Tagged...

Nothing to do.. so for fun got this from Sam's blog who got it from Herb's blog

Four jobs I have had in my life:
1. Secondary school teacher: Form 6 Class teacher, Pre-U Chemistry, Form 3 science
2. Tuition teacher: Bahasa Malaysia, English, Science
3. Research Technician: UPM working on oil palm
4. Research Assistant in Training (PhD): Present job, playing with zebrafish.

Four Movies I have watched over and over;
1. You've got mail
2. Serendipity
3. Top Gun
4. Gattaca

Four places I have lived:
1. Setapak, Kuala Lumpur
2. Serdang, UPM
3. Bath, UK
4. Utrecht, The Netherlands

Four Shows I love to watch:
1. CSI (only Las Vegas)
2. Heroes
3. House MD
4. The Nanny

Four Places I have been on vacation:
1. Stockholm, Sweden
2. Basel and Interlaken, Switzerland
3. Paris and The Loire Valley, France
4. Berlin, Germany

Four of my favorite foods:
1. Hokkien mee
2. Grandma's "mee hun ker" (flour cake cooked in soup?)
3. Nasi lemak with sotong sambal and kerang
4. Lut-lut (steamboat)

Four favorite drinks:
1. Fruit juice
2. Chocomel (chocolate drink)
3. Root beer or Pepsi
4. Teh O'Ais Limau

Four places (and activities) I would rather be (doing) right now:
1. With "him" doing anything or doing nothing
2. In Malaysia enjoying good food and warm weather
3. Bungee jumping/Para-gliding
4. Cooking and eating...

Trip to Karlsruhe

My lab went on a "lab trip" to Karlsruhe, and stayed in the boring-est ever "village" Eggenstein. We arrived late evening, unpacked, and tried to find a place to eat dinner. Found a Restaurant Loewe that was super expensive... almost as expensive as the Nobel Prize Menu in Stockholm! The whole street was empty, it's like a ghost town. In the end we found a "Chinese" restaurant... I would call it more of a student's cheap eatery. I had koolowyuk (sweet and sour pork):













It was more like fried potatoes! With tomato puree poured over the rice. Quite gross. It's super oily, had stomach ache the next day!

Dinner the next day was good... we were treated to the expensive restaurant! I guess that's the only edible restaurant around. It was quite a good choice, we booked the whole restaurant, so there were no background noise to disturb our "scientific" talks!

Appetizers: Whipped cheese (slurp. yummy!) and quail egg with basil.













Starters: Garden salad -literally. They just pluck whatever they have in the garden I think There were rose petals, some grass (really!!) and leaves (not kidding!)... and some normal salad veggies. The salad veggies were nice with the salad dressing.

Main: Chicken with creamy white wine gravy.

Dessert: Looks pretty eh? Appeltaart, but different from the Dutch ones... it's half an apple on a yummy pastry. Everyone was just trying to scrape the chocolate off... to no avail.

The Good ol' Days...

Today Matt from CCC Bath and Bristol (http://www.christiancitychurch.eu/bathandbristol) came to visit my church in Amsterdam. He just came back from Israel and had a stopover in Amsterdam. It has been almost 2 years since I last saw him! We were together in an Intercession group of 5 people back in CCC Bath (at that time it was known as Freedom Center). He's also leading the CAP (Christian Against Poverty) group in Bath. He has a big heart for the homeless. Meeting him again makes me think of the good ol' days in Bath. It was rather different in Bath compared to Amsterdam, although we share the same Kingdom culture. It felt really homely back in Bath. There's a sort of cosy, warm feeling. Instead of meeting in a cafe, usually we would meet in someone's home. There are also families offering to host students for lunch etc. There is just a sense of a small community or a big family. I miss just chilling out for Connect Group at Cath's and Danii's house. I miss the home baked cookies and cakes before and after service. I miss the children waving their flags and dancing around in front during worship. I miss Pastor Betsy, she's just so bubbly and full of life. And she's probably one of the few rare ones that can get people saved while drinking coffee with a stranger in Starbucks! When you meet Betsy, she is soooo warm, and full of love, that you just feel sooo comfortable and feel like you can share anything with her. It's so great! I miss walking to church with Shanon, shivering during the winter and walking full speed; and just strolling happily during summertime. I miss the shoppings and lunches that I do with Shanon after church. I miss the kids in Kids Crew (ages 7-9), I still remember Moses punching Josh (Pastor Andrew's eldest son), and his nose bled!! I was shocked! Boys... sheesh! The girls were adorable! I miss Jon and Rachel Wilcox, my CG leaders! I miss Pastor Andrew's preaching, he's really intense. Super good! I miss Pastor Betsy's preaching, her way of preaching is different from Pastor Andrew, she tells it in more of a story, makes it very real and relevant. I could go on forever...

But now I'm in CCC Amsterdam (http://www.christiancitychurch.eu/amsterdam/), and it's really cool too! It has brought me to another level of faith. In Amsterdam, maybe it's because the people here are city people, their perception of things are different. Maybe that's why I get drawn to Lizby, she has a familiar "British-ness" about her. The atmostphere in CCC Amsterdam is friendly and nice, but you do get the extra boost of Pastor James' vision, and the leaders have a very vision-like mindset! It's cool! I love it! There's just sooo many things to learn from the leaders here. Pastor James is the overseer of the CCC International in Europe. And he always say that he used to be really shy, and scared to preach... kinda hard to believe actually. And he used to be a hippie! But it shows how much God can transform your life.

Sometimes, thinking back makes me yearn for all the good things back then. And sometimes I miss the good things ahead of me. But I've learn to trust God for my future, and wherever He leads me, I know it's gonna be good and even better!

I'm an aunt!

My cute lil' niece Shannon Leaw was born on 17th September 2007! And that officially makes me an aunt... makes me sound kinda OLD! Arrrgghh! She's grown quite big now in just a month!

Just a week after birth:

After all the breast milk and formula milk for a month:














She's so chubby and cute, just wanna pinch her cute rosy cheeks!
She can even make funny faces too... hmm... is that following Mummy or Daddy?

Darwinism

Remember the guy whom everyone is talking about when going for the attack against God? No... not Dawkins... it's Darwin! Actually I don't think Darwin was against the idea of a Creator, but that's another story. Anyway, some people have actually started an award called the Darwin Award. It's given to people who help improve the species by removing themselved from the gene pool! Check out this really silly and amusing website, honouring all these award "winners" http://www.darwinawards.com/. And also if you can't win the Nobel Prize, why not try for the Ig Nobel Prize instead? Too bad my research is too significant to qualify... darn....

Back to blogging?

Random people have told me that they really like reading my blog, but being totally absorbed in research, Ministry and Sam (not in correct order.. Ministry and Sam comes first)... it just sucks all the time away! But I'll TRY to update interesting things (or not to some people) once in awhile, in between my experiments... ;)