Escaped Worm

I have unearthed a disgusting story from my friend, who's name I shall not mention as promised. :)

In primary school, all kids are given deworming medication. When I my turn came, I remember my friend telling me the day after, she saw a long worm in the toilet bowl after she did her business. I was so scared that when nature called, I held in until Mum came home from school a few hours after to make her sit near me in case it happened to me too. Fortunately (or not, otherwise I'd have a more interesting story), there was nothing unusual about the day's defecation exercise.

So now back to my friend. She was also given the deworming medication and after that, at night, when she was about to fall sleep, she felt something in her pants. She pulled out something and in the darkness wondered why there was a string in her pants. Only when she took it to her mum did she realize it was a worm.

She clearly remembers it was dead but has no idea why she didn't feel it coming out or when it happened.

Appreciating Bugs in Gopeng

Last weekend, I organized a retreat for the youth leaders of my church. We went to Adeline's Rest House in Gopeng (which we've been before and her food is just as excellent... yumsss) where the young ones enjoyed white water rafting, wet abseiling down a waterfall as well as a jungle walk which included feeding leeches along the way and a crossing of a river.

As I was still coughing and KS was starting to get ill, we didn't join in the activities but stayed back and enjoyed a quiet evening with a book and a nap. There was a little girl who joined us for the trip and she decided bugs and the mention of leeches were too disgusting and scary to go for the jungle trek. So she stayed back and I found myself trying to make her appreciate bugs more. Yes, me, the very person who would prefer examining a lizard than a bug any time.

So I went around with her for a while and used my camera to create life in each creature. You know those micro shots of insects that everyone seems to have? Well, they're really not easy to take with a point and shoot.

Here was a flying wasp-like insect which posed for me on this leaf for a good 15-20 mins while I took shot after shot. Only this one turned out okay. Of course in the original photo, the subject was but a small dot. My story to the little girl was something like this, "Hey look at this wasp! So cute! It's posing for me!" 

More bug photos. This green beauty has a little C design on the shell. It's body, beneath the green shell, is red. So pretty!

Another random wasp which we both spent a considerable amount of time trying to figure out what it was doing.

Then there were clovers. I never knew they were furry!

Dragonflies also elicited screams from the girl so I made her observe their beautiful colours. "Look at it's colour! Doesn't it look like a light saber?"

In the end, did I succeed in making her less afraid of insects? For that few hours, she did scream when insects flew near her but I'd like to believe she was less afraid. But it will take a lot more effort to chip away that fear, if it ever does.

The curl of a vine. Just a random shot but I like the bokeh.

There was a stray cat there but he was rather shy. Kept us at a distance.

The little stream that runs along the Villa. Cool waters.

Anyway, along the way home, I thought I'd take a picture of yet another mysterious advertisement along the highway and share this with you.

Okaaaaay...

Wows and Not So Wows

A few exciting things has been happening, some really good and some not so good.

Firstly, at work, my bosses are giving me the chance to move into an area I've expressed keen interest on. They've carved out a role for me where I am to move a new part of the business and I'm very excited about it! Excited, thankful and grateful for this opportunity.

Yes, it's going to be frightening to prove myself in an area where I don't have any experience and I know there are challenges ahead. Nevertheless, I feel like my ladder is now leaning against a wall that I've been desiring for some time now!

Unfortunately, I fell ill three weeks ago while I'm trying to prove myself and have been on two days MC and a day off due to my cough, cold and fever. I'm still recuperating and really hope I get better (like tomorrow!). Not a very good impression, I know, and it couldn't have come at the worst timing.

Anyway, in between, I won a couple of lucky draws:

The first was a mini DVD player which I won at an internal office party. At first I didn't know what to do with it since I already own two DVD units in the house and didn't need another one. Luckily, before I gave it away, I checked with Dad who exclaimed it was just what he was looking for for his line dancing class!

Speaking of my two DVD players, a week ago, there was an electricity surge in my housing area which destroyed , amongst my two DVD players, my auto gate, water pump, computer, speakers and Apple Airport. Thankfully, most could be repaired while a few replacements need to take place. And thankfully, none of my white electrical appliances were affected like my fridge.

Moving on to my next lucky draw win, I attended a screening of the latest Spiderman sponsored by MasterCard. And yeah, I won one of their 3D2N Kota Kinabalu trips (excluding flights). Despite fairly restrictive conditions, I am now booked to visit KK next month! Even though KS and I have been KK not too long ago, we didn't manage to visit Kinabalu Park and this warrant gives us that one day tour. Yay!

Speaking of trips, this month will be an exceptionally busy one for KS and I. I'm now in Melaka for the weekend, next weekend we'll be in Gopeng, Perak with the youth leaders for a retreat and the weekend after, we'll be in Penang for a wedding and a short family vacation.

Then in August, we'll be in KK, September KS will be in Singapore and we'll need to be back in Melaka for another wedding. Then in mid November, we're off to Perth to watch George Michael for his Symphonica concert! Then hopefully we'll have a winter trip in December and in January I'll be going on a gals trip to Bandung.

And lastly, the other thing we won was a concert ticket to the MTV Live Stage featuring Justin Bieber which happened last night. KS gave it away to a colleague who's teenage girl is nuts over JB.

How this happened was KS office was giving away five pairs of tickets and the top five with the most voted rock star name in their internal Facebook page. I suggested KS to name himself RM1.50. Why? Because a couple of months ago, The Star reported the rapper 50 Cent and converted his name to the local currency.

So he was one of the top five liked names to win the tickets.