I feel like I'm barely at home these days. I can't even remember the last time I ate at home.

So I went with Grace and Riz to catch seven deadly scenes last Friday. Well actually, three deadly scenes is more like it, only because I was the source of our lateness, which resulted in the bouncers not allowing us in until the intermission.

Riz and I got off to a rather bad start. After spending an hour waiting for us to arrive, he was understandably pissed, Grace was apprehensive, and I was all of the above AND guilty. It was so tensed in the car you could slice through it with a knife harhar. But it's ok, we're buddy buddy now after a nice banana leaf session and some touring around Bangsar.

Anyways, I was feeling quite shitty when we got there and THEN to make it worse the bouncers made us wait some more till the intermission. And Shern had to rub it in and tell me I missed out badly on the other four scenes. Tried to trick me into coming with Jess the next day but oh howdy no thank you very much. One of the reasons I don't really go for plays as much as I want to is because it takes about 2 hours just to get there by public transport. By the time you get there, all the enthusiasm you might have had initially would have been replaced by irritation and tiredness from all the travelling.

So after the very short no-value-for-money play, things picked up. We went to Riz's famous Nirwana banana leaf (note to everybody: Only go there if you're a big fan of bitter gourd. haha!), where we sat beside a rather cute guy with a rather cute Aussie accent who offered to take a group picture for us and then reminded us to post it up on facebook, which probably will never happen unless those two decide to get off their dusty butts since I don't believe in personally posting pictures on facebook ;p




And then we went to Starbucks, where I claimed my free coffee (Thanks Riz, now all you owe me is chocolate cake ;p hahahahha jk larr) and fooled around with his darling Fedora with a capital F.





And when Starbucks closed, Riz brought us on a walking tour around Telawi. At one point we were chilling at the roadside in front of the deserted castle and guess who walked up! Aha.

And then we went back to Grace's place where she and I had an all-night chat session. GAWD it felt good just to talk to an old friend like that again. I miss her. And I'm definitely staying over at her place more often.

And then she finally went to mandi at 7am while I collapsed on her bed. After some intermittent sleep, Ivan came and we went to the Gardens, where more photo-taking ensued.



And then because I got home late, I missed carolling and went to YAF's christmas party instead.

So that was my weekend that was.

Christmas was awesome too! The musical that GHM put together was spectacular. When I see how big a music ministry we have at church and how much potential we have to grow even further, I can't help but feel proud of my home church. I'm so thankful that we've got a senior pastor so open minded and willing to incorporate all sorts of things into the different ministries, and I realize how blessed we are to have the whole jingbang of traditional Malaysian intruments at our disposal, some of which we don't even know the name of. I WISH I played some sort of orchestral instrument so I could get involved in the orchestra, but sadly I don't.

Looking at the young ones playing the angklong yesterday, it brought back memories of my time in GHM and how I too used to play the angklong, and the xylophone! ahaha. I remember the white satin outfits and oh man, those golden hair sanggul thingys with the pointy flowers lovingly made by some of the aunties I think. They had to make hundreds of them. What a labour of love. I ALWAYS had a problem with those sangguls because I had short hair and the bun wasn't big enough to hold the sanggul combs. Anyways... yeah. And those selendangs with gold patterns. Mine was always pink! Man I regret the fact that I don't have any pictures of me in that era because we didn't have digital cameras then, and my parents weren't particularly photography-prone. Oh and we lost our analog camera too and were cameraless for a few years.

I miss those years! And i really do miss playing the angklong. And the xylophone. And i miss the practice sessions!

But I'm proud of how the ministry has grown, and it was just such a joy to witness the little hands vibrating the quaint little angklongs and the bigger hands handling the hugeass double bass and the other string instruments. I would love to get involved again if I had the time, but I really doubt it.

So that was Christmas at church.

Then I took a step of faith and drove to Jess' house in the jungle WITHOUT GETTING LOST (applause please), where I discovered another connection to Grace and Riz. Man the world is sho schmall!

And then on the way home I got lost in some Malay area but got smart and turned back on the right track, and then at night we had a nice barbeque at Kim's.

Christmas was awesome. Looking forward to next year!