WHAT?

wisdom follows age but sometimes gets lost on the way

2009-06-11T07:54:00.000-07:00

Allrights.

This post is purely dedicated to you guys man. My birthday this year was totally whoa-some thanks to all of you. The barbeque party actually went quite well with no rain at all. BUT THEN, some PEOPLE started a taboo game without me so I started a bluff card game :) I totally won that one. Then we all ate cake and watched a movie which has made me to rethink any vacation ideas in the swamps of Australia.

ANYWAYS, just for you guys, I'm gonna list out all the things I got from you guys this birthday.

I got:

1) A great party with all my buddies who made it the most memorable one.

2) Cake in the face from taking out a candle with my mouth

3) Hugs from a lot of people.

4) A V-necked T-shirt with buttons which I've always wanted

5) A really cool blue Quiksilver wallet which I now use

6) A white sports shirt which I kinda need because I have no real sports kinda shirt

7) Another V-necked shirt which looks really nice 'cause I like V-necked shirts

8) An Ang Pow containing 50 bucks which apparently is how much I meant to the guy who gave it

9) A book of Christian Short Stories

10) A book with funny pictures of "close friends" :)

11) Anime dvds

12) A Chocolate Brownie cake and BLUEBERRY CHEESECAKE and the best of all home-made cupcake.

13) A really funny mug with a picture of a cow playing a guitar (fits me perfectly)

14) Cool modern-ish desktop accessories

15) A super funny card from two of my closest buddies

16) A GUITAR HERO GUITAR FOR THE PS2 MAN. IT'S WIRELESS TOO.

17) I almost forgot, a MIKASA WATER POLO BALL

18) - trashed in the card game 'BLUFF'

19) - ditched by my friends who started a Taboo game without the birthday boy

20) - peer pressured into nearly playing a Thai horror movie which could have given me nightmares for my birthdat

21) - to hang out with my true best friend who stayed on until the end watching Rogue with me.

Okay guys, feel free to comment on this post and say which one you're responsible for including 1, 2 and 3 :)

I'll just tell you who number 21 is anyways. It was Jes Ibrahim. :)

By the way, someone left a sparkly shirt and a towel in a plastic bag.

However, if this is a present, I really like it.

good memories.

this is how happy you guys made me. :)

part 2.

2009-05-23T22:59:00.000-07:00

Wokays, I might as well finish the story. I'm supposed to copy some add maths notes but I don't understand nuts what Jien Min did in his notebook so here I am.

SO, obviously you guys aren't the dimmest lightbulb so yeah it was crap. Now, if it was normal crap, it'd be okay but guys, I think aliens exist cause I just wiped some of their crap on my hand that day. That alien crap was..well I don't think I'll explain the colour but the SMELL IS JUST WONDERFUL. I don't think I've smelt anything as horrible in my life and I've smelt a LOT of things in my life.

Anyways I tried wiping my tire and it got stuck to my hand. And that was the day I decided not to wear my cycling gloves. Then I tried wiping it off on the grass and the people that passed me in cars just stared at me but oh well. THEN I WAS BACK ON MY ADVENTURE. I cycled further down the road with the smell of alien crap strong in my nostrils and I made the right turning this time. When I got to the "spot", it wasn't as great as I expected. Sure I could sort of see the sunset but it was quickly fading and I could see this highway in front of me. After salvaging what I could of the "scenery" I then made my way back home.

After an exhilarating ride DOWN the hill and going down the wrong hill, thus making me cycle back up, I made it back to my house. Strangely I just saw my mum's car go in with the gate open so I skidded in. When I got off my bike, my mum who just came out of the car ran to me and embraced me, crying. I was like, "HUH?"

It turns out I kinda cycled too long. I came back at 8 which was already kinda dark and my mum panicked. She went round the neighbourhood searching for me and even asked some security guard if a boy on a bicycle came through the park. WHAT'S MORE is that she called my dad who was in the middle of an important meeting at work so he had to wrap it up and come back home.

Heh.

There are a few things I have learnt from this:

1) I have 2 very amazing loving parents who really care about me.

2) I shouldn't cycle so late or risk giving my mum a heart attack and making her like this:

3) I should bring a handphone or some flare to let my parents know where I am.

