Life is a process of living through predestined encounters, some bad, some not so good and some that would leave you breathless. Ive said to myself that maybe one day, when I do have that encounter again, I would make the effort to build on it. What happens when you feel that you are in it by yourself? Would it invalidate your encounter? Or would you let that experience build on you? Uncertainties are most unnerving and many give up because they dont want to be let down. What if it was disappointment in the first place that warranted a defensive action which seemed to be a rejection but its not? What if theres really something at the end of the rainbow if you care to wait after the rain? What if the rainbow is that something that you may be beaming from within you, that can be sighted long after the rain is gone? How would that measure up to what others see in you?

The only way to find out is to look outside every time it rains, and wait for the sunshine…it may beam you up higher than wherever you have been before…

For awhile, work was all I could think about. The inspiration for my work came in that ability to channel something in me into something worthwhile but of late, I seem to have lost it. It must be a creator’s greatest nightmare to experience a blank, an uninspired phase that decelerates everything else in your life. When I encountered a sad occasion at the end of September, a week of crying did me a lot of good. It was almost like a severance. Then I went through my archives of the tens of thousands of photographs I took and picked out a few to elevate my mood and symptomatically treat my signs of withdrawal.

And then things became alright……

Send me some inspiration please…..

The two days that I got to see my eldest sister back in 2005 didn’t count as she was on an urgent mission to see dad in his last days on earth. I had a dive centre to run on an island who’s Indonesian workers were besieged by a wicked management. It had been 11 years in total, that I haven’t seen my nieces nor have I met the additional one to the family. The temperature was freezing by my standards, giving me the chore of wearing leggings underneath my pyjamas, with flannel top plus a hoodie over it. And we haven’t even gone outdoors yet.

My darling nieces have grown and for a change, I got pampered with food as they baked a pumpkin pie and made brownies for me!!! I got tucked into bed at night by Zazi, who’s 13 years old and enjoyed girlie talks with the eldest one of 16 years. They taught me how to rake leaves which I thoroughly enjoyed in their backyard while discovering bunny holes in the ground where they hibernate for winter. My sister would take me to the huge hypermarts during the day while the kids are in school and I spent 7 blissful days with them in Charlotte, North Carolina doing stuff that girls do!! I got to taste my first caramel apple and found a conditioner for my hair that doesn’t fluff it up like a lion’s mane.

My brother in law took us to Billy Graham Library to see the legacy he is leaving behind, the crusades that he rallied in and the magnificent work of God in his lifetime. His wife was buried in the grounds of the property too. The library was scheduled to be closed for renovations during winter and I’m glad I got to visit it.

Nonetheless, 7 days is too short to make up for the 11 years of separation and parting is never easy. I watched the youngest one score in the volleyball championship and made it all the way to be the champions of the season! Ah! The sports’ trait is running in the family after all! The eldest is trying for the swim team while scoring as the top student in her grade. The second one is just as talented to be the top in her grade too, making me miss all their witty and intelligent conversations. I miss them already. The 35hour journey home made me jetlagged for a week. What an opportunity it would be if I would get a chance to spend more time with them.

As soon as the meeting was over, the planning for my next excursion began! The following day, Wolfgang and I, drove to Disney World (yay!). Stepping into a world that’s foreign to mine, the music seems to be emanating from all directions, projecting from the plants, the pillars, the authentic postbox and possibly even the dustbin! Disney has a way with the world he created and he made sure the surround sound really encompassed you! The parade in Orlando, Florida’s fantasy land, had begun as Wolfgang and I walked in, almost running into the crowd to catch the floats that carried my all-time favourite Disney characters!!!

It’s the child in all of us (especially me) to experience Disney once in our lives and this is it! I joined in the parade to dance with Goofy, Mr. Incredible, Donald Duck & the whole host of people celebrating together!

My quest for their autographs had begun soon as the parade was over as we set out to explore the park. There’s nothing like a sunny day with blue skies for photography! The castle’s main corridor was adorned with mosaic pictures & medieval arched ceilings. Walking through it was so surreal!

Staying on till the end of the day where the pyrotechnics was displayed, I sat in the middle of the castle’s courtyard to capture the fireworks……

For the rest of the pictures, you may search www.pummkin.net/gallery

The revolutionary social networking tool has taken the world by storm when the viral hit us some time in 2007 though it was created in 2004. Without much hesitation, I signed up for a profile and proceeded to add my list of friends to my network. Those who signed up prior to their facelift would know how the incessant pokes became obsessively funny as you throw sheep, cows and progressively earn the right to throw an elephant at your friends or fling a thong at them if you are naughty. Keeping in touch became a constant adjective and not knowing what your friends are doing has become a thing of the past as Facebook updates your friends’ (and yours’) status to reflect their current preoccupation with their cameras/bikes/computers/travel and their lucid and wanton sex lives.

