One day trip

I had a restless night yesterday and so wanted to wake up late this morning. Then, my sister woke me up and reminded me we had a family trip to Penang today. So I forced myself to get out of bed. I slept through most of the journey to Penang.

When I woke up, we were already on the Penang Bridge. Later, we went to Queensbay Mall and shopped there for a while. Then, we had McDonald's for lunch. There was this McValue offer from 12pm to 3pm. When we arrived at the outlet, there was not much customers in it, so we decided to sit down first. Suddenly a few minutes later (aroud 11.55pm), a whole horde of customers appeared inside the outlet. In the end, we had to queue up for around 10 minutes before we get our lunch.

After eating lunch, we went to the famous temple Kek Lok Si as my sister had a project to do. We climbed high and low and took a lot of pictures (most of them just my sister). My father was furious because he had to pay twice just because he parked at two different places. When we arrived at the foot of the hill, we had supper at a famous road-side stall. We had the famous Penang laksa. It was fantastic. Although I have only eaten it twice altogether, I love it! Not only is it tasty, it costs less than RM3!

After finishing the laksa, we decided to head home. My father decided to go back to the mainland by ferry and in the end, we got stuck in a major traffic jam and delayed us for at least 30 minutes. While waiting for the traffic congestion to clear up, I drifted off into dreamland, again. After arriving at the mainland, we had dinner at a fishing village called Sepetang. We had seafood for dinner. It was also very delicious.

At around 9pm, we headed home. Overall, it was a nice trip to Penang. Not only does it allows you to have a relaxing time, it also tightens the bond between family members. I hope there will be more similar family trips in the future.

Term 1 Break

Sec 1 Camp was over (a bit glad), and the Term 1 break starts!!! I returned to Malaysia on Friday (13 Mar) and arrived in my hometown early morning on Saturday. Sunday and Monday I went out with some ex-classmates and friends. I thoroughly enjoyed spending time with them at Ipoh Parade (a shopping mall) and I definitely will go there again the next term break. Besides interacting with my peers, I also spent a lot of time with my family. It has been a long time since we sat at the same dinner table and so we talked a lot. I also watched football with my father (and was overjoyed when Liverpool thrashed Manchester United 4-1). The result further lifted my spirits (not to mention Liverpool last week's 4-0 romp over Real Madrid). Of course, I cannot just slack this whole week, tons of project work has to be done. Still, overall, this has been a terrific week and there will be more additions (I will be going to Penang this Thursday). I simply love the term breaks.

Crippled but Strong

Today, as I flipped through the newspaper, I saw another interesting article. There was this article about a woman. Miss Oh Siew May, 38 years old, is not a normal person. She is a writer of a book titled "Scaling Walls". The book was an instant hit, with over 3000 out of 5000 copies sold when it was released.

So what was so special about Ms Oh? She is the youngest of five children in her family. Ms.Oh is actually a victim of cerebral palsy. This disease renders her ability to move normally. Unfortunately for her, she is not the only one in her family to suffer from diseases. Various diseases have robbed her of her families and friends. One of her siblings once had a high fever causing the sibling to be mentally impaired. Besides that, her father and one of her friends died due to cancer. Her father succumbed to colon cancer.

The other friend, Lui Ming, who greatly inspired her to do wonderful things, died in 2005 at the age of 44. Lui Ming and her daughter, Aurora encouraged Ms. Oh in many different aspects. They even persuaded Ms. Oh to climb Mt. Kinabalu, which is situated in East Malaysia, and stands at a height of 4095m, making it one of the tallest mountains in South East Asia. Ms.Oh's mother, too suffered from chronic skin disease and had to amputate her right leg.

Despite facing these various setbacks in her life, she continued to work to make money for her family. It was a hard task for her to find jobs, as many companies did not want to hire physically or mentally impaired workers. So, Ms. Oh had no choice but to start a pushcart business at a shopping mall. She had to gave up in 2003 when SARS hit, resulting in drop of customers. After that, she continued to look for jobs.

In the end, she started to write books. After finishing writing the book, she tried to find a company to publish it. Eventually, she found a company. When the date of publishing came nearer and nearer however, the company refused to publish her work as they cannot reach an agreement of contracts. So, her group of motley friends pooled up over $10000 to start a Siew May and Friends publisher and managed to publish Ms.Oh's book in merely 8 weeks.

Ms.Oh has been a great inspiration to me. People can be motivated just by looking at what she has done, even though she is crippled. She had to break more barriers in comparison to a normal human to do what she has done. She is really a determined person. We should emulate what we can from her.