4) Alien crap smell doesn't come out even after using 2 different soaps.

So yeah. That's the story of my life :)

I've decided to put off cycling for a while for my mum's sake.

the-much-awaited-(but-probably-not-really) story

2009-05-16T08:11:00.000-07:00

okay guys. I'm just gonna blog about my story since I have nothing else to do (and I'm waiting for a phone call anyways.)

So. This is the story of THE BICYCLE STORY.

Some past wednesday. I can't remember. 7.15 pm.

It was after my guitar class I think that I decided to go cycling at this time. I hadn't taken my bicycle for a spin for some time so I'd thought I'd just go that day. After struggling to operate the bicycle pump, my bicycle was ready for action. I had already planned where I wanted to go, which was this place near Pantai where you could sort of see the sunset and I thought it'd be cool to go there. The sky nowadays was also very nice.

So, I started on my journey. For those of you who know where I live, my neighbourhood is basically uphill + downhill. Unfortunately I had to climb to mama big hills to get to the top where I can go the main-er back road of Telawi to get to Pantai.

So there I was. Just cruising down without my helmet and handphone looking cool. The wind in my hair. Car exhaust in my nostrils. It was the (cycling) life. After cycling for a while I turned into a turning which i thought was my destination. After travelling for a while, I was thinking: "EH?" Turns I took the wrong turning so I did a failed attempt 180 drift turn and made my way back. While waiting for cars to go by, I noticed this brown thing on my wheel. I thought it was mud, so I tried wiping it away WITH MY HANDS. Turns out..

well, I think it's getting a bit long so I'll leave the suspense there :)

TO BE CONTINUED

History Maker.

2009-05-05T07:57:00.001-07:00

Hi. I'm supposed to:

1) blog about "THE BICYCLE ADVENTURE"

2) study even though i'm not taking exam

BUT I've decided to do something rather lame and brainless.

Yes.

I'm doing the question-answering-shuffle-song thing.

Mei Jing did something like this so I could say that I'm not so bad then :)

1) IF SOMEONE SAYS 'ARE YOU OKAY' YOU SAY?

Love Lead Me On - The Afters

2) HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOURSELF?

Cowboys - Counting Crows

3) WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?

Somewhere over the rainbow - IsraelIsrael Kamakawiwo'ole

4) HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY?

Like A Movie - Midtown

5) WHAT IS YOUR LIFE'S PURPOSE?

Take Me Home - Aqualung

6)WHAT'S YOUR MOTTO?

Changes - 3 Doors Down

7) WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?

Understatement - New Found Glory

8) WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?

The Best Thing - Relient K

9) WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?

Fifteen - Taylor Swift

10)WHAT IS 2 + 2?

Drive Away - Melee

11) WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?

Beauty and the Beast - Beth Fowler

12) WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?

Good Love Is On The Way - John Mayer

13) WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?

She's My Winona - Fall Out Boy

14) WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?

Goodbye Mr A. - The Hoosiers

15) WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?

The Blues - Switchfoot

16) WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?

Look At Me - Sum 41

17) WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST??

All At Once - The Fray

18) WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST FEAR??

Incomplete - Switchfoot

19) WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?

Everday - Troy and Gabriella

20) WHAT DO YOU WANT RIGHT NOW?

There is Nothing Like - Hillsong United

21) WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?

On A Tuesday In Amsterdam London - Counting Crows

22) WHAT WILL YOU POST THIS AS?

History Maker - Hillsong London

HAHAHA. This is rather funny. Most of my answers match up very nicely with the questions. :)

i have 5% left on my com.

2009-05-03T03:59:00.000-07:00

There seems to be some epidemic going on.

And no, I'm not talking about swine flu but that is quite important-enough-to-blog-about news.

People seem to be blogging about other people quite a lot.

eg: 1) Jac : Me and Mei Jing

2) Me : Jac

3) Shi Fen : Me

4) Mei Jing : Ronald

5) Ronald : Mei Jing (sort of)

6) Audrey : Boon (sort of)

I think this is quite funny.

