My BFF's 20th Birthday! Ideas for your own Handmade gifts.

HAPPY 20TH BIRTHDAY 

HONEY BABY YZ

Here are some possible inspirations or ideas for your friends.

Trust me, you don't need to throw money around for an amazing gift.

IT'S THE THOUGHT THAT COUNTS

So, I live in the Southern part of  the banana shaped section of Malaysia, really near Singapore. Yeah, you might be wondering why suffer over getting presents for a friend when I could just get my ass over to Singapore. First, I can't freely go into Singapore without apparently my parents permission. Second, it's expensive especially when you factor in the 7% GST. 

My dilemma might seem pretty unfortunate plus I can't drive to the big city which is Kuala Lumpur ( for non-Malaysians ease of understanding) as I do not have a driving licence yet. The story behind that is pretty funny and I shall not delve into it.

  

THE JOURNEY INTO MY IDEA

Hence, I got her this bunny soft toy which I love too.

Then I envisioned the bunny holding colourful balloons at both its' bunny hands as it held a big red board which will be her birthday card.

We will both be parting ways, living a life of a university student soon at possibly either different countries or the same country. This itself, gave me the idea of printing out Google Maps of the places we will be furthering our studies.

The flower background was handmade by me too. Just use your average A4 paper, then use your water colours to randomly paint shapes of haphazard circles, the important part of this is painting dark strong parts of a colour than mixing soft delicate parts naturally with it together.This helps to create the effect of a more 3D flower since nothing has just one monotone colour. Then take a standard ballpoint pen to sketch , roughen up the flowers, thereby creating necessary shadows on its petals.

The colourful printed tapes and the old-ish ,hipster-y stickers you see were bought and collected over time by me. The brown string can be bought for RM 5 for 120 metres at Daiso.

So I made a pocket envelope photo album. It isn't hard. All you need is some coloured paper, double-sided tape, some decorations even magazine cutouts and lastly, print out pictures of important memories.

I love quotes especially from books ,hence I choose my quotes online and just wrote them with a standard black Sharpie.

I initially thought of getting her real flowers but since another friend was doing that, I just found a tutorial on how to make these big beautiful paper flowers.

This was by far the hardest part of her gift as the hot glue gun I bought was broken.

I actually had to unscrew the whole thing and try to fix it.

It was a failure , hence I came up with an easy, transportable and safe method of melting my glue sticks in the comforts of my own room. The method didn't require me to contaminate the metal pots used for cooking with glue. I was worried if it could be poisonous even if I made sure to wash it well.

After thinking it over and remembering how a woman melted her MAC lipstick on a spoon over a burning candle, I carried the same procedure out except with glue stick and a small sacrifice of getting burnt from the hot sticky glue from time to time. 

The end results of all that, sweat, brain cells, glue stick fumes and glue burns was these flowers.

Sorry, my room is very windy,thus the position of the petals are as such.

Once again, these are some of the ideas I did for my BFF. You may modify it for your own use. 

The true happiness of all these hard work is the smile I was able to make on her face.

ITS THE THOUGHT THAT COUNTS.

NOT MONEY

SPECIAL THANKS TO:

MY BFF YZ, THANK YOU FOR PUTTING UP WITH ME.

FOR THE MANY TIMES WHEN I NEEDED YOUR HELP

FOR THE TIMES THAT I WASN'T SUCH A GREAT FRIEND

FOR THE ROUGHT TIMES WE HAD

FOR UNDERSTANDING ME AND 

FOR BELIEVING AND FOR NOT GIVING UP ON US.

HERE IS TO US

I AM PARTLY EXCITED TO START UNIVERSITY

YET SAYING ALL THE GOODBYES

MADE ME THANK GOD FOR MY LIFE IN MY COUNTRY

THE PEOPLE I MET

I FELL IN LOVE WITH

GOT MY HEART BROKEN OVER

THE FRIENDS  I LOST

AND BEST OF ALL THE FAMILY AND FRIENDS WHO STOOD BY ME 

AND LOVED ME DURING THOSE LOW MOMENTS.

LET ME BE YOUR BRIDESMAID AND I SHALL BE YOURS TOO!

Love you. 

Freedom is an Ilusion

Freedom

the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint.

Words brought actions into play

In between those two words are thoughts.

