Last night, I went to The Garden at Leederville with Tham and Robert and we all thought it was an awesome place. It’s right next to the pumping Leederville Hotel and it’s sorta an extension of it. There’s an area enclosed by glass walls that is the dining area, and then a bar with lots of high tables and stools surrounding it. There’s also a roof-top lounge and a couple of sunken vergola areas. It all looked very chic but it still felt very casual and comfortable.

The Leederville Hotel’s main dance area is situated right next to The Garden. You can peek into it and you can see the disco lights bounce off the walls. With the music spilling out from there, you get that nightclub vibe but it was not so loud that you can’t talk to each other. Though you can’t walk across to The Leederville directly – you still have to walk around the block to get to the queue, and at first I thought that kinda sucked but in hindsight, I think it helps gives that secluded feel.

There were a lot of pretty people walking to and fro the place which just makes us guys love it even more. It’s my new favourite night spot.

My grandma passed away at 12:30pm today. I am sad but relieved because her final years have not been the best – she had been bed-ridden and she suffered from pains and aches everywhere, and was coughing a lot. Now she’s free from her mortal coils and for that alone we are glad.

I will be flying off to Singapore tonight and then up to Penang a couple of hours later. The funeral should be in 2-3 days. After that, I might spend another day in Penang before flying down to Singapore to rejoin Tham and Kayo.

I’ll be returning to Perth on the 17th. I hope to have some stories and photos to share then. In the mean time, I leave you with Ferris Bueller’s classic words about living every day appreciating the people and the simple pleasures in your life.

(Youtube)

I had planned for my holiday since September. I was going to be spending one week in Singapore from January the 8th till the 16th with Tham and Kayo, and my parents will be here to look after Snoop. The tickets had been bought and the accommodation booked. Then everything changed on the 27th of December. News came that my grandmother who’s in her 90s was hospitalised and it doesn’t look good this time.

Dad flew off to Penang on the 30th and mom followed the next day. And that was why I had the house to myself to celebrate NYE with my friends. I had to then hope that the kennels that I’ve always used would have a spare place at such short notice. Luckily for me they did, but the only day they could take him was today.

All the while, my parents have been updating me every day and most of the time their messages were along the lines of “this might be her time”. This added to my stress as I would have to fly off at a moment’s notice which means I would have to arrange for urgent leave from work, call my cousin who had previously agreed to do it to come over to house-sit, and to arrange for Tham to take Snoop to the kennels. I had also anticipated not being able to take the same flight to Singapore with Tham and Kayo.

Planning these contingencies was ok but not knowing when I would have to deal with them was very stressful. Every day for the past week, I would wake up and hoped that I didn’t get a message on my phone telling me the worst. I really hated not being in control of my schedules, and the stress of not knowing got to me. I was glad that I had my friends around me most of the past week to help ease my mind and anxiety attacks.

As it turns out, I could still take Snoop to the kennels myself today and I would still fly to Singapore tomorrow night with Tham and Kayo. But, I now have to fly off to Penang right after I’ve landed because now is “really her time”. I’m not sure how long I will be in Penang for but what’s certain is that my plans for my time in Singapore is no longer valid. I won’t be able to catch up with some of the people whom I’ve been meaning to catch up with, and I won’t be able to be with Tham and Kayo in Singapore as much as I wanted to. Though I still hope to have a few days there on the way home to Perth.

It’s kinda silly and selfish but all this time I kept thinking in the back of my mind how my holidays have been ruined, though death is never good timing is it?

I had the house all to myself at the last minute due to a family emergency (more on that later), so Tham had the idea of coming over to make burgers. Along for dinner was Kayo, Khai, Lydia and Scott. After we had our fill and cleaned up the place, we danced and listened to music, watched Youtube clips on the big screen and drank ALOT. Oh and somewhere in between, we did the countdown.

I drank so much that I woke up not remembering much of how the night ended. And what’s more, I discovered mysterious cuts and bruises on my elbows and knees. How disturbing. Hur hur hur.