Any hoo, my battery's going to die and I'm going out to eat JAPANESE FOOD so seeyah

Coming soon : "The Bicycle Adventure".

Whoops, my battery actually died after I typed that :)

if i put a title here, it would spoil the suspense.

2009-04-27T06:16:00.000-07:00

Now guys, there's actually a lot of things to blog about.

1) I could blog about the event only known as "THE BICYCLE ADVENTURE"

2) I could blog about Sports Day.

3) I could blog about me actually arranging my study table and shelves neatly for the first time in male history.

4) Heck, I could blog about my dinner where one of my favourite dishes was served which was 'fuu yong tan' and today's one was especially great because it had a lot of onions

5) In fact, that sentence could have well been one post by itself

Instead I'm going to blog about this person who had written a post about me so therefore I am returning the favour. That person is Loo Jac Lyn.

Let me start by stating how I met Jac. It was a dark and stormy night. I was riding my SZ32100 bicycle back home hurriedly so that I can beat the rain. So there I was just cruising on my bike, when I saw some gang members cornering a small girl which turned out to be Jac Lyn. She had said "Don't take my yellow squirt bottle and milo biscuits!" I drifted and skidded into the alley knocking down the disgusting criminals and together we rode off into the night becoming best friends ever since.

Well obviously that's not true 'cause Jac could probably kill those gang members which one swing of her handball-netball-frisbee-throwing arm.

ANYWAYS, I had always considered Jac as a friend since primary but I only truly became close friends with her at the end of form 1 and throughout form 2. Jac's one of those rare friends which you can only find a handful in a lifetime. And I had find one of them in secondary school. How great is that?

She's been basically my big and small sister in so many ways these past few years. She was always someone I could bully (eh heh heh) and yet someone who can be the wise one who'd know what to say whenever I tell her something. So yeah, Jac you rock.

In dedication, I've decided to put this picture which perfectly encompasses who Jac is.

haha :)

what happened after audrey left the CF meeting.

2009-04-18T06:48:00.001-07:00

After our CF meeting on Friday, the amazing, responsible male committee members of CF, namely, Alvin, Jien Min and Judah decided to take pictures to commemorate the event

Judah wasn't in one of the pictures because he kept laughing at the bucket in the background.

BREAK.

2009-04-18T06:36:00.000-07:00

I'm writing this post as a break from homework.

Today I ate some really nice japanese food at the new mall in ss2 which is Tropicana City. Quite a cool place I should say. It's still new but they already have BORDERS :):)

Anyways I ate at this restaurant called sushi takei or something like that. It was not only cheap for a japanese restaurant but the portions are a perfect size man. I love japanese food. Everything about japanese food rocks. From their sushi to their desserts. I could even just eat their rice alone and still feel satisfied (while not really but you know.) They had this amazing dessert which is ice cream stuffed between waffles in sandwich kinda style and size. :D

Oh, and I bought this totally random book which is "If I Really Wanted To Beat Stress, I Would." It's a local published book by a church I think in SS something. I was intrigued by the book after I turned to a page which said:

"If I really wanted to beat stress, I would:

SING IN THE CAR."

So, I bought the book at RM 12.90 :)

i'm dead.

2009-04-12T07:56:00.000-07:00

I'm kinda dead, and in two ways.

1) I haven't started sejarah at all even though it's due on Tuesday. I tried to do as much Physics as possible but I've only gotten about halfway through.

2) I'm so so so so so so so so la ti do, tired. Water polo training was intense with lots of swimming. My skin is kinda has that peeling-but-not-really-peeling-which-goes-away-by-adding-water look which you get after staying in the pool too long. I'm dead tired man. I konked out on my bed after dinner until 10 and I've been doing snippets of Physics since then until I gave up and came here :)

Well, that's it.

F-one anyone?

2009-04-05T06:30:00.000-07:00

Well ironically, this post isn't about the results or whatever. I'm just posting this up so that I can get it up before anyone else :D

I'm sort of into f1..it's the only 'sports' I watch on tv mainly besides basketball and water polo (but how often do you get that?). It's quite wicked to see the fastest land vehicles on the earth battling it out on the streets. Nothing but pure speed and adrenaline, man.

