ballads to each other. They're not the ideal music you'd want to hear or anything close to the frogs in Meet the Robinsons, but now I think it'd be harder for me to fall asleep without them. I guess it's the same way I can fall asleep even when I'm listening to rock music in my iPod. It's like a background noise which you hear in your head which you kinda embraces you and makes you sleep.

And now I'm talking about frogs. 

Maybe I need to sleep now. I might write more about London later today.

Nights or morning or ragh..you know what I mean.

Chinese New Year improvised.

On the first day of chinese new year. We had duck.

Yes duck.

You might think we went to some expensive chinese restaurant for new year's (do you know that three pao's cost about 6-7 bucks?!) but we decided to do things our way. We had our chinese new year 1st day celebration mainly in our small apartment. 

- Note - 

Apartment is immensely tiny. No kidding. I think most master bedrooms are the size of our living room, kitchen, hallway and toilet combined. 

But moving on, at the morning of the first day of the new year, it is a chinese tradition to 'cham cha' for our parents which means we serve them tea. This is then followed by words of blessing by our parents. However, there were several things out of place in our tea session

1) We were all in wonderful, beautiful pyjamas.

2) I had to borrow this Beijing Olympics white T-shirt with A BIT AND ONLY A BIT of glitter on the logo from my sister because I forgot to pack my PJ's

3) Our tea was hot green-tea

4) We took pictures of the whole thing with us in PJ's

Well anyways, besides 3 or 4 oddities, we did the session and got our ang pows and blessings.

After that I think we went out for lunch with some of my parent's friend's kids along side all my sisters' friends (note plural sisterS) in a chinese restaurant about a few minutes walk from our apartment. Just to give you guys a bit of background, we live near a few chinese restaurants and Whiteleys (it's the first shopping mall in Europe or UK I can't remember) and a lot of small, humble shops. So anyways, we had good chinese food with prawn noodles, dishes and the lot.

After that, it was back to our apartment where my mum started preparing our chinese new year dinner. Our dinner was to be at home where the cooking never fails. :D 

My mum bought a few stuff from this supermarket called the "ORIENTAL uh..something." located nearby. (note: I forgot the name). 

So at about 7.00 we all sat down and ate our dinner complete with chinese music (my sis played it on her computer), yee-sang, DUCK GLORIOUS DUCK, tofu, veggies and other dishes.

And to top it all off, we all basically wore our PJ's for dinner. 

eat eat eat eat eat...

Today I found out if you type 'eat' a lot it looks like it's pronounced ee-yaat.

Anyways, this entry's about eating. Quite a shocker isn't it.

But more specifically, I'm going to talk about this market called Borough Market. I'm telling you, this kind of market is my kind of market. In this market, all you do is eat stuff.

Basically, there's a bunch of stores in this designated area just for Borough Market. It's sort of open air but it's snakes it's way between some old-looking buildings. Usually in markets, you buy a particular item like vegetables or other things so that you can cook at home or maybe for example in Malaysian markets, you can eat some snacks like boiled (is it boiled?) nuts, fish ball and etc. But there in Borough Market, they sell sandwiches, hot-dog, burgers and a whole lot of stuff just to let you eat.

Originally, there IS a normal market selling food products. But I guess it expanded with a lot of individual stores selling a special kind of food. Let me list them down and you'll see why it's so different from other markets:

1) Ostrich burger (HUH?)

2) Spicy-red-looking-sausage-with-rocket burger (it's a veggie not NASA)

3) Fried oysters on an oyster shell

4) Some Italian / Spanish / I'm not sure, hot-dog

5) Thai green curry with rice (the store guy was British)

6) DARN AWESOME CHEESECAKE MAN.

7) Man, I wished I bought another box.

8) The most amazing burger you can eat in the world with lots of fried onions.

So yeah, that was the first place I visited in London that week with my family. I can't remember what day I went but it was probably in the first few days of the week. 

That's it. 

one post down teacher!  muahahaha..

please don't read this heh heh.

to blog or not to blog...is that a question?

Well, I'm back.

I was in London for the past week celebrating CNY with my sisters. My parents thought it'd be a good idea to spend it as a family so that they wouldn't get home-sick or something like that. 

Hmm.

You know, I have no idea how to start this post. There's a lot of things I did in London some I'm not sure are important or not. I'm still debating whether I should even write about Chinese New Year. I've read a few other blogs and some of them are already in the CNY mood typing about what they did.

Is that what we're supposed to do? It's like we're all pressured to write about it since the others have done it and since it IS chinese new year after all. STOP PRESSURING ME. 

Haha, well getting down to business.

I guess I'll just blog about some of the interesting things in London. I'll split it up to a few posts I guess. And no, this is not a way to kill off some posts due since we all have to post something every week.

Okay, it is, but it's easier to read anyways.