In Motion

I've been asked to present about Malaysia to the international spouses at the IHouse on November 6th. For the past month or so, I've been piecing together my presentation and doing lots of research on Malaysia for this purpose. If I were back in Malaysia, this would have been unthinkable. Among Malaysians, I'm the last person you want to ask about Malaysian culture, seeing as I'm not very culturally knowledgeable about the gazillion ethnicities and hybrids that Malaysia boasts. I am Chinese, but I hardly know any Chinese traditions because I was brought up practically anglicized. Being Christians, my parents didn't subscribe to superstitions and old wives' tales, and neither did we. Being mostly introverts, we didn't celebrate festivals on a large scale, much less know about the background of these festivals. Granted, I did pick up some Chinese history and mythology from the Chinese primary school I attended, but knowledge doesn't stick when it isn'

Brace yourselves, the cold is coming. Scratch that, it's already arrived. As I write this, I'm holed up in my bedroom with a portable heater because I'm too cheap to heat the whole apartment up when I'm alone . Sometime today I'm going to have to go out of my room to do the dishes and put the laundry to wash, but not right now. Brrr. Summer went by too quickly. I'm not quite ready to break out my scarves and jackets yet. One of the things I deplore about the cold is how I'll look the same every day because my big jacket/sweater is all that's visible no matter how dressed up I am beneath that layer. The monotony gets to me. =P I've also started moisturizing my legs more regularly now because I can totally feel the eczema itching to present itself. Haha pun but eczema is NOT funny. Not funny at all. Not that it really matters - even when there aren't any eczema patches on my legs, I have multiple bruises at any given time anyway. If you were wo

Whenever I don't blog as much, you can assume that I'm happily occupied with miscellaneous schemes. Or that I'm just too lazy to reach out to the world and let others know what I've been up to. Either assumption would be valid. =P Anyway, here's an update. I've gotten involved with the Animal Protection Society (APS) of Durham as a dog walker, and also joined their Education Committee. I know the word "committee" conjures up the image of power and prestige in the mind's eye, but trust me, it just means I (sometimes) offer to man the APS booth at community events. Manning the booth doesn't take much - I usually wait for little kids to walk up to me, tempt them to spin the "Wheel of Animal Trivia", and quiz them on whatever category they get. Hardly powerful. Then they get to choose a small prize regardless of whether they got the correct answer or not, because they learnt a new fact. I think it's an ingenious way to educate littl