I never understood football what with 22 people chasing after a ball or golf where they just hit a ball with a metal stick only to chase after it afterwards. Not dissing it or anything, golf and football are okay, basically 98% of male humans who have television watch football I would say 70% of males (mainly people over 40) also watch golf. Yes, I do make up the 2% and 30%. Well, we're all different I guess.

So coming back to F1. I was quite depressed because my dad managed to score tickets to today's race in Sepang with his friends, leaving me alone. Sniff. How unfair is that? Well I guess he deserves it better than a not-so-enthusiastic enthusiast for f1 like me. BUT STILL. Who wouldn't want to watch it live? So there I was. Left behind from the fastest race on the earth. Hmph. I decided to go for water polo training to drown my sorrows, quite literally :P

Oh today was more productive and I'm quite pleased. Except as I just typed this I realized I haven't practiced piano whatsoever and I have class tomorrow AND it's already 9.40. Should I deafen my neighbours with my horrible practicing of Beethoven? Gah. Well seeya. I'm going to go procrastinate.

It's 12.14 am.

2009-04-04T09:16:00.000-07:00

OK, this is the post you've been waiting for.

I'm going to write stuff as my thoughts say it because I'm so lazy to compose a decent and witty post so I'm going to let the brain juice flow yo. My juice will be separated into colored paragraphs.

Man, I feel sunburnt. I should have put more sunblock today.

I have a bad feeling about the coming week 'cause I haven't started any homework whatsoever and it's all going to pile up soon. Sigh. I planned to do it today but I had the mini water polo session in cheras, then I had youth in my church, then I went out for dinner, then I read the last 100 pages of a book until 11.30, turned on my mac and here I am. And yes, that was all said in one sentence.

I think I have eye bags. I'm not sure how. I keep falling asleep on my bed accidentally when I lie down for a quick 'rest' and I always wake up at about 1, brush my teeth and go back to sleep. Maybe that's why. And the funny thing is, when anyone wakes me up during this 'nap session' I actually talk subconsciously. I used to talk a lot of nonsense to my sisters when they woke me up during the time they were still studying here. That used to get on their nerves. Strangely enough, my eyes are apparently open when I talk to them. I think I've told a few people about this. They laughed at me.

I'm currently balancing my guitar on my lap and not really playing it. I mean, I was playing it but then I turned on my mac. Now whenever I hear my mum walk around near my room, I start playing random chords so that she'll think I'm practicing and not wasting my time on the computer. I've trained my ears for this.

I have a lot of monster mosquito bites on my ankles and one on my hand. It's itchy.

I wish I knew how to solve a Rubix cube.

I wish I was better at water polo and guitar.

I think I'm a seriously blur person sometimes and that bugs me. How am I going to be like in the future? Do people graduate from blurness?

I think I have a lot of Batman stuff. Even a coin box from Movie World, man. I wish I could go back there. I was too young to ride the Lethal Weapon. But I met my favourite heroes that time, Batman and Robin. They were cruising in a darn wicked Batmobile and they parked in an alley and I was the first to take a picture with them. I still have the picture.

I think I have a headache. I'm going to sleep now. What a wasted day. And yet it wasn't in some ways but I still feel so lazy and unproductive and I hate it. Oh, sleepiness. Nights.

it's 11.35pm

2009-04-04T08:38:00.000-07:00

Today was the frisbee/basketball/volleyball/5 a side? day. I played frisbee and Harimau got 3rd for boys but the girls, despite being one woman down, managed to bag a gold. Darn pro man seriously. I've never seen such awesomeness in my life :D

I just found out "awesomeness" is actually in the dictionary because there's no red line under it when I typed it.

Anyhoo, after frisbee, I watched some b-ball. The funniest and most entertaining match I've ever seen in my life was Seladang versus Beruang Damansara. Kesh and Jude were the best duo, man. We all went berserk and were so jakun when Kesh managed to score a basket, giving him high-fives even when the game was still going on with the referee staring at him angrily. Anyways, Beruang won that match with Mark as their MVP. He's like some fast, scary tank that keeps shooting haha. Boon however didn't score crap and caused much disappointment in the Boon Fan Club comprising Jac, Mei Jing, Judah, Chin San and me. Boon. Why.