One actually wonders what kind of information is deemed suitable to be shared or rather made public knowledge of if certain privacy controls had not been put in place. Knowing security can be breached and accounts tapped, I scrutinised every fine line in the terms and conditions of use, went through every settings to put controls in place, set up boundaries that prevented bulls from charging through and an electrocution sentence of ‘blocking’ anyone for breach of moral ethics in my actual circle of friends. I never add anyone I have not met unless it was an introduction from close friends. We would have to have some kind of interaction on forums that have a verified list of members who socialise regularly. Even with that, I get the occasional stalker who would add friends on my list who may be of use to whatever purposes they may harbour or get an obsessed ex-girlfriend of someone whom she thinks I shouldn’t be seeing. Now what would my world be without drama?

As more people jump on the bandwagon of FB-dom, few realise the potential of this remarkable social media networking tool. It’s not just an interface on your browser that tells you who does what, but it’s a media that connects you with people you have lost touch with, make connections with the people that you often do, allow a simultaneous update on the various media platforms that you use such as Blogger, WordPress, Flickr, Picasa, MySpace, Gmail, Twitter, Buzz and so on, using integrated browser tools such as those available on Flock. Some use it to promote their services, which people may never know its existence if not for the suggestions that their friends made. From the pictures uploaded by friends or friends of friends, you may see new discoveries right before your eyes in the comfort of your own home! A friend of mine, an award winning underwater photographer, Tony Wu, is in Tonga to document whales and he’s tagged 15 calf since the day he arrived and what’s great to know is that we have resources to National Geographic lifestyles delivered live to you over Facebook! It’s no longer tedious to sieve through blogs to see what your friends are up to when you get to read an update on your homepage and read further if that tickles your fancy.

Using FB to bridge various groups of friends, keeps everything in one place for better management of communication. Now with some of these actions pertaining to the stuff you can do to your friends ‘virtually,’ it’s easy to misconstrue their action if you do not take it with a pinch of salt. You should not lose hair, lose sleep and lose relationships over something virtual and what makes your connection with one another real is to have real social outings and physical/emotional bonding sessions with your friends.

Note to the muscular sex:-

Guys, if your girl flips on you over what you did on FB, it’s because you weren’t sensitive enough to her! I can’t teach you what to say or what to do to wrangle yourself out of trouble and appease her but the day you stop working on your relationship is the day you deserve to lose her. A girl derives her self-worth from how much her man loves her (generally as a woman’s biological make-up was built that way) and if you send someone flowers, you better send her a double bouquet. If you’re not learning and adapting from your friends’ successful relationships/marriages, you ought to be whipped. I know you like that, don’t you?

Note to the fairer sex:-

Remember girls, men are wired differently and if they go wild online, it is in their world of make-believe that drives them to do so. If you are still the person he comes home to, you ought to do what it takes to keep him. Whatever the case may be, whoever sends him that virtual flower in a pot, an egg that hatches into a cute animal or a love ice cream, AND he responds to it, take it at face value. He’s trying to be nice to earn brownie points for whatever but he knows YOU are his biggest brownie point so live it!

So the person you had been secretly admiring has given a virtual flower to a drop dead gorgeous chick on his friends’ list who happen to be prettier/sexier/more happening than you, but in reality, what is the level of friendship you have with him? A hello/goodbye one? A see-him-but-can’t-talk kind? Or a deep, meaningful conversations type that carries you through thick and thin? You have your share of guy friends you talk to or connect with and so should he. Life shouldn’t be difficult. We cannot change a person but we can change our perception of things to make us become a better person. If he still doesn’t notice you, it’s time you go out there and make some real connections with people who would value you more than what he can. Then you can add him, tag pictures you take together and let others see what they missed out on. You go, girl!

Facebook is only a tool, it should never be allowed to ruin your relationships. In the course of life, you will find a few who would walk out of your list for whatever reason only known to them but if they are insecure, it should not make you any lesser of a friend to the 99 others who are still on it.

I am one who is true to my friends and would defend someone to death if I know they are being wronged but as much as I would like to keep in touch with everybody, it becomes almost impossible to split my time for each and every friend of mine I deem important in my life. I want to tell all of you that you are very much a part of my life, have helped fashion and shape my situations as much as God had put you there. Please forgive me if I haven’t been poking you in awhile, I have so many issues that need to be dealt with that sometimes I feel like an octopus running out of tentacles. You know that I would love to rock your world as much as you have rocked mine and till our oceans collide, I would have to contend with sending you love ice creams and throwing the occasional sheep at you just so that I can laugh at our times gone by…….