It is thoughts that slowly blooms into actions.

There are two sides to it.

One adds kerosene to a fire and another consists of random thoughts.

When you were a child, let's say a child from a loving middle class family, 

you enjoyed what little freedom you had.

All the stupid things and words 

Did and said

was forgivable.

Life hadn't taught you that words have consequences.

Actions are elicited by words. 

Hence, I see words far superior than actions as it is, 

the power to awaken both the bad and good emotions humanly possible.

From the words of our mouths,to the emotions it gave rise,

Comes the actions.

When you grew up, became like any adolescent who proclaimed love for the opposite sex,

tried every sexual desires and curiosity buried deep within,

Had your first love, which broke your fragile young naive heart, 

Remember he or she broke it with words?

When you are an adult, heart heavy with regrets, past  lost opportunities and lost loves.

You feel constrained, shackled and restrained in your actions,words,opinions and thoughts.

Life becomes a list of debts, despair,broken relationships, failed dreams,faltered dreams,disappointments,insults,insinuations,oppression,depression,secrets,desperation,exasperation,lies,and deceit. 

Have we ever felt freedom?

Being 18 and free to do almost everything

Is not true freedom,

I once thought this is freedom, hanging out with friends, drinking a bit here and there (nothing severe or wild),

getting piercings my parents didn't know about 

was freedom.

I thought having a licence which entitled you to the freedom of driving to your hearts content was freedom

It never was freedom

You had to work to pay for petrol

Pay the road tax and toll.

Freedom of trade is precisely freedom of trade and no other freedom because within it the nature of the trade develops unhindered according to the inner rules of its life. Freedom of the courts is freedom of the courts if they follow their own inherent laws of right and not those of some other sphere, such as religion. Every particular sphere of freedom is the freedom of a particular sphere, just as every particular mode of life is the mode of life of a particular nature.

Karl Marx

Quoting from Marx, the topic freedom is a difficult one as to him there is freedom which only lies within a certain group or organisation or workplace.

Yet, I can't seem to completely agree with him. Even within each sphere therein lies the freedom to operate however they want according to their own personal profits.

What about the freedom of an individual?

My country is a hub for human trafficking

Tell me what is freedom?

Do women have freedom?
Do children have freedom?

Is there freedom to live out your lives ?

I do not see freedom in countries filled with political turmoils, constrained by religion and male chauvinist cultures.

Reality hinders freedom 

Yet, people hinder each others' freedom even further.

I may speak of freedom but I do understand that with complete freedom ,chaos exists.

Sometimes, its not freedom of the life we live .

The restrictive life.

We can attain freedom of the heart, our soul.

Are we freed from our past?

I am not

Hence, I may have the freedom to act,speak and think but there is nothing I could change about my past.
Freedom is an Illusion.


I want to redeem my past with the present which will alter the future.
The thing about the past are the memories that brought joy,sorrow,disappointments and worst of them all is helplessness.
You would carve out your own heart just to ask for forgiveness and to change the past.
I am on a journey to attain freedom of my soul.
To correct my past regrets, to forgive myself and forgive the pain others inflict on me.


If I succeed, then to me that's my freedom.
Maybe to others, freedom is the escapism from the iron grip of politics,politicians and the people who clamped down on their wings to fly in the blue sky.



In truth, the only thing in life that enjoys freedom is Love.

Living life.

Life

What make youths naive is the fear of taking risks. The fear of asking and knowing how to work your way to get what you want. 

I am one of those. But I have also learned that even if you failed while taking risks, its not failure. Its never failure unless you stopped picking yourself up every time you fall.

I met some people heading towards a suicidal direction. They  only think of how to make money, not just a minimum wage salary but an amount of a millionare. They have this mentality that their partners involved in the business idea are trustworthy even if it means investing your own savings into it. They only dream of owning a Maserati, Porsche, Audi, Bentley,Rolls Royce and etc. With a stack of money in hand, they could buy the world, buy women and live life. Ask yourself this, are your conscience clear once you find yourself on your deathbed a few decades down the road? Have you done things you regret, lost the person you love to materialistic things?

 Enjoy dying without any real friends and family you pushed away.

To me, I live for myself and repay those who supported me all the way. 

I want to experience everything and do what my heart tells me.