After that, I just sorta drifted around, eating (they didn't have the amazing chicken rice today garh), watching games and went for the water polo briefing/training in cheras after all the sports (except damansara basketball finals which dragged on quite long). Quite a relaxed day compared to yesterday actually.

Ah, you don't really wanna read about games carnival because everyone's blogging about it. So I'm going to write another post about random thoughts. But of course, I gotta give a brilliant conclusion to this post. Basically, I found out today that:

1)I'm not that good at frisbee

2) Basketball looks really awesome 'cause it's so upbeat and I like fast games (maybe I'll play next year)

3) I sort of lost my voice from cheering the girls frisbee team in the finals.

4) I'm so sunburnt.

Kay, that's it folks for this post.

that was actually pretty long.

2009-04-01T08:02:00.000-07:00

That was actually pretty long.

Maybe it's the pictures.

To balance it out I'm going to post an extremely short one to sustain your attention span.

I thought this picture was cool.

well.

2009-04-01T07:29:00.000-07:00

Hmm, I have no idea what to write.

Like seriously.

I COULD write about house deco but the idea doesn't appeal to me.

OH WELL.

Last Tuesday, which was just yesterday, the first day of games carnival started! Houses battled it out in the sun (except squash you indoor people), competing in tennis, house decoration and of course, squash. I have no idea why I joined house deco. I have a vague memory of enjoying it a long time ago, but last year's experience kinda blurred it out but it all came back to me yesterday. :D

I guess I could say I had fun (besides the fact I sang in front of Dr. Rizal AGAIN but more on that later.) It was quite cool in a sense. We all were gung ho for the first few hours, doing our part to deplete the world of cellophane tape, paint and cardboard. For Harimau, we all had our own stuff to do.. mine was making a CHINESE PILLAR THING out of Coca-Cola cans which I was relatively proud of until we found out it couldn't stand for nuts so we built a base.

It was supposed to look like this:

Well, that was a bigger picture than I thought. Anyways we tried to do the flap thing by cutting the cans at the top and opening it up but it kinda looked odd but it was okay :D

About 1 and a half hours from date line, we all slightly panicked and rushed to set up the house because we hadn't put anything up. I risked my life on the wobbliest ladder in the world and helped put up the "lanterns" made up of cans and our "curtain" to divide cheras and damansara made up of, you guessed it, cans.

There were a lot of cans. Seriously.

Anyways, we all got what we needed up and it was time to prepare for our presentation. In case you guys didn't already know, I was appointed "chinese opera singer". I was extremely terrified that I would end up looking like her (or him? :0 ) -

But I just had some funky newspaper outfit where I could only move my right arm and walk like a duck or my outfit will be ripped to shreds. It was all fun anyways. And the rest is history.

I got to sing a chinese song in front of Dr Rizal AGAIN..

Some people thought I sang Indian...

Seladang won both cheras and damasara category..

And of course, they deserved it. I wish I could have seen it but I knew it was awesome. Harimau got 3rd for damansara but we were quite pleased that they said we made them laugh the most :D:D:D

So yeah. That's it. The main lesson I've learnt from this experience is that:

Stapler guns are really, really cool. Really.

Goodnight.

I am chlorine-man.

2009-03-01T05:11:00.000-08:00

Yes, I am becoming chlorine man.

Not only me, but probably Boon Hoe and some other guys you don't know as well.

This is because, MSSM water polo competition is coming up and in order to get in the state team, you have to come faithfully and not-caring-whether-you-die-or-not regularly every week, Saturday and Sunday , 3.30 to 7.00 in the evening.

Not counting occasional Monday training of course.

It's quite crazy. Mid-sems are coming up and this is taking up a lot of study time. I haven't even started memorizing the makalala billion things to remember, especially for Chem, Physics, Sejarah and Biology. Every Sunday and Saturday, I feel really exhausted and really, really, really hungry after training. (If you guys have seen me eating chap-fan, I eat nearly double of that)

Even now, my hands are slowly turning webb-ish and dry in my transformation in becoming Chlorine Man. Maybe I'll be able to cause my arch-enemies to become skin-irritant in the future or something. What do you guys think of this costume?

the gala of swimming.

