Hiya people,

For the past few months, I've been so tied down with work, I just couldn't find the time to stop and write for my homepage. There were attempts of course but they're all uncompleted. I'm still tied down with work... in fact very tied down.

I'm sitting by the window in the room I've rented with Gui and another girl (student). We're now staying at a condominium at Section 14, PJ. It's so far a "perfect place". Public transportation especially the LRT is very convenient --just 5 to 10 minutes walk. The town centre is also within this distance. It's not this that made me take up the rental here but it's the view from my room. We're on the 9th floor and our window overlooks a huge horizon covering Kelana Jaya, SS2, SS23 and other areas nearby.

It's so romantic here at night. Many may not understand what I'm raving about but I guess my views are different. My heart just melts when I look outside my window at night. Hundreds of lights lit up from the sea of houses and buildings below in the distance. I never fail to look out of the window each morning I wake up and each night when I come back from work. I'm not creative at all in describing the lovely scenery unlike the writer Lucy M. Montgomery. I'm sure she will give names like Land of Uprightness, Birch Path, Lovers' Lane or Haunted Wood for places around here.

The Wind Woman here is strong and breezy. It is present most of the time..... banging the doors with unforgiving force.

My housemates are a "chirpy" lot. Siew Ho, the house leader - in spite of him being quite nosy, he's a generous lad. Most of the house gadgets like the washing machine and refrigerator belong to him but he shares out freely. Sometimes he treats us snacks and he's willing to fetch you to places if you're unable to go there on your own.

His roommate, Kian Chye, is the quieter one... like me actually. I know it seems odd when I used to be so "kay poh" (busybody) back at 41, PJ. I guess it's partly because most of them are Chinese-educated and prefer to speak Mandarin. And partly because I may have changed - I prefer to listen more and perhaps I'm seeking a different type of conversation.

The rest of my housemates are girls. There's Siew Hooi, who's aspiring to be a newscaster. She's the independent type and how can she not when she's the eldest in her family. There's also Su Zen, a pretty lass. She's definitely the chirpy one. Both of them are pretty good cooks.

Amy is my other roommate and she's a Stamfort College Student just like Su Zen. I'm glad that all of us get along fine. I guess being unselfish, caring and tolerant is the key to our 901B household unity.

We've had some dinners together and if not because of my busy schedule, I'm sure we would have gone on an outing by now.

Speaking of busy schedule, yeah I've been busy and worse... real moody. My mood swings have turned bad and I believe this mood has played a part in me feeling rebellious of late.

The clients to whom I'm working for although are nice people but most of them have not been effective in producing work or committed in making the project a smooth going one. We've got lots of problems trying to hold the project together and it's rather frustrating when we find the consultants working harder than the clients. I'm doing a lot of work which is not supposed to be mine - which is why I'm so pissed off. Because of some of the work not performed by clients, my project manager will assign to us extra work and says that we must be proactive in getting the project going. Basically there's nothing in it for us - we don't have overtime claims just a miserable $12 meal allowance. The clients are not even grateful for what we've done because they don't even realize that it's actually their work that they need to prepare.

This job frustration really gets to me and I'm always grumbling about my work and my project manager as well as some of my clients. Basically it's gotten to the point where I don't really like to work at all.

Enough said about my tragedy at work. Not all is bad. I'm working with a bunch of fun colleagues. It's pretty an honour to be "one of the guys" since most of the time I'm the only female around.

Ooh yeah, talk about act of being rebellious. Recently I've done three - not really something I'm proud of but I can't help that deep inside of me, my heart is secretly grinning and not regretting one bit.

The first act and the most rebellious kind - is that I tried smoking! It was not an act of sudden impulse, I can assure you. It's been something I've been plotting to do for quite some time. Not trying to look cool (smoking makes you look cool?). Well you know me, always fancying trying out new things and I've wanted to satisfy my curious mind in what smoke tastes like. Unfortunately, it turns out to be just that - smoke. Maybe it's just because I only took one puff.

My colleagues knew about my intended venture and I guess it's just kinda fun to see me daring to take up the challenge. I was offered a Marlboro cigarette and my colleagues or should I say "accomplices?" helped out in lighting it up. For fear of coughing, I took the advice to just give the cigarette a suck which I did - where it felt I had just tasted smoke. Then only did I move on to a higher level of inhaling it as well. I didn't like it - there and then I just quit!

They say it takes awhile before you get to like it and that girls normally start off with smoking menthol cigarettes. Whatever it is, my parents gonna kill me if they'd known about this. But then again they also know they have a daughter who likes to defy the normalities of life.

The next act would be a vain one - I had my hair dyed. Somehow I feel like a hypocrite when I had always hold to the principle that I like all things natural. Here again, curiosity killed the cat. I asked myself "what if..." It was also not a lightning decision, I had planned to dye my hair after the IKEDA project and supposedly go for a change in my physical outlook as well as personal self to kick off the new millenium. I have this sudden thought that I did it (and the cigarette thingy) due to the fact that life was getting extremely boring and monotonous (notice that I haven't been on a single adventure since August last year) that I would like to break out of this never ending cycle.

I'm very glad I dyed my hair. This was not what I felt halfway in the process which I felt that my hair was turning too blond (I didn't want to look like a Easterner copying a Westerner). I was telling myself - "Oh my goodness, what have I done? What am I doing to myself? Maybe I need to reverse the effects by dyeing my hair back to black again." That would cost me another RM50. I have no qualms of hiding my hair colour intentions - my mom was actually right beside me in the hair salon! And I even asked her to pick the colour!

Mom was afraid that I'd blame her if she chose the wrong color so I ended up picking the colour - medium copper red. I even liked the name of the color!

My final act of rebellion would be "showing the finger" at another driver who really pissed me off during one of my moody days when I was coming back from work. He was tailing me near town area and was flashing his headlights while I was slowing down to turn at a corner. What the heck was he flashing for? This was town area and I was driving normal speed - that really pissed me off and without even thinking I showed him the finger when he overtook my car.

And so there you have it. I've been bad this start of millenium and Santa's not gonna bring me any Christmas presents this year. But it does not matter, my family is here with me and that's more important to me than anything else in the world.

This weekend's ramblings is dedicated to Inma, my longtime penpal from Spain who's wondering whatever happened to me since I've not been updating my homepage. To Nisah, congratulations on your wedding again - my first attendance to a Malay wedding. And to others, thanks for dropping by my homepage. This is truly a "personal" homepage meant only for my close friends. Please don't link this to any commercial sites. Here's a view from my new place's window.

Regards,
Li Li