All day today the sky has been providing a persistent release of moisture and casting its dreariness over all of us. Such a far cry from most of last week, when the degree of warmth seemed to be indicating that summer was impatient to show up. Mother Earth has definitely been moody lately.
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This was taken during one of the weekends of the Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington DC. It's quite a sight to behold when all the trees burst forth in blossom simultaneously.



But these blooms have a life-span of approximately 3 weeks; if you don't catch them then, you'll have to wait till next year. It's rather a mirror of human experiences isn't it? The opportunities we have that we let slip by, our youthful years that vanish in a blink, the happy occasions that we all go through-birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, graduations, reunions, etc. To me, the blossoms epitomise it all perfectly, except with people, some situations don't have the "get it the next time" opportunity. As we're standing under the trees, marveling at the surface beauty of the flowers and snapping pictures with our camera phones, it's a pity that we often miss the more significant meaning that these flowers bring.

I saw an ad a few days ago about a brand of bottled water that announced they had come up with a new eco-shaped bottle that uses about 20-30% less plastic, thus making it more environmentally friendly.

I can't tell you how big of a contradiction that is to me, because bottled water is a LUXURY (seeing that millions of people in the world still don't have regular water supply). The act of producing so much bottled water for everyday consumption is a monumental waste of energy and resources, since we have access to clean, treated water that flows substantially from our taps. PLUS, the non-biodegradable characteristic of plastic makes it toxic to the earth - unless we find a way to change that characteristic, how can anyone claim that a plastic bottle is the remotest bit environmentally friendly?

If you are interested to know how much of an impact plastic bottles have this site All About Water is interesting to check out.

If the makers of the bottled water are really TRULY dedicated to the environment, maybe they should consider not manufacturing bottled water at all and take a cut in the mega profits that they have been cashing in from other products they roll out of their factories instead of creating an ad to feed polished PR talk to the public. Don't believe it people. Please don't.

All About Water

For nostalgia's sake, I want to roll back a couple of years to see how my previous new year eves were like.

2003
New York City
It was the end of the first semester at Penn State. Some of us Malaysian students who were situated in universities in the East Coast and Mid-West had converged via email months before to muster up a plan to explore New York City. The plan was for everyone to meet in Pittsburgh, where the Carnegie Mellon kids were to play host for Christmas. We ended up being like a small army of 20 people, such that at certain points during the trip our living conditions really did look and feel like a boot camp. On the plus side, because there were so many of us, our lodging expense was drastically lower (I spent $200 for a hotel room for nearly a week!!! Unheard of in NYC!!!) and there were plenty of people to point it out if we were getting lost. I actually didn't know many of the people in the group at all, making me one of the four "outsiders" to this extraordinarily large circle of friends. The four of us bonded, decided to see the city together and, luckily for me, very comfortably shared a suite meant for four in NYC rather than joining the ten-to-a-room bed-ins that the others were doing (which is illegal in case you didn't know and VERY fire hazardous). It was with these three, Adeline, Sean and Jiang Wei that I was cooped up in what felt like a sheep pen (New York police had placed square barricades all around area, once you entered one area of barricade you'd literally have to fight your way out) in Times Square on New Year's Eve, freezing our derrières off, waiting for the ball to drop at midnight.

2004
Kuala Lumpur
Went out with a group of friends where we counted down to the New Year in a shopping mall. Compared to last year, I was in warm and toasty weather in a familiar city.

2005
State College
After spending a week in Minneapolis, I had a week or two left in State College to pack and move out of my apartment before leaving for Manchester. Since it was break and there weren't very many people around, I sat quietly in the apartment watching back-to-back episodes of......*drumroll* Law & Order! I didn't mind at all, it was actually quite nice, warmly tucked up in my room with food, drink and my favourite tv show.

2006
Rockville
Worked like a madwoman till about ten-thirty p.m, then rushed back to the house I was living in, showered, changed and hopped into a taxi to get to Hard Times Cafe in Bethesda to join the roommates and their friends for the celebration. I got there about 15 minutes to countdown and had to pay about 50-60 to get in. Everyone was silly-drunk by then and looking for people to go home with. I had a great time with my roommates and scored the number of a cute guy.

2007
Rockville
This year I was at work again but after that headed out to a co-worker's friend's house party. It was the strangest experience for me, sitting with a group of nearly all strangers and eating crab legs with melted butter. At midnight, the host lit some fireworks, so that was cool.

That said, what does the new year hold? Who knows? Only thing I'm sure of is with the currently cloudy political and economic climate hanging over this country, I've got quite a challenge ahead to put myself in a better financial situation.

Tackle one thing at a time and don't give up is all I can tell myself.

Happy New Year!

As I have been church mouse poor the past few months, I haven't had the luxury of buying quality deli meats priced by weight, thus resorted to a value combo pack of three variations of turkey ham slices.

One fine afternoon a few days ago, I thought I would super deluxe my sandwich by using all three turkey ham types in the packet. I slapped on the turkey cotto, salami (thinking, ooh, never had turkey salami before!), smoked white turkey and turkey bologna in between two slices of toasted whole grain bread, medium cheddar and freshly washed lettuce leaves. Aha! A lunch fit for a poor, struggling, liberal arts graduate!

Happily I picked up my sandwich but stopped short of chomping into my first bite when I eyed the packet label and noticed information I had missed previously.

Turns out this value combo pack had not three, but four types of turkey ham within. I looked at my sandwich. Salami? Check. Smoked white? Check. Bologna? Check. And what was the fourth? I looked closely at the packet again.

It was Turkey Ham & Water product

Even though I didn't have the turkey & water product in, it sure took the enjoyment out of eating my self-proclaimed super deluxe sandwich.