2009-02-24T20:08:00.001-08:00

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.

2009-02-22T23:44:00.000-08:00

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.

2009-02-22T22:56:00.000-08:00

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..

2009-02-01T10:00:00.000-08:00

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.

2009-02-01T02:27:00.000-08:00

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...

2009-02-01T02:00:00.000-08:00

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?

2009-02-01T01:43:00.000-08:00

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.

piles and piles and piles..

2009-01-21T07:26:00.000-08:00

Recently, the workload has been a lot.

Well, maybe that's a huge understatement.

It seems like everyday is just to survive and complete tomorrow's homework and assignments.

Above that, I have to juggle being President of Christian Fellowship, Captain of swimming (guys, this is the worst possible captain to be, seriously. You have about the whole primary and secondary to worry about and about 50 events to get people to drown in), Co-captain for water polo, going for handball training, going for tuition, practicing piano, guitar, the list goes on.

Welcome to Form 4, I guess.

There were a lot of things I had to sacrifice to compensate for a lot of other things. It all basically comes down to a matter of priority. You have to know what's most important and place that before anything else. It's almost impossible to handle things if we place the same importance on everything we do. For me, Christian Fellowship comes before anything and I had to sacrifice several trainings and other stuff. But when you know your priorities, you don't regret your sacrifices, knowing that it'll all be worth it.

These are times when you're thankful for friends, family and for those of you who are like me, God, who is always supportive and always eases our burden. We're not in this alone. Just look around the classroom and you'll probably notice that there are people who constantly back you up no matter what.

And for those who need a friend, call me now at 012-...

You don't think I'd give you my sacred number that easily do you..

..Chin San?

Haha joking, you already have my number :D

random thoughts

2009-01-19T05:54:00.000-08:00

Okay it turns you're supposed to UPDATE this blog frequently :D
So basically, I'm just going to write what I'm thinking right now.

Well currently I'm kind of thinking what to write.

And now I'm thinking writing these thoughts are a good way of taking up space.

I'm feeling a bit hungry.
I wish I had more junk food and not so much chinese new year stuff. A chinese-new-year-food-mountain is growing before the festivals even started. It's quite sad. We're already trying to consume our stock of ba gua which for you guys who don't know what in the world it is, is this meat thing in strips which a wonderful helping of food colouring on it so it almost glows a red neon uh glow. We ate it between white bread for breakfast on Sunday before church. A great healthy start I guess.

breakfast..mmm

I feel like eating a Mcmuffin burger right now. The one that's sold in the morning which has egg, a patty and the bun's kinda dusty with something which I'm not sure what it is to this day. I don't know why people don't really like the yolk of eggs but for me, I can't get enough of it. It's healthy anyway guys, so eat it before it gives you heart attack when you're 74 years old.

Not to scare you or anything.

It's still healthy.

anyways all this is making me hungry, so I'm going to go see if I can eat anything now. Or I'll just drink lots of water to fill my tummy. yummy yummy yummy, I want food in my tummy.

nights.

oopsy daisy..

2009-01-12T23:23:00.000-08:00

Well guys, this is my first post in my brand new blog.
Are you excited? Because I'M EXCITED.
ROAR.

Anyways, just to give you a bit of background about my life and who I am, my name's Alvin Soo Jian Xiong. People may know me by a lot of other names. Here's the most popular ones:
1) Alsoo
2) The Alster
3) JX
4) Susu kambing
5) Al
6) Square Face :(

etc, etc, etc..

I'm 16 this year and currently trying to survive through the new concept of Form 4. I'm roughly 5'11 i think..hoping to grow an inch at least before I'm 54 so that I can retire happily as a 6 footer. My sport's water polo and for you water polo enthusiasts, I invite you to join me in my journey of waterpoloship.

I play all 3 types of guitar, piano, guitar hero and I wish to learn the bagpipes also. Many of my friends including male companions call me handsome. well not really i'm just trying to fill in space.

so that's me. :D You only know a person by what he says and does so all this is just a background. You'll know who I am by reading this blog. Cheers.

Remember to eat your veggies and stay in school.