If there is something that is good and bad at the same time, that would be the fact that I don't have a hometown to go to. Good because I do have to endure long traffic jams driving in our usually-overcrowded-during-festival highways. Bad because I never experienced balik kampung fever!

Usually my festive/semester breaks are exciting at first and it gets bored couple of days down the road. By the time it ends, I can't wait to get back to work/study. It always been like that, even since I was in my kindergarden. Maybe because I don't get to plan anything for the holiday (with all my friends going back to their respective hometowns.. how to plan ler?), and even if I do, it would be short one or two days trip to the beach.

I'm not sure what I am going to do for this Raya (Eid) break, which is going to be 5 long days. But I have decided to take a break from the usual stuff I always do, which includes blogging. Tulipspeaks will be on festive break as well, just like all Malaysians.

Travel safely. See you all after the holidays, and be good!

I know I have been MIA from everyone's blog. My apologies. Will catch up with everyone over the weekend! Hugs!!

My favorite scene from one of my favorite movie. Somehow I feel I can relate to Jo in Kushi :-P

Enjoy the clip and have a great weekend!

I am a regular (but silent) reader of some Malaysian celebrity blogs and one of such celebrity blogger is doing what I always wanted to do at least once before I die.

She is moving to another country.

No, not migrating.. not going to study there.. not going to officially work either.. not on a vacation.

But she is simply moving to another country for 6 months!

That's exactly I wanna do before I die! Save enough, move to another country, live in a completely new surrounding for couple of months, learn new culture, blog from there and come back home.

Where would I go?

Maybe Mauritius?

How about Sri Lanka?


South Africa? Monash has an off-campus there :-P



Hmm.. what if I move to Sdyney?



Alrite.. I think I have made up my mind..



What is the single thing you want to do before you die?

*photos are copyrights of the respective owners

Over the weekend, I was cleaning up some of my things and came across old albums of mine. I sat quietly with the company of those albums for a while and I went through pages of memories that brought me back to my childhood. Such a brilliant phase of my life.. all laughter and happiness. I think the only times I ever cried were when I fell down (which happened quiet frequently) and injured myself. The photos are rather ancient but it is a great joy to flip through the albums and to feel the texture of the printed photographs. Somehow it is nostalgic.

Sharing some of the happy pages of my life...

After that, I have grown up anyway :-P.

I was tutoring SPM (it's M'sian O-Level equivalent) students the other day when I find myself explaining why the sky looks blue during the mid-day and orange-red during the evening. Science tends to explain or at least attempts to explain everything around us, somehow..

Though medical science trying to make sense of human emotion, the path is not explored enough.. I find myself speechless at times, trying to put my feelings into words subsequently failing to address an issue effectively. Maybe the scientists are at the dead end like me. Can science do better than this? I wonder..

In contrary with what I am suppose to do as a nutritionist, I found myself attracted to foods for a different reason. Going through my archives in Flickr, I realised that I have this urgency to take snaps of my foods! Check them out yourself..

More in my Flickr.

Its a trend which got me really worried.. hmm..

I had a disasterous Friday night and took some pills to sleep. Woke up today to this freaking news - my ADUN (and MP..and state exco) Theresa Kok has been arrested under the draconian law ISA (Internal Security Act)!

....it allows for the arrest of any person without the need for trial in certain defined circumstances. Malaysia is one of the few countries in the world whose Constitution allows for preventive detention during peacetime without safeguards that elsewhere are understood to be basic requirements for protecting fundamental human rights.

....The three grounds given in Section 8(1) upon which the order may be based is where a person has acted in any manner prejudicial to the:

a) security of Malaysia or part thereof; or
b) maintenance of essential services; or
c) economic life.

Read more in wiki about ISA.


ISA for a Member of Parliament? ISA for a woman of her nature? Why? What this fuss is all about? Apparently it is just about a mosque-azan issue! What a crap! The ex-chief minister of Selangor lodged a report against her for issuing order on a mosque asking them not to use the loud speaker during azan. She has since refuted that claim and in fact a number of police reports have been lodged again the former. So what is the need for ISA on her?


The opposition now holds my state of birth and she is an integral part of the state goverment. I know the state government will now keep quiet seeing one of its member being held for 2 years without a trial. They will somehow work to get her out. But what is the need for ISA now? Is this another Operasi Lalang?

Operation Lalang (Weeding Operation; also referred to as Ops Lalang) was carried out on October 27, 1987 by the Malaysian police to crack down on opposition leaders and social activists. The operation saw the infamous arrest of 106 persons under the Internal Security Act (ISA) and the revoking of the publishing licenses of two dailies, The Star and the Sin Chew Jit Poh and two weeklies, The Sunday Star and Watan.

Read more about Ops Lalang.

Those in the ruling party (Federal Government) complains and make fun of inability of opposition MP, ADUN and state government to carry out their election promises effectively. But in my eyes, they are not even given a chance! Shame on the big brother! How to do something for the rakyat when the elected representative are deprived of means to do it? Whether the rulling party is doing it on purpose or not, I don't knwo but they are pushing the rakyat further away from them. This is not 60s or 80s where rakyat get scared of these kinda dirty tactics. This is 21st century and hell, no one is scared of anyone now!

Besides my ADUN, prominent blogger Raja Petra has been arrested for insulting his own religion. I am a regular to his blog and I don't think I have seen him publishing any posts insulting his religion. So, there you go.. another abuse of ISA.

If that is not enough, a journalist has been arrested under the same Act too. Looks like she was just doing her job of publishing a racial remark uttered by a racist and landed herself in hot soup! The racist has since been suspended from the ruling party for 3 years but the journalist who reported the incidence got ISA instead! Darn, we can't even do our job eh? So, much for democracy!


My dear Prime Minister,
Who is next in your list?

I can't. Well, actually I can but only if I am provided with an excellent step-by-step recipe! Okay, I know I sound a little handicapped in the kitchen but you can not blame me (turning defensive)! I have various excuses good reasons why I am little incapable of churning out the best dishes - from "being too busy to learn" and "too many women in my home" to "whatever".. what's in a cooking anyway? :-)

But as I mentioned before, I can cook if there is a good recipe which explains everything in detail. I found one such recipe in www.GreatAmericanSeafoodCookOff.com . There is actually a cook off going on there and you know what? I just love it! It usually brings the best of the best chefs around. And now don't tell me you don't know what cook off means? *sigh...

This particular recipe called Texas Gulf Shrimp by Chef Mark Holley who is obviously from Texas presented a delicious recipe. In fact the presentation itself caught my eyes!It has huge Shrimp over hominy cakes with heirloom tomato relish drizzled with prickly pear gastrique. Yummy! Do check out the site as well. The heirloom tomato relish sounds a bit difficult to be done and I have to admit some ingredients are alien to me! I mean what are hominy, epazote and prickly pear jelly?? Now that is making my life a bit more difficult in the kitchen isn't it? May be I can substitute some ingredients with Indian spices and test it out!

Anyone willing to test out the recipe? :-)

* Choice of Starbucks, San Fransisco or Coffee Bean

I have been writing in MINDSBLOG (Malaysian Indian's Blog) for sometime now - about 9 months to precise. The last 9 months with MINDSBLOG have been both exciting and challenging. Looking forward a stronger bond with the group in the future :-)

I wrote couple of articles In MINDSBLOG since Jan this year and I would like to share some of them here:

Jan 11, 2008
Ponggal - how to cook it, huh?
Thai Ponggal will be celebrated next week (15th Jan) and everyone is talking about it. But how many knows the basics of cooking ponggal? Be it in clay pot outside the house or in stainless steel pot in your own kitchen, the basics are still the same.  Here I will go step by step on the method of cooking basic sakarai ponggal. May be you could try cooking ponggal this year around!


Feb 14, 2008
Malam Kebudayaan & Kesenian Putra
Last Saturday (9.2.08), the Hindu Society of UPM (PHUPM) organized the most anticipated annual event, MKSP 2008. This is the 8th MKSP for UPM, and the 4th one I attended. Previously known as Malam Kebudayaan Sempena Ponggal (and now Malam Kebudayaan & Kesenian Putra), MKSP’s main agenda is to collect funding for PHUPM’s annual activities. Each IPTA has their own cultural night, and MKSP is ours to show not only our talent, but also our commitment towards helping the community which is obviously why MKSP is being held in the first place.


July 14, 2008
What genre are you?
One thing that baffles me in Malaysian Indian blogging scene would be the lack of interest shown at variety of blogging genres. Our brothers and sisters who have just jumped into the blogging bandwagon seems to be very comfortable associating themselves with social and political issues - "SOPO" blogs in short. It seems to me that other blog genres are either invisible to them or they simply do not ‘regard’ those blogs as blogs all together! One need only to scan through their link list / blogroll. There is a high probability that you would find a long list of SOPO blogs and no other genres.


