the ride to the clouds

my newfound long ago love (:

cool huh!

the face; written all over

right and cts are just about to start for most people in school, lucky me i have one more day to study, unlucky me, i have one less day to enjoy. oh wells! all the best (:

on a side note, if you are feeling bored and would not mind making me feel happy, please click

http://www.shine.youth.sg/sos/module/front

and vote for me under ”contribution”.

it would feel exactly like a hug if you do!

haha.

actually it would be quite cool if you take a look at the many people featured there, some of them do have really inspiring stories to tell (: have fun! 

the flipside of it all

haha! okay xinyang was right. i also don’t know what leaves they are. at first i was like, “pandan leaves”? but cannot be. cause pandan leaves are the thin green ones that we use to make flavouring for the syrups and stuff. so i thought “hah! not pandan leaves then must be banana leaves.” okay anyway so i went to ask my mum and then my mum said “of course not banana leaves la!” i think banana leaves are the big ones that the bollywood indian dancers sometimes dance about. that kind that have many narrow leaves on one stalk. so come to think of it, should not be banana leaves.

right. anyway i checked wikipedia and it said that supposed to be use bamboo leaves. but i looked at the picture then it looked like those in thailand with that non-pyramid shape and yeah i think those are bamboo leaves. but anyway i got confused so i asked my mum again. then my mum gave some super super super imba answer.

she said,

“it’s zhong ye.”

the clock rings

haha yes and it is 端午节 again! dumpling festival for the uninitiated. haha (: and i dug into my blog archives to retrieve the entry about how i helped my mum to make dumplings last year.

 “it’s 4-sided, not 3-sided!”

haha yes and i helped my mum to “bao zong zi” again this year! after reading the old entry on making the dumplings, i definitely still agree with it, and actually i was quite surprised to see that the predictions i made one year ago came true!

yes after one year of preparation for this year’s dumpling making, i can finally fold the groove using the banana leaves now! the only problem is that my hand is kind of like too small, and my fingers too short. the thing is that you have to put the banana leaf in the groove under your thumb, and use the rest of the fingers to fold it into a “pocket” to put the rice and everything in. so the rest of the fingers will have to reach the other end of the banana leaves so that the leaves can be folded into the pocket. and well. my fingers kind of don’t reach the other end of the leaves.

and this whole big problem arises – i can’t reach far enough to make a small fold so that the pocket would be big.and if i adjust the size of the two leaves placed together to a smaller size so that i can reach the end, well. the pocket would be too small.

okay i think no one knows what i am talking about. never mind.

anyway the result is that my dumplings are all quite small, as compared to my mum’s gigantic ones. then my mum said, “eat one, not full, then eat two, too full already.” haha! then i said, “three people eat two la!” oh then my brother pointed out, “two people eat three la.”

haha but overall, i can make the shape of the dumpling! (:

and yes! haha i predicted correctly that i would forget how to tie the dumpling to the DAMN string this year! haha but i recalled how to do if after my mum showed me twice! which is a great improvement (: i was really very happy after that when i knew exactly where to tie the string! greatness. hahaha!

before i started making the dumplings, the interesting question goes like this – “the dumpling is a pyramid with 4 vertices. how do you best tie a string around the dumpling so that it would not fall apart? 3-1 or 2-2?”

okay well i think the obvious answer would be 2-2. i kind of figured that out. but while making the dumplings, i realised that it is actually not so easy! you cannot actually tie the string between any 2 vertices that you fancy, it has to be exactly the one around the vertices you created cause of the double-layering of the leaves and if you choose any 2 vertices other than that, your pyramid will definitely go out of shape!

hahaha okay the knowledge from traditions never fails to impress me. i doubt people who tie the string using the correct method actually think about what they are doing, but they just know it works.

this is all quite cool (:

and well. uh i took quite a lot of time away from mugging for cts to “bao zong zi”. not exactly a very smart move but i enjoyed myself! yayness.

my brother said that next time i can “bao zong zi” for him, like in the future when my mum is too old to “bao zong zi”! haha it will be so cool. cause i will be like someone who can’t cook anything but can only “bao zong zi”. hahaha (:

i can’t be as good

haha it seems that blogging slows down everytime i do pathlight/autism resource centre stuff. perhaps cause my days are always so full of the kids, i don’t have energy left to write, but maybe also because i can’t write much about them without revealing too much anyway.

right but anyway the junior camp is over, and oh no, it is kind of the last major thing i will do for pathlight and arc until after my a levels. it does not help that my parents are not very happy about my heavy involvement. and it also does not help that i am behind my mugging schedule. okay not that i have one, but i kind of know if i don’t mug 24 hours a day i am so going to not be able to finish mugging.

so anyway, i have thought quite a lot about my kids, and reflected much. but well i shall not say much about that here, but there was one important thing (or interesting?) that i thought was really really a must-blog. i have always thought we were somehow equal in our lots, whatever we possess in life. yes, the rich man might have so much more money than us, but he might not have the talent of the young prodigal violinist. yes, the young prodigal violinist might have so much more talent than us, but he might not have the happiness of the ordinary great-grandmother. right i think i made my point.

when i look at my kids, i know they have gifts. i know they have the innocence, the frankness, and their uniqueness. i do not want to think that having autism is a disability, but sometimes it does stare hard into my face that they may never understand people around them, have friends, or have people take them as normal. though this is true, i do not think any less of them, normal people have weaknesses as well – just that they are in the majority, and thus, they are not seen as a disability.

so sometimes i think… is it because they are missing out of these things, the higher beings have given them more? it always strikes me as funny when some of the normal kids in camp say “hey k____, pray hard, pray hard that it doesn’t rain! when you pray it always works!” it just makes me think “are they more blessed because they have lost out in some ways in life?”

haha but it is just a thought. i would not really believe that just cause k_____ prayed and the normal kids did not, the rain would not fall. but yeah, it kind of made me think a little bit about the higher beings.

my kids are just so lovable (: