Adventure to the North on the East Coast!

Honestly speaking, there isn't much entertainment here in Terengganu. BUT! There is quite a handful of beautiful places if you'd look out for them :p So I'm going to share about my trip to Bukit Keluang with my Zimbabwe friends!

My hometown friend/classmate, Amanda and I have been here for more than a year, and we have been asking our friends to come Terengganu even before we came. After more than a year of waiting, we finally had visitors! Whoo-hoo!

So our Zimbabwe friends, Francis and Trymoe arrived before 10pm, and because of the landslide that happened a day before, the bus I took from KL had to make a detour and that caused me to reach Terengganu so much later than expected and I was only able to meet them after 11pm. I suggested that we could go hiking up Bukit Keluang but told them that they had to wake up as early as 3am to catch the sunrise. I thought they wouldn't want to, but maybe they loved nature enough too to be willing to sacrifice some of their sleep. Haha!

I had never been to this place, and my classmates' description of the route was sooo vague we really had to depend on using a navigator. "Start climbing when you see a flight of stairs." Goodness. How to find this flight of stairs was more of what I was asking about -.- Never mind. So it was a midnight driving without the windows down but with two navigating systems up! Waze lead us onto a route on which we hardly saw any cars around. For me, it was a pleasant drive! Hehe.

So what happened was, Waze lead us to this MARA campus as our destination for "Bukit Keluang". We asked the security guard for directions but didn't quite understand the directions given and so we decided to ask for directions at Bukit Keluang Resort which we passed by earlier on. We went to the reception and saw this guy who had fallen asleep, lying on some chairs. We didn't really want to disturb him but we had no choice because we couldn't see a single soul around. So this poor guy got all startled by us and woke up with red eyes looking as though he had conjunctivitis hahaha. He told us to go straight and turn right at a junction, then we would see a "wakaf", from where we could start hiking up Bukit Keluang. I didn't know what a "wakaf" was, not to mention my African friends here, so I thought I'd just look out for something that was human-made haha.

We came to a place where we spotted a shelter on a small piece of empty land that opens out by the road. "Maybe that's the human-made thing that guy mentioned," I thought. We stopped our car in front of the shelter and came down to have a look around and see if we could find "a flight of stairs". It was very dark. I looked up, and whoaaaa, the sky was clear and I could see stars spread across the sky, sparkling! That was really beautiful! If we had not come for the sunrise, I could just sit there and stare at them until daylight haha!

Shining our way with our phone torches, we walked a few steps and found a road that winds down and behind the shelter, so we got back into the car and drove down that road. Well apparently the car lights were so much brighter that as we drove down, we realized that the road was just alongside waters on our left! That really scared me a bit. We saw a flight of stairs ahead the road and that got me excited, "We found the place!" I thought. There was no place for parking so I had to make a three-point-turn, a careful one so that we wouldn't fall into the water, and drove back to the shelter to park our car. We walked to the stairs and started climbing, thrilled. The stairs ended after a few steps, and you know where? Back up to the empty land where the shelter is. Haha! Whaaaat! We just made a marry-go-round... That felt stupid hahaha.

Sigh, the wrong place, Oh wait, we saw a path further straight up from the shelter, we could try that, we said. So we walked down that path with our torches. We were walking alongside waters on our right (this path is in the opposite direction of the road behind the shelter just now), and on our left was a hill which we were quite sure was Bukit Keluang, we just had to find the stairs to climb up. We couldn't see any stairs, but came to a part of the hill where there was a big, dark cave carved into it. "Err... I think we have to go," Francis said. Haha okay! It seemed like the path wasn't right anyway.

So we went back to the car and drove back. Back at the junction, we saw some human souls in a car! I flashed at them and asked if they knew how to get to Bukit Keluang, they said they were heading there too so I asked if we could just follow them. Hahaha well finally! Thank God!

The hike up Bukit Keluang didn't take quite a long time. But because we lost some time earlier on and I always had this "mountain sickness" sort of issue, the sun began to rise as we were halfway up.

Halfway, the sky started to light up.

Francis reached the top before us, and called us saying that the view was amazing and hurried us. So I pushed on! After all, we came all the way for this!

 Tranquility :)

Here we are!