July 21, 2008
Culture, clothes & us
While I can’t remember the exact post, I remember reading a blog post of a fellow Malaysian Indian blogger criticizing Malaysian Indian girl’s clothing. Something that pointing out that sexy and Westernized clothing (and character) of them are ‘killing’ the culture. Yea, something like that. No, I am not going to argue on someone’s post here. That is not an ethical thing to do, but I would rather argue about so-called burden of preserving the culture that many think only need to be shouldered by women.


Sept 6, 2008
 Why I don't see Indians in gyms?
Its a question that I always ask myself whenever I go for work out at a nearby gymnasium.The majority are Chinese (I see equal numbers of males and females), some Malays (more males than females) and very few Indians (maybe not more than 5 at a time). While I agree gyms’ charges are kind of high, the centres come with good equipments, various different studios and even professionals watching over you. Its a money-worth-spending-over activity.


Check out MINDSBLOG for more exciting articles.

I bought a new MyVi 1.3 SE Auto 15 days ago and was holding myself posting about it till I get over the departure of my beloved Kancil 1980. I got myself the same number plate [XXX 1980] which set me back by RM300!! In total, it was RM52K.

Some pics..

More pics in my Flickr.

Barely 3 more months to go before we see the end of 2008 and only recently I manage to get another resolution 'done'! *sigh.. While I wanna remain optimistic, I do have doubts if the others ever gonna work!
 Anyway, here is the updated list of my 2008 resolutions:
1. Robbers to be caught
2. A new car
3. New hairstyle
4. Gadgets
5. Lose weight
6. Overseas vacation
7. A new boyfriend
8. PhD
9. A new blog on shopping
10. A brand new self

How about you guys?

I was anticipating this movie ever since I know Vishal is acting in it. So much for my Vishal-craze! The story was a little different but I see loads of dialogs emphasizing heroism - something I personally loathe. Spent the entire time drooling over Vishal and I noticed this song missing from the movie. Guess they censored it but I found it in youtube :-).

Yet, I still think Sandai Kozhi and Thimiru are Vishal's best movies so far.

Again, the nation burst into laughter reading the news of a welder who tried to elongate his penis but ended up in the hospital. I am still puzzled how a nut could help to elongate his bro! *sigh

Today an urologist commented that having a longer penis does not mean you will have better sex. That is a statement that will break some people's heart and may make some other people happy. A quick check using the term "longer penis" in the PubMed* revealed 435 hits (but they don't teach you how to elongate your penis) and I am sure there will be thousands of pages if I google it. A well-researched topic I suppose!

 Dr Lee noted that most non-surgical methods used for penile elongation such as vacuum pumps, squeezing exercises and lotions merely gave the illusion of length, but did not actually lead to greater length when erect.

Longer ones or the shorter ones.. Hmm.. Personally I don't know which one is better but I think the bigger/longer it is, the scarier I will feel :-P

I was talking about it with a friend and he immediately became defensive. His argument is that the size of a man's penis is as important to him as how important breasts are for a woman. Now, that is an interesting argument and I can't deny the fact that women are resorting into all sorts of techniques to make sure their breasts stays eerrr.. (firm?)...I even know of a story where this woman doctor refused to have mastectomy (removing one or both breast(s)) after being diagnosed with breast cancer for the fear of losing her husband. I mean.. she is a medical professional and still think keeping a husband with her is more important than keeping her alive!

What a world!


p/s: *PubMed - serves just like a search engine but the search is confined to articles published in scientific journals. 

It was a long day and I am not gonna complain. After all, a birthday only comes once a year ;-). My day started early with me attending a morning wedding. Wore a saree my grandma bought for my birthday *sorry no pics.

Came back home around noon, picked up parents and headed to my childhood friend's place. Her son, Aakash share the same birthday with me and today he is 2 years old. He has a sister, Meera, 4 months. Spent some time with them, played around with the kids and took some pics.

It was pouring like crazy and I came back home with wet saree (no dirty imagination please!). Took a short nap.Woke up, bath, prayers and had a small cake cutting ceremony.



Sent sister back to hostel and I'm back home to blog about today..

Overall, this was a 'better' birthday than last year where no one seemed to remember it :-P. This year, I had so many comments in tulipspeaks and facebook, smses and phone calls. It feels really good to be remembered.

Thank you so much everyone!




p/s: check out my flickr for the rest of the pics