Selamat Hari Merdeka

Today's our country's 55th Hari Merdeka or National Day, marking 55 years of independence from British colonial rule. Our national flower, the hibiscus, is even featured on the Google webpage :)

I thought I'd share a few video clips that have been circulating around, a tongue-in-cheek look at our Malaysian way of life. Enjoy!





And the very recent parody of the Korean hit Oppa Gangnam Style....

Have a Great Weekend, everyone!

An Interesting Blog

I was at a hair salon getting my unruly hair tamed, and as usual  I would get a stack of women's magazines to pass time. Whenever I go to the hair salon to fix my hair (not including a haircut or simple wash & blow-dry) , I am prepared for a 4 hour session. My hubby, and men in general, can never understand that.

While I was flipping through a local magazine, I came across an article about   make-up blogs. Since I use make-up on a daily basis , mostly because I'm vain and partly to disguise my age, I decided to look up the websites listed in the article. 


I have read many beauty blogs and find that most of them feature rather expensive cosmetics but this one blog "My Women Stuff" written by a girl known as Paris B, has reviews of various products plus their retail price (some which are quite affordable and others which are a little pricey). She lets readers know the pros and cons of each product on her skin, which seems very much like mine in skin tone and texture. There are lots of photos which I find very helpful in determining whether I like a particular product or not, without having to go and test them out myself at the make-up counter in a shopping mall.

A rather hilarious post about keeping our skin fair
while out in the sun

You might like to check it out yourself:

http://www.mywomenstuff.com/

Discovering Korean Drama Series

Lately, hubby and my kids have been following some Korean drama series on viki.com . For years I have resisted the urge to watch these dramas because I understand how addictive they can become...until the 3 of them started watching them during dinner time and I got hooked too. By the way, hubby and I never allowed our kids to watch TV during mealtimes because they were such slow-eaters, but now that they are older and can eat much faster, we have relaxed the rule a bit. 

So far I've enjoyed "I Do, I Do" and "My Princess". I know many people have given reviews on their blog about these 2 dramas so I won't review them here.  

I Do, I Do

My Princess

One thing I discovered very quickly is how a person has to literally focus all attention on the TV screen in order to read the subtitles, which means that no multitasking (for example: doing household chores, reading/sending sms, surfing the internet) can be carried out while watching each episode. Perhaps it's time to pick up a new language...Korean!

The Olympics Is Here Again

Been enjoying the 2012 Olympics for the past 1½ weeks. I remember watching my first Olympics on TV way back in 1976 when I was a little girl and  how I especially loved the women's gymnastics events. That was the year Nadia Comaneci won perfect 10 scores in gymnastics and became such an inspiration to little girls all over the world that I had even dreamed of becoming a gymnast myself. Of course that never happened, so just as there are armchair travellers I became an armchair gymnast and cheered for the gymnasts competing at every single Olympics since then.



My older brother taught me to play badminton when I was 6, probably because he was bored and had no one to play with. I remember using the front gate of our house as a net, and how I soon mastered the game and we had many hours of fun competing against each other. I found that I was good with the racquet and took part in inter-school badminton tournaments in primary and secondary school. In college I even took up squash and won 2nd place in a college squash tournament. I could play table tennis too, but strangely enough, could never master tennis itself. I lost so many balls over the fence that I eventually gave up.

Some of the sports trophies from my primary school days

Sports became an outlet for the very shy young girl that I was, and I loved swimming and basketball, but was deathly scared of getting hit by a volleyball. Growing up with 2 brothers, I could even play football and knew all the teams in the English football league. The teenagers in our church youth group would have outdoor sports activities every Sunday afternoon and I sported a tan that most Caucasians would envy (back in those days we didn't know very much about the dangers of UV rays from the sun), although now in my forties I have to pay the price with freckles that refuse to fade no matter what beauty cream I use.

Sadly, a recurrent knee problem has put a halt to many of my sports activities. So every four years I stay glued to the TV during the Olympics and now with YouTube there's even more to watch. Oh, and I absolutely LOVE the daily Google Olympic doodles, especially the interactive ones.

To play, click the link: http://www.google.com/doodles/hurdles-2012
(Use the left and right arrows to make him run, and the space bar to jump over the hurdles).