I want to be less selfish and more selfless.

I want to be willing to sacrifice my life for the greater good of others.

When you work for the life you want even if plans do not follow through always,

you can still collect every piece of happiness, disappointment, tears,laughter and moments ,then place them in a glass jar. 

Of course I do not have any rights on nagging people about how to live their life however, think of it as a blogger, your everyday human blogger ranting out her thoughts.It doesn't matter if you agree or disagree with me, what does matter is that there is a mutual understanding of respecting and accepting differing views between the blogger and reader.

I have always been a coward however, recently, I lost someone,hence I am taking more risks in life. I have nothing to lose. I need to evolve just as how caterpillars metamorphosised into butterflies. 

There are a few to-do things in my life, I may add more as the years past.

1.Paragliding in Austria,Switzerland(if there is one there) and somewhere with a beautiful beach and deep blue sea.

2.Jet-skiing

3.The roller coaster in Japan which is 90 degrees towards the ground

4.Earn enough money to travel around with friends

5. Earn enough money to bring my parents and grandparents for holidays before old age steals away their opportunity

6.To love someone again 

7.Read as many books my lifetime will allow

8.Learn as much new things, skills, languages and etc

9. Step out of my comfort zone more

10. To build a house and life together with that special someone

(this includes painting the walls of our house together, sleeping on the floor together with paint stained clothes, looking into each others eyes, kissing right there on the floor, and telling each other you are the one  I want to go on an adventure with.)

11. Do DIY stuff for the house. (furniture, interior design and etc)

12. To have the job that suits me.

13. To know what I want to do with my life

14. To be independent and responsible

15. To scream in joy with my close friends once we achieved what we dreamed of together.

16. To live in the present, let the past make me a better version of myself and let the future be.

17. To continue blogging

18.Write my own novel. Literary novel. 

19. Go to Bali and try out that ride which ejects you out in a tube.

20.Sexy body from hard work. Exercising and disciplining myself.

21.Hike my way up Nepal with Dad.

Over the month or so, I experienced more than I could have planned for. I felt fear and exhilaration for the unknown possibilities when I choose to step out of my comfort zone. I have nothing to lose.

I enjoyed the moments of being a daredevil with my friends. 

Overall, I had grown as a person. I want to grow more, enjoy everything and be grateful for the little things I take for granted.

I may not have an affirmative direction in life right now but I sense it's near. It's coming. Do not fear. Do not back out into the comfort zone again. Instead, take those toes into the region of risks, and never turn back.

Learn to Live.

The Journey towards Destiny

Towards Destiny

I have recently gone through a difficult time which had buried me deep into the Earth , gasping for air and crying over my internal pains. After experiencing such pains, physical pain is nothing comparable to it. It is a pain which requires time, love, compassion,mercy, forgiveness, and a long walk with God. I don't want to seem like an overly religious person; just like Paulo Coelho, I believe that all religions leads to the same one true God. In a way, you can say that I am starting my journey of finding myself, my destiny and to discover how to treat myself as well as others around me better. If love fills us and we constantly talk to our heart; be silent for a moment, silence those distraught thoughts,forget the day's problems, we will eventually hear a voice speaking to us. I lived a life of complete ignorance,always thought that the universe revolves around me and that life is good since for all my 19 years of my life, I gained more than I had lost. That's where I made a regrettable mistake which lead to this pain of losing a living breathing being.

When you gained someone, you may get used to their presence, and eventually your universe revolves between the two of you. You wouldn't have thought of preparing your heart for the leaving of this person. Once that person has decided he has to leave, you then fill your heart with regrets over the possible aspects and parts of that relationship which you could have corrected.Maybe it could save that connection you had with him. For a  few weeks, living becomes regrettable, you burst into tears without alarm, those memories of regrets and sweetness fills your mind and each day this routine repeats itself. As you try to process the lose, the words of harsh goodbyes and the complete cut-off from that human being  you placed your heart into his hands, in the end  your old self dies a little. I lived like this for a month but days felt like a year. The pain lingers since memories are always present because it happened. However, I grew through these trials , I humbled myself more, I listened more to others, learned from others, understood my faults , and I embraced change. I took rejections and bad days as methods to better myself. I reconnected with people who loved me when I was so starstruck by just one human being. Over time, I felt I want to encourage others who are feeling down as well, maybe not due to the same reasons but there are times that we need strangers to give us another reason to live. Up until now, I tried to encourage and hopefully passed on the message across to my friends in doubt that I am here to help even if I can't do much. 

