and voila, the hand-made guestbook! :)

just finished making my wedding guestbook! it took quite a bit of glue and some pressure screwing the fasteners tight, but it's done! here's a photo of it (sorry it's not a very detailed pic) entire thing made from scratch (ok, i bought the paper and ribbon, lah. not patient enough to make my own paper..) the pages inside are A4 sheets bound to the covers with metal fasteners. the covers are made of 2 layers of A4-sized hardboard cut out from a giant piece. a small window is cut in the middle right section of the top piece of board to reveal our names printed in silver. the gold ribbon ties the book close for storage.



that was fun! anyone interested in having guestbooks made? :-)

pounds of pain

i had my first experience of a migraine headache yesterday afternoon.. and boy was it a bad one. i had been having a mild throbbing headache the whole day and was treating it with paracetamol and medicated oils, but it got worse in the afternoon and the throbbing had turned into pounding towards early evening. lying down and resting didn't help as the pounding continued no matter what i was doing. the Ponstan pill didn't help either.

in the end i decided to ask my dad to drive me to the doctor's as the headache was getting quite unbearable. i think being in a moving vehicle exacerbated the condition as i was holding my head in my hands and literally crying and screaming out of pain all the way to the doctor's. it didn't help that there was a massive traffic jam - it was the evening rush-hour after all. i think we had to wait out two traffic light sequences at the junction outside my house.. i must have been quite a sight to other motorists, gritting my teeth and tearing my hair out wishing i could be sedated there and then.. i had never known a headache so exceedingly torturous.. stories in past issues of Reader's Digest of aneurysms were running through my mind with every paralysing throb of the veins. heck, i was even thinking of which hospital was nearest if i had to be admitted! each pounding pulse was an excruciating inward burst of pressure from all sides of my head; it felt as if my skull would implode any moment. and have you noticed that time seems to pass slower when you're in pain? to add to the pounding, a tinge of nausea had developed, and i was holding a plastic bag in case i had to throw up.

i was still holding my head in my hands and gritting my teeth as i described the pain to the doctor, who was himself gritting his teeth, possibly in an attempt to show sympathy. having been prescribed sandomigraine, feldene (a painkiller), an anti-nausea med and a sedative, i still had to endure the throbbing pain till i got home cos i couldn't take the medicine on an empty stomach. i stayed at the doctor's still grabbing my head as if my brains were falling out, while dad went next door to tarpau teochew porridge. the trip back through the jam was another clutching-head-and-crying-and-screaming ordeal.. finally, back home, i gulped down the porridge as fast as i could (the pain was getting ridiculous, and it was difficult to even eat) downed the pills, and i think i collapsed immediately to sleep on the sofa without even needing the sedative. i woke up this morning miraculously feeling quite all right, realising only after a few minutes that i had a major headache the night before, and vaguely remembering that at some point of time my family members were sitting next to me on the sofa with their theories..

"aiya, she was staring at the computer the whole day, that's why."
"it was quite bad, she was in this horrible pain all the way in the car."
"yeah, probably bogged down by too many things to do lah."

all i have to say is, man, that was one scary headache.

intoxed, detoxed

i was fed a slew of --OH* last night - a B-52, a flaming tower, a Cosmopolitan, a malt whisky and a Slippery Nipple, and was still all right until i started seeing spots after laughing too much (i never learn.. i almost always end up woozy cos i laugh too much after drinks). got driven home by sis with me navigating (it being her first attempt at driving on the left side of the road, with my senses still lucidly yelling "oi, go to the right a bit!" every few yards as the barriers/pavements on the left started looking too close for comfort), and now i'm awake at 8.00am and running errands. wonderful! ;-D

*alcohol, lah

quotable quotes #387

"Wah, ni keyboard bukan main besar..."*
- Cititel bell-boy who helped me unload the 88-key Yamaha Portagrand out of my car into the lobby for yesterday's Christmas carolling.

"Er, maybe next month lah, it will reflect."
- Jaring Wireless Broadband customer helpdesk officer, in reply to my query on why the change in my contact email in their records, while having been reflected in the "Account Information" section of my online account details, didn't seem to have been updated in their internal systems as I was still receiving Jaring notifications in the old email address.

*Translation: "Man! This is a freakin huge keyboard..."

the pensieve

i just started a blog which will act as a repository of useful web links i come across while browsing or doing research on web design, or just doing research in general! inspired by toomanyhatz's blog. this will come in useful when you can't remember where you wrote that link down, or which bookmarks folder on which PC you saved that oh-man-this-is-an-awesome-site URL...

... head over to The Pensieve at www.lightblog.com/member/wreckademik and have a look! :-) (used LightBlog cos it's got a nifty Widget tool that lets me post a link conveniently without having to call up a browser to log on and post!)

why Pensieve? what's a Pensieve? Harry Potter fans will know why. if you haven't read J. K. Rowling's famed series, go read 'em! ;-)

for starters, i'll probably have links categorised into "music", "design", "legal research", "academic research"... it'll get updated as it goes along. you get the picture. do drop a your comments at the postings if you have anything to add to the collection!

this blog will, of course, still be up and running.

join in some xmas cheer - mid valley cititel & boulevard hotels next week!

The Choir of The Philharmonic Society of Selangor will be performing Christmas Carols at the lobby of the Cititel and Boulevard Hotels (at Mid Valley) next Wednesday! (wth yours truly on the pianoforte). Open to the public. No admission fee. Come join in the fun!

Date:
Wednesday, December 21st, 2005

Venues:
Cititel Hotel Lobby - 7.00pm
Boulevard Hotel Lobby - 8.00pm

stuff it!

need to put a stop to:
the stuff people would like me to do;
the stuff i think i can do but which if taken up would be pushing my limits;
the stuff i all too readily volunteer myself to do;
the stuff people hint i could or should probably do, because, apparently, if you're still on sabbatical, you wake up every morning and sit around sipping tea watching the world go by;
the stuff everybody else won't do because it's taken for granted that i will somehow see to it.

sure, having the initiative to do things and being the all-obliging all-round do-it-all person earns some brownie points here and there, but people have to learn to stop taking others for granted...

cartoonist's block

just noticed a few days back that The Star is accepting cartoons from readers on issues of the day, etc. (and each cartoon published gets RM50). i've been sending emails to The Star for ages (since i was in school, i think) asking what I would need to do if i wanted to get a cartoon strip/single panel published in their paper.. finally here comes something and guess what, i've got a cartoonists' block. come on! come on! must.. think.. of.. something!

oh, so you're a lawyer! great, cos my mind is bursting with legal questions on my rental agreement, my sister's marriage and my company's HR policies!

one of the irritating things about being qualified in my field of work is when random persons you meet ask you for your thoughts on something 'legal'. and because they expect you to be well-versed with law in general, they don't quite understand when you say you're not familiar with that particular area and that you will need to check/can recommend them someone who is.

many legal issues involve a lot of common sense. sometimes when you respond logically to queries on such issues, you get the skeptical "are you really a lawyer? i expected legal jargon from you but you seem to think like a regular person" look.

on the other hand, there are also some who think lawyers are gods, and will listen and take notes on every single word that you say, even asking you to pause so they can write it down (presumably so that they can repeat it later to impress the party they are having a dispute with). you could be spouting nonsense and they will take it as the gospel truth. it's like you actually wield a power to set people's minds at ease. what a huge responsibility.