I always get this question back at uni and now at work. Last week, my colleagues and I chatted about traveling during lunch time. They talked about their traveling stories around Malaysia and 90% of the time, I had no idea where they were talking about.

Colleague A: We went to Desaru last year and it was beautiful!
Me: What ru??
Colleague A: Desa-roo…
Me: Jejaroo?
Colleague A: DE-SA-ROOoooo..
Me: Dejaru??
Colleague A: Gosh! You Malaysian o-not??!!
Me: What kind of place is that? I don’t recall seeing this whatever ru in my Geography textbook!
Colleague C (Malaysian): I did what..
Me: Ah?? Aiya, syllabus must have changed after 15 years.
Colleague D (Singaporean): But I also came across Desaru during secondary school. How come you don’t have?

I wanted to find out the correct spelling of Desaru so I searched on google a few times for Dejaru, Jejaru, Gejaru…and I gave up. So I turned to my singaporean colleague sitting next to me just now and he spelled the word for me. How pathetic.

The lunch continued…

Colleague B: I drove my family to Kuantan last month for holiday…
Me: You meant Kelantan? Why did you go to Kelantan? I heard that ladies can’t wear shorts and must wear long sleeves!! So what did your wife wear?
Colleague B: Kuatan is in Pahang lar!!!
Me: Ohh.. The big big state right in the middle! *grin* See! I know my Geography!
Colleague B: Walau!!!

Colleague E: So Cherry, where have you been so far in Malaysia?
Me: Err..not many…
Colleague E: How about Malacca? Malacca is nice…the food is nice.
Me: Er….no…SO FAR! How to go??
Colleague E: FAR? You know where Malacca is o-not?
Me: Of course! It’s somewhere at the bottom, right?
Colleague E: Aiyor, we have to be your tour guide one day and take you around in Malaysia.
Me: Wah..thank you thank you!

My pathetic situation is beyond words…

So I happened to come across kennysia.com and took a "How un-malaysian are you?" test… guess what I have got?

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Congratulations Cherry, you are 67% not Malaysian. That means you’re as Malaysian as…

Guy Sebastian !

FINE! Well, it must be some scam or conspiracy or…Anyway Kenny, nice try!

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The feeling was very odd. Made me felt 10 years older. But looking at the effort that students has put in even though the exam is just around the corner, it was heart warming.

Each of the ladies was given a rose while the men was given an apple. (even though I saw a few guys taking roses, too) Hah!

We were given a doggy balloon. Ignore the ‘graffiti’ on the balloon. Poor doggy…my bad..

The students prepared a video. Students around the campus gave their wishes in the most creative way! One guy even composed a song for us! How sweet.

How could any celebration go without food!

THANK YOU people, you guys are great!

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This week is the first week of holiday and that means, the marking season is here.

These are the assignments I have to assess. Excluding the ‘digital’ version of assignments.

My buddy left last week so I took over one of his classes assignments for marking. Obviously, my surname is very ‘unique’ and not many people can spell it correctly.

Actually it is still not so bad. Some of them wrote Cherry Tham, Cherry Tian, Cherry Thiam, Cherry Tan…etc..

The smart one just wrote ‘Cherry’…Mm…

I do enjoy marking assignments. It is excited yet worrying. Excited is because I look forward to be fascinated and impressed by their work. Worried is because some talented students with full potentials could not finish their work due to some circumstances (eg, thumb drive crashed etc)

But overall, 90% of the students did a fantastic job that surprised and fascinated me. They were able to model characters with textures and shading that they designed from first week. These students took up 3D for the first time and yet, they have accomplished it so well even though they are not design-trained. Most of them did fantastic and complex human characters with awesome weapons. I knew from the beginning that it wasn’t easy for them and I believed that they have gone through it with tears and sweat. But to see the characters came to life in 3D was such a great achievement for the students. And so, I am truly grateful for that.

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Hey, that’s me in action! (Hah! How I wish)

That’s me again! =)

Pictures: from EA games

I love playing Battlefield 2 and did I tell you that I am quite good at shooting game? It is so much better than counter strike. When I first started playing, there were tonnes of shortcut key to remember. I remember struggling through the keyboard for prone action, jumping, changing weapons and etc. Now I have become better. From ‘easy’ to ‘veteran’ stage. Hah! Oh…oh…I love to SNIPE! Hey, I am a natural sniper. =) Actually, besides that, I am also very good at ‘team killing’. It is something that my ‘teammates’ called me. (Team killed means I kill my own members instead of the enemy). Whenever they see me, they will warn each other to stay away from me! As you can see, I can be a very powerful assassin – means I just shoot anyone I see. Hah..Well, you can’t blame me for that because the characters have similar uniforms and it is very hard to differentiate between the good and bad guy. Unless the enemy’s head has a huge pink ribbon. Especially when I threw a grenade, it was more likely to kill my teammates instead of the enemies so I stopped using grenade now. But I am getting better now. I was ranked 1st for a few times when playing with the rest of the ‘veterans’. Don’t play play….

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Chijmes has always been my favourite place for dinning. My vision is to dine in every restaurant at Chijmes and of course, take as many pictures as possible. (I just loooooove taking pictures at cuisine)

So on Monday night, my mom and I went to Chijmes for dinner. She wanted to have jap (which I was very happy because I was "craving" for jap too). So we went to SUN restaurant.

I love the interior design and I just can’t help myself taking pictures here and there. They must have thought I was some spy who wanted to "steal" their interior ideas.

Isn’t it beautiful?? I simply love great gothic architecture like this…

The church hall

Dinner at the SUN restaurant

Reflection of candles : It looked as if there were 2 rows of candles!

Love this calligraphy, but have no idea what it means. May be it is just a painting.

I love open kitchen concept! Can always check out the cute chefs

Mom ordered a set which had soup, chicken, rice (with hourglass) and dessert. When they served the rice, we had to wait for a minute before opening the cover, hence, the hourglass for timekeeping.

It came with fish bones, too. Hahahah.it was so crispy after deep fried. But the idea of chewing the bones was very weird. I was so worried that the bone may "poke" through my tongue, throat and gum. *shudder* Hey, they were HUGE!

Oysters with cheese and bacon

I ordered the prawn and snow crab rice. It was fantastic although the rice was a little bit too "cold" for me.

Last but not least, the dessert. My ALL time favourite: tofu cheese cake and green tea ice-cream. The ice-cream is the best I had so far! So creamy and yet, the tea flavour is soooooo strong. The texture is very good, too!

Next destination: Carnivore (Brazilian restaurant)

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