This may seem hypocritical of me, how could I change so fast within such a short period after my lost. I met a certain person, whom asked me to ask myself the reasons behind every good actions. She has taught me to not overthink, made me realise many things and I felt that this meeting with her was something planned out by a greater writer who wrote the stories of lives on Earth, both the departed and the ones that are still here.

Many things happened, many people I have met and the accumulation of words from them nourished me. For all my life, I hadn't experience such a journey in which people,places,circumstances,words,events,emotions,memories,books and reflections could have such a profound way of changing my life. How absurd and naive I was when I thought my life was like a straight road. It never was, it may have seemed like it is just as how mirages in deserts twist our minds into believing the lies we want to be true. 

I know that I still have a long journey ahead of me but if only I knew all these, let it shape me, be my guide,be lessons  in handling the past relationship I cherished and lessons in being a better person, possibly a better friend, I wouldn't have lost what I had been blessed with. For some time, this idea haunts my mind and heart. By chance,however, I read a book which lead to many more books which in turn taught me this:

Live not in the past as those cannot be undone, live not for the future as it is something unseen, unknown and is subjected to change by the writer of our lives, instead live in this present moment since you can do something with the present. Live the present and remember death is hanging by your shoulders each day and may come for you. Do not have a shallow pre-concept whenever you chance upon the subject called Death. It is inevitable yet it is necessary since without it, the true meaning of life and the beauty of this life is lost in piles of to-do lists, mundane works and shallow trivial talks. Death reminds us to treat people around you especially those you love --right. It daunts us to live in the moment, gaze at the trees, the sky, the sun and ponder how wonderful everything that was made by the great writer. Lastly, Death gives us the push to come out of our comfort zones, to be fearless and do what your heart tells you. 

I am on the journey towards an unknown destiny. 

I have not pinpoint what I want to achieve in my life, all things are pretty hazy for me right now, its as if having all the pieces to a picture of a jigsaw puzzle but because of the complexity of that picture, it takes time to assemble those pieces correctly. 

One thing I had learned is that, I abandoned my dream to write, express myself and to be who I am over a reason I can't seem to remember. Sometimes , life is weird, how do you realise when you had lost that big chunk of yourself over the years? 

All I am certain of is that I will continue on this journey, at my own pace, writing about it either by blogging or by  my personal writings. This is the beginning. The wind is changing, the smell of rain of regrets

lingers shorter, the clouds clear,and the sun illuminates the blueness of the blue sky.

Oliver Nobody and the Winged Woods

                                                “ Oliver Nobody  and the  Winged Woods”  

As a peasant, whatever scraps given or found , either dirt or rubbish, you just have to set aside the most gullible sin among the Seven Deadly Sins known to mankind --- Pride…and keep the palms spread like doves’ wings, trapped in morbidity and the entrapments of men. It knows no blue sky but the dark grey of endless shower and coldness . My name is Oliver Nobody. I have no surname, no father to make me a man fit for  a structured society. We are all  born with structures, without it, there are no rigid and firm forms to uphold us when a tide of physical and emotional tests of life , are thrown into the boiling broth.
Open your eyes and see the make-up of a democratic nation , an open-minded society  and  social levels that give rise as well as power to our leaders, our so-called nucleus. The political system of our current world works like our bodies which are made up of various systems, from these systems, organs work together,and these organs are made up of tissues. Tissues are groups of similar looking and functioning cells. These cells are common working people, the basic unit of life. Yet, due to man’s own greed, every politician wants a part of us, the cells’ by-products,  and claim it as their own riches, just like a malignant cancer sucking away the life source of a healthy cell. I view our world of recessions  and political instability in a biological way. The malfunctioning  of our nucleus, the leaders, has lead to the fall of such systems. Now, peasants like us are borne without a structure, an instruction manual to lead a long happy life.

You might ask me why and how did I come to seem educated  from being a peasant but sometimes life is such a mystery  even if it is ironic most times. “ In the middle of difficulty, lies opportunity.” as quoted by Albert Einstein, I have found my glimmer of hope. All you need is curiosity and imagination that could feed you a lifetime no matter how deep your physical hunger may be. My story started  on a cold winter night, I was homeless, dirty, smelly and unwanted . Even a slight warmth emitting from the tender orange lights shining out of windows from rows of houses passing by, gave me a second of relief. I have forgotten when was the last time that I had eaten and silently pray to any god that may exist that I wouldn’t die of starvation. Regardless, I am still moving and breathing. My body didn’t fail me, though I am frail. Maybe there is a god who created my power-saving body. This body that stores any fats intake first and metabolize it last when all proteins and carbohydrates are gone, depleted by my starving poor body. Death awaits me if I don’t find food. Every living being fear death and the unknowns that lay ahead of it. Hence, I fear death but Mark Twain once wrote, “ Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear ,” and  these words continuously whispered in my mind as if  a permanent dial tone, droning behind the piece of meat in my head which kept me in my search to find the putative  meaning of life.  I did face my own death that winter day while walking away from that warmth and running away from a pack of guard dogs as I was trying to steal food from a rich man’s garden. I had lucked out by stumbling upon a deep,dark forest after a 15 minutes marathon fueled with fear of pain and gruesome death in the hands of hounds. My feet bleed from cuts sustained as I randomly ran, turned and stumbled on logs, broken twigs and whatever the wilderness  offers to trespassers like me. Lack of glucose, energy and dehydrated, I finally fainted into a place like hell if I was in fact dead and if hell was that dark. I drifted off like a phone shutting off due to low battery. My consciousness wanes. I am in deep slumber.

Sometimes reality is too harsh, and we want to believe in fantasy or maybe something  called an after-life. Out of that need, we believed that after-life was like seeing a white light at the end of the tunnel. I did see that light. What I didn’t understand was the sound  I heard behind this light, like a dove singing. Automatically I thought I was already in heaven or some sort of underworld vacation resort. That dream was broken by a cry of a chicken. The loudness of its voice opened my eyes to the bright sunlight and a large, upside down vulture-like looking shadow. I immediately shoot up and was ready to run from it out of fear  that it was Death in a black, long cloak, ready to rip my soul. If there were any spectators around, they would be laughing at a delusional young  man who tried to sprint away at the sight of a house that looks like the wings of a chicken.
The building was grey, dejected and lonely. The foundations of it was mere well-shaped blocks of wood that complimented one another like ‘lock and key’ hypothesis of enzymes and substrates. A strong kind of cement mixture acted like glue, and held the bricks together. It didn’t seem like anybody was living there and the intense smell of poop could be detected from the inside of it. Regardless of its state, at the angle at which I was standing at, it was emitting a motherly protective feeling. I couldn’t quite place the correct words to express these foreign emotions since I am a peasant and orphaned. In a way, it was like a cell wall of a plant. Strong, rigid from cellulose but porous and fully permeable, thereby allowing warmth, light and love from a mother hen to her chicks or letting all these flow into the wild. We can’t see it with the naked eye, but under a metaphorical microscope, the air once containing oxygen and other gases were replaced by these elements especially love. At that moment, I felt like I got a second chance in life and the old broken systems of the world were past me. If man wasn’t chasing papers of different colours like rainbows of the visible light spectrum, we wouldn’t be losing these trees I see around the cell wall structure. Enclosed by nature, I knew I was safe and far away from the destroyers  of  Mother Earth.

Time is just an illusion. Some physicist believed that theory while it was abhorred  by most left-brained population of zombies programmed by cancerous cells governing countries of our world.  As for me, time truly was an illusion here. I felt like a foreign substance trying to get into this interesting infrastructure in front of me. At a closer look, it was lined with little doors just around the height of my knees and each had a small window-like opening. It was  in fact , mini houses for chickens. In each house, it had a family of chickens. I curiously peeked into one of  these equally shaped small openings as if it were transport proteins.There were fluffy little chicks inside and an angry looking hen that tried to peck my eyes. Luckily, I fell back on my bottoms just in time to save my right eye. The hen was similar to the semi-permeable characteristic of the plasma membrane. It knew that I was an unwanted, probably armed and dangerous walking three-dimensional and breathing organism. I was amazed that even such simpler organisms could detect a certain danger approaching.