I paid for it though – I was dry-retching and couldn’t eat at all for the whole of new year’s day. But I dragged myself out of bed to Jen and Guan’s dinner because they had arranged it around my schedule. I briefly contemplated not going but I figured they would be more than miffed about it. Heh. Thanks for looking after a mighty hungover friend, Jen & Guan! I promise to be more fun next time.

All up, it was a blast. I needed to be around good friends at the moment and over the past day and a half, I was in a very happy place. Thanks peeps.

As my close-knit of friends would know, and the same goes for all of you reading this through my Facebook notes, I never did reduce the time I spend on Facebook like I said I would. Sometime last year, I had said that Facebook was about having too much information. At the time, I had said that not only do some of us over-share, but in return we tend to know more than what we would want to know about people we are not necessarily close with.

But I’ve since found a happy middle ground with the things that I share and I’m enjoying the reaction and comments that I get. Some people may view that a friendship that exists purely on Facebook may not be as substantial as one outside of it, but I find that the social interactions can be just as fulfilling.

I think that if you use Facebook to augment your “real life” relationships and not to supplant it, that’s where it’s true value as a tool lies. As its tag line says, you can use it to connect with people whom, because of the tyranny of time and distance, you don’t connect enough with. And it can enrich an already good relationship. That is why I think that the interactions are as real as those conducted face-to-face or over the phone, even though some are quite frivolous (does anyone still “poke”?).

As an example of the good that it can bring, today is my birthday and I didn’t really expect much from the day because I’ve already had celebrations earlier with family and friends. As I was commuting to work, the birthday wishes started trickling in and it didn’t stop for the whole day. As I am writing this now, they continue to come in.

Friends, new and old, near and far, and relatives in other states and countries have all said happy birthday to me. I’m quite sure that the only reason that I’m getting more birthday wishes than normal is because Facebook has made it easier for people to leave a few words, and as a result, it has allowed me to feel more popular than I normally would.

Yes, I feel very popular right about now. So thanks Facebook! Feeling good didn’t cost me a thing today.

A few weeks ago, I was at the bottle shop stocking up for the increasingly frequent house sessions at my place. I saw “Vodka O” being offered 2 for $60. At $30 a bottle, it worked out to be around $5 less than a bottle of Smirnoff Red so I decided to give it a go.

Serendipitously I had read recently about how the quality of cheap vodka can be improved by using a simple charcoal filter.

lifehacker: Increase the Quality of Cheap Vodka with a Water Filter

So, what made the sale for me was the fact that it said charcoal-filtered on the label.

From the Vodka O site, the product description is this:

Using Australia’s purest water, our unique evaporative and charcoal filtering process creates a super smooth taste.

Vodka O is free from chemical additives and contains no residual herbicides, pesticides or fungicides, which means more natural goodness and fewer hangovers.

I don’t know about vodka being “natural goodness” but it turns out, the product description was otherwise not exaggerating too much. I did a side-by-side test of shots of Vodka O and Smirnoff Red, and the Vodka O went down smoother and was scarily easy to drink. I say scary because my friends and I did shots of this last night a little too enthusiastically.

And it was clean enough that I did not have a bad hangover. I declare this my new favourite vodka. Any Vodka O sales rep reading this out there? *hint hint wink wink*

I can choose to be miserable.

I know for a fact that I’m earning the least amongst my uni peers.
I don’t have a girlfriend.
I haven’t had sex that I didn’t pay for in 5 years.
I don’t have everything that I want.
I wish I was little bit taller, I wish I was a baller …

I can choose to be miserable but I don’t because these are ridiculous problems compared to those who don’t have enough to eat, who don’t have a roof over their heads, who don’t have freedom, or who go to sleep at night worrying if they will live through the next day.

Compared to them, we have the luxury of choosing to wallow in self-pity. They don’t. So if you have a choice to be sad and miserable or happy, why wouldn’t you choose to be happy? Yeah it’s an effort sometimes but it’s worth it because the alternative sucks hairy balls.

If nothing else, I choose to be happy because it makes people around me happy, and I like being around happy people. So it’s win-win.