Hello from us! :D

Hello from the other side :p

I'm thankful for the safe trip there, especially when I thought of how quiet the road we took was and how dark the place we wrongly went to had been that there could be some bad guys hiding somewhere waiting to pounce on anyone who comes by. And I thank God for the fine weather! The sky was so blue so pretty! I would have stayed longer if not for my friends who probably were already hungry xD

Fourth Month of Fourth Year, Fourth Posting

Looking back my blog posts this year, I regret for not writing anything when I was on my end-of-year 3 break. There were two highlights of my holidays that time:

1. Taiwan trip with my friends
2. SWEEP (Social Work Exposure and Embracement Programme) by FES

Why didn't I write anythinggg T.T For SWEEP alright I can understand myself because right after SWEEP was the beginning of year 4 and my first posting was superrrrr hectic I didn't have enough sleep most of the time. But why not for my Taiwan trip?! LAZY, HUHHH. What a waste of the 2000 over photos my camera so beautifully captured! Terrible! Okay I'm gonna find time one of these days and write a throwback post about it!

By the way, I'll take this opportunity to update a little bit about my "life circumstance" right now. Well apparently I'm now into my fourth posting, the end of second week of it, to be precise. All the postings we had gone through since year 4 began were major postings, even now - Psychiatry. This is so different from previous postings goshh. When you talk to the patients, it's almost totally dependent on your knowledge and judgement because many of the patients are either going to tell you their hallucinations (which they don't recognize as false perceptions, of course, in the unstable state) as part of their lives, or they may make up a little bit of stories in denial of what really happened. I'll honestly say that I had difficulty for the past 2 weeks getting reliable history from patients, and because of that I was rather in low spirits especially this week. It's my turn to present a case for the next clinical teaching in 2 days' time, and I have a case write-up due in one weeks' time, and I haven't got a single proper case!

Whyyy

Why do I have to be so far away that it's so difficult for me to attend my friends' convocations :( And I have a friend who's going to be the valedictorian. Looks like I'm going to miss out 2 convocations in a week :(

Missing Everything Here

Hello bloggy I'm in KL now! I passed by Taman Connaught just now and felt the urge to drop by and say hi to everyone. I just want to say that I really miss my friends here and I miss those times studying in KL very very much. I realized that the last time I spent time here was last December and this is the longest record ever since I started tertiary!

First CPR Attempt!

I made the first attempt of CPR in my life. It wasn't an official one though. The doctors and nurses where attempting it on this patient who had a cardiac arrest. As they took turns, a medical officer saw us standing nearby observing. He asked if we would like to try and we thought it was a good opportunity for an experience, so we tried. I guess they had half given up, which was probably why they allow us little newbies to perform. I was the last one to perform on the patient, as the family member of the patient later said that we may stop the resuscitation. I could somehow feel for the family member. He seemed to be ready for this moment. There was some dullness in his eyes, and I felt the compassion towards him. So slowly, I went up to him and said, "I'm sorry for your loss, pak cik."

Cinderella 1950 in 2015

Guess what, I just re-watched Disney's animated film Cinderella because I so happened to stumble upon it when I was looking up Disney's songs on Youtube.

And for a 22-year-old girl who might or should have grown out of being fascinated by fairy tales, it's surprising that watching it again after so many years actually made me laugh so much! The rats' conversations, and how they tackled the evil cat, the king's anxiousness of getting his son married soon... They were all so funny and entertaining to me. I guess any adult would laugh too. But wait, I can't believe I actually shed tears when it came to where Cinderella's dress was torn and she cried! "I can't believe, not anymore," she said, "there's nothing left to believe in." Yeah and I can't believe to find myself in tears hearing a cartoon character say that.

One thing I changed my mind about Cinderella, is that she isn't "the weak, pretty girl who gets bullied all day until a prince saves her day" that some people might describe her to be. Whenever people would ask, "Which Disney princess would you like to be?", there would be answers that sound like "Certainly not Cinderella because she's too easily pushed around." Yes, true enough, I used to think and say that too. But as I was watching it today, I'm amazed at how the rightful heir of the house, after being harshly treated by some "outsiders", could still keep her cool and meekly do whatever she was ordered to. This is not being weak, THIS IS STRENGTH! She never turned nasty or hateful out of resentment. And now, how many people can be like that? Even though she was bullied again and again, she never indulged into self-pity, and she could still care for others even more than herself (she was more concerned about Gus than for herself when her stepsister found Gus in her cup and complained to her mother)! What's more, she never harboured grudges against her stepmother and stepsisters after all the ill treatment.

I know it is just a fairy tale, but in every story there's always something we can learn. And I believe I just picked up something new from a very old, old tale.

Missing Home

Dear dad I miss the supper you prepare for me at home that keeps my tummy happy before going to bed.