It was getting darker in these areas much earlier than those cities bombarded with lights twenty-four hours. I knew I had to find shelter to keep myself warm against the forest cold nights, so I walked behind the building in hopes of finding a bigger door that would lead me to a small cabin if there were farmers tending to the chickens and staying there. As I walked further down, I found a brown door with a green knob. I tried to open it but it wouldn’t bug. In despair and dire consequences, I gave my all and poured the remainders of my energy storage to break the door open but my insane actions was stopped by the sudden opening of the door by an elderly man. He was bespectacled, learned-looking and had an approachable countenance. He smiled at me and gestured for me to enter  without questioning my identity and my abrupt appearance in front of his doorsteps. With no other options left, I walked into a room made of interesting patterns of wood that made up the floors and walls of it. The room itself was like  combinations of  arts museums in some big cities. The patterns and decorations changes as I strolled into each smaller rooms. In one room, the wood walls were carved and fitted together in the shape of pentoses  and in another room the walls were like random stacks of  wood in shapes of hexoses. The eccentricity and randomness of these rooms intrigued me as I had never stepped into rooms of other people's houses except during the short time I had stayed in a foster home until I was legally eighteen. Even then, I was constantly bored from staring blankly at those grey or white painted walls with smudges of  dinners that was cooked years before my arrival there.
The last room I entered was the mini library. It’s walls were filled with shelves of books from the ground to the ceiling of the room. I could smell the daily brewing of coffee, knowledge and years of  younger days spent in here by the old man. As I glanced through his collection of books, he introduced himself and asked me if I had a place to stay. After years or even a lifetime of homelessness, shame was nothing but an itch on the small back of my skin. I told him my story and for the first time, I felt good that somebody was truly listening to me and not treating me like the brown mud beneath their feet. My fate had turned for the better and  if it was not for his words, I wouldn’t have spent  the changing seasons of each year with him as he taught me how to read, write, calculate, hunt in the wild and the importance of maintaining the balance of wildlife by unleashing the inner caveman in me and getting reacquainted with Mother Nature. He was like the father I never had and a tender mother figure with an authoritative side. I stayed by his side until the day he passed on. His last words to me was, “ Man had forgotten the foundation, the fundamentals  of being ‘human’. We lost compassion, empathy and the nerves that makes us sensitive to emotions. We have gone on an endless  killing spree on animals, cleaned out every inch of land from trees and let the poor starve on barren land. I have given you the gift of emotions and  trained you to differentiate between what is morally right and wrong. Mostly, I have given you knowledge. Knowledge is power.Most men use it to reap their own profits but I hope, you would take the road less taken by others and use your knowledge for the greater good. Reverse or revive as much as you can of the wildlife. It is the heaven on Earth that men never realized.”

Three years later, it was the same winter night but I am no longer a peasant but an advocate for the wildlife animals that needs protecting and a fighting chance against human greed. I’ve turned that winged-wood shaped building and the entire similar looking trees surrounding it into a national park in hopes to fulfill the old man’s last wishes to me and my love for the Mother Nature he had introduced to me. My name is Oliver Nobody who became a somebody in  the winged-woods and it is my meaning of life.

The wrong feelings.

I listened to this when I had wrong feelings for a friend. 

Bombay Bicycle Club // You Already Know 


the moment we forgot we were just good friends
i moved my arm her face went red again
one more bus home 
another silent weekend

said love was painted gold
like all things growing old
the paint peels and slowly falls
you already know (3 x)

looking out the glass 
always sit together
we both know we could be someone better
not with our heads like London weather

said love was painted gold
like all things growing old
the paint peels and slowly falls
you already know (4 x)

So to cure my heart

I went on an adventure

Music adventure

And drown almost every night after acting that I felt nothing for this friend

Lit a candle or two 

Read a sad biography

Read poems

Haruki Murakami's book Norwegian Wood became my escape.

Watanabe felt what I felt

Best friend killed himself

due to a girlfriend that may have liked Watanabe 

Naoko ended up committing suicide in a forest during winter

As snow fell heavily in the darkness of night

The moon shone

It was a sign of her end

Watanabe could never forget her

Until another girl comes into the story

I feel like that girl

How can I surpass my friend's first love

What my heart wants is this