You may have noticed the site being down much of yesterday while I was coding the backend to work with my new installation of Joomla on the main site but I missed a configuration file and crashed my blog instead. Thank you, Francis for coming to the rescue and reorganising the SQL database for me and slowly but surely, I got each component up and running again. I thought the links to all my pictures were gone for good. Thank God for friends!!! I thought I was surely going to sink into depression!

I’m trying to syndicate content into my main site and hopefully get it up by next week. Sorry for all the inconveniences but the wait will be worth it…….I hope…….

Just when you think every leap in your life is in tune and well-paced, another stride springs up and do the rumba on your otherwise well-sprung life’s episode. I covered an event in Redang a week before Malaysia‘s Independence Day and disembarked on a private beach which looked like a piece of paradise on earth.

Travelled in a chartered coach to and fro the east coast town of Merang, we were part of the entourage of Wings, Malaysia‘s favourite rock group. From the time we left the jetty, we were transiting at every popular eating joint, community market buying batek and knick knacks to eating otak-otak while fighting with their kids for the next serving. There were approximately 30 of us whenever we stopped at any outlet, drawing attention wherever we went. Wings were obliging for photographs every time people recognised them. Some of the participants of the event bought several hundred Ringgit worth of keropok (crackers) for their friends and family while I was looking for some local delicacy to savour. The journey back to KL took 13 hours, giving me a spinning cerebrum and a butter-flown stomach.

Returning to a pile of work, I discovered a crack in my underwater housing. No leaks, thank God. This is just great. My camera is obsolete and to find a replacement is almost like impossible unless I buy a 2nd hand unit. I thought I‘d figure that one out after I took care of other pressing matters.

A week passed and I was into my Independence Day weekend. The all-demanding male in my life wants attention and he wants it now. If I were to as much as chat on the phone when I come home, I‘ve had it. I would end up being bruised by his dominant swipe of furpads and have my arm half chewed to oblivion. I don‘t think he realises how big and thug-like he is when he charges at me hoping to topple me over in which the look of glee would surface and shine on his snout.

Taking him out for his run at Stony Park is one big adventure. We were minding our own business when all of a sudden, a cock crowed. The next thing that happened was faster than lightning. Rufus struck a chicken tied to a tree trunk!! OMG! I was shouting at Rufus to drop the chicken! The bird poacher emerged from the stones he was hiding behind and was shouting at me and Rufus. Then I shouted back at him demanding to know why he tied the chicken up seeing that my dog was roaming in the park. And I had to catch my free ranging canine to drop the barely alive poultry as I had to drag him up a slope to head home with a mouthful of feathers. Why oh why me??? I don‘t know if the chicken was more traumatised or I was, having to deal with two animals and a poacher on a Sunday morning.

My beau visited me over the same weekend and his ex-girlfriend tracked him down to the club where we were, obviously displeased at the liaison before storming off. We went on a country run with his fast car, a convoy of continental car owners, to arrive in Seremban for some out of this world beef noodles. Everywhere we went, we seem to be feeding her baseless suspicion and news would travel across the seas to boomerang back to me. I feel so sorry for her disconcerted position as an ex. I hope she finds what she‘s looking for and keeps her relationship sacred and exclusive.

Surely there‘s peace amidst the chicken and chick chaos as I have found solace in spending my Sunday morning in the presence of the Most High in the sanctuary. Days later, I went on a live talk show on cable TV, Astro Awani, to talk on Women in Travel, an invitation extended to me a week before. I will find a way to post the video here eventually but for now, my life is such a drama in itself that I don‘t need to watch TV to enjoy a plot filled with conniving people, a rogue and a couple of unsung heroes.

The weekend came & gone. I went in for the slaughter. I came out unscathed. The NAUI Instructor Trainer course exam was clinched & the score was a mediocre 86%. Nothing to shout about as it’s not an A but I passed. I’m on my way to becoming the ‘PADI Course Director’ equivalent once I conduct a workshop & certify a couple of students using the NAUI system. How’s that for the month of August??? I celebrated it with a friend whom I brought along to cover the assignment at Putrajaya International Convention Centre. I shot Team China’s pyrotechnics & it was to demarcate my milestone in diving. The rest of the pictures are in my gallery. Hope the celebration is with you too…..