Dear mum I miss your cooking that is so tasty even without MSG. I must have taken too much MSG-ed food since I came to KT because my hair seems to be lesser :(

Just keeping the laptop on without doing anything on it makes me feel more connected to people. Haha. Forgive my randomness. I'm always a little homesick on the first few days here.

Noooooo

I'm going to miss having my camera with me. My next holidays will be on the end of May and that's so long! That means 3 months in KT without my camera! :(

My Chinese New Year Break

I realized that I'm always in the mood to write something here whenever I touched down Terengganu. Maybe I just need someone to talk to haha! Anyway I'll just update my blog while I'm in the spirits or it's gonna get really busy and I won't have time for this in awhile.

I don't know about you, but I'm feeling 22! Yeap, February is my birth month and I'm officially 22! At this age, I don't know about you again, but my friends really had to add something when they wished me a happy birthday - "Old dy lo." Now how is 22 being old? I feel young! Hahaha

I had a week's holiday for Chinese New Year, beginning on the 13th Feb, which was the day I flew back. As usual, since I don't get to go back as often as before, I made plans so as not to waste my trip :p And my very first stop was Mdm Chiam Chili Pan Mee! Words can't describe how much I miss KL chili pan mee! I have to say that was most satisfactory!

I attended CF meeting, and was totally blessed by the message "My Love Story" which was about BGR by Pastor Rudy (Hey we've got almost the same name! :p) from Kingdom City. Some of the points he shared were taught by my parents, and it's good to refresh that lesson. He said if we drew our lives in concentric circles, God has to be in the centre, and after God, the person in the next concentric circle would be the one closest to you - your family if you are not married, your partner if you are. But the problem is, too often when we get involved in a relationship, we let whoever it is share the space for God, and that's when conflicts happen - when we don't know where to draw the lines. The message was much longer but I'll just touch up with one more point he shared, "If you don't have the spirit of community, don't get involved in a relationship until you understand your need for a community."

After CF I went to catch up with a few of the CF members, when Joey suddenly shouted for everyone to sing me a birthday song as Joellene walked up to me with a cake! That was awkward for me but I was touched at the same time because I wasn't expecting that. Thank you guys, I'm always always so blessed with you guys around! I'll miss all of you :)

The next item on my itinerary was to go The Owls Cafe for my long awaited waffle! Even now blogging about it makes me excited xD

Living up to it's name, the place was full of owls!

Even the teapot came in the shape of an owl xD

I had Rebecca waffle as recommended by a girl in the cafe, and I'm compelled to say that I was really happy with the waffle. It tasted sooo sooo goooooood! My sister ordered David waffle, which was good too, but I liked mine more because my ice-cream was earl grey in flavour and it tasted superb!

Rebecca waffle and a glimpse of David waffle :p

After high tea we went to the airport to pick up her boyfriend, and we headed to Oasis Damansara for a dinner not so worth its price. BUT! Man the place was beautifully decorated! 

Love the atmosphere! :)

Not where I had dinner, just thought this building looked like a palace, beautiful huh? ;)

The next day we stayed at my sister's place the whole day, my sister ordered Domino's for lunch, a treat by her boyfriend.

My third time having Domino's for the week :p

That evening we were thinking of going Jam & Kaya cafe for dinner, as we thought it closes at 11pm (misled by a blog haha!). Thank God we made a call first because then I was told kitchen closes at 5pm and the cafe at 6pm! So we went to Midvalley instead to get my mum's stuff and to settle dinner. We went to Dragon-i, it was kinda expensive but at least my sister's boyfriend enjoyed the food, so it was worth it then.

Thanks Tracey for holding the chopsticks while I took this haha!

Meet Tracey, my sister's good friend (who is very nice to me too!)

The next day after church, my sister took me to Jam & Kaya Cafe. We almost didn't make it because of some appointment her colleague told her of that morning. I had Farmer's pancake, which was awesome!

Farmer's pancake - that little sunflower was so pretty it had to be taken together in this photo!

A close-up shot of Farmer's pancake - made of pancakes, mushrooms, lettuce,

hash brown and sunny side-up :) I hope I didn't leave out anything xD

Jam & Kaya Cafe, a quiet and lovely place to dine in. :)

That's about all for my weekend before heading back for Chinese New Year. I stayed home for the rest of the day, just to be a good girl for awhile, before taking a bus the next day back to my lovely hometown!

Always good to be back! :) That's my dad! :p