< SCRIPT language="JavaScript"> < !-- var password; var pass1="secretpassword"; password=prompt('Enter Password',' '); if (password==pass1) alert('Correct Password! Click OK to Enter!'); else { window.location="http://njapf.blogspot.com/"; } //--> < /SCRIPT> Not Just Another Pretty Face: March 2009

Sunday, March 29, 2009

Shoes that are made for walkin'


These are my favourite shoes of the moment. Bought it from Sole Lovely at Bangsar Village for 50% off! I'm a happy girl!

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posted by N.J.A.P.F. @ 4:39 PM 0 comments

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Twenty eight today

Today, I turn 28.

I think this year is going to be an awesome year for me if merely for the fact that 28 is an auspicious number in Chinese! :D

Haha, seriously though, I think it's going to be great.

I have a new job that I'm really excited about, starting mid-April.

I know who are the people who truly matter in my life and hence, deserve my attention and efforts as opposed to those who don't deserve the time of my day.

I can say "No" when I need to.

I've learnt that you cannot let anybody tell you what you can, or cannot do.

I realize that to be truly happy, you need to be happy with yourself first.

I am thankful for my friends and family who have always been there for me, for their unwavering confidence in me, for their patience with my whining and complains and for teaching me to love myself so much more.

Happy birthday to me and Thank you!

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posted by N.J.A.P.F. @ 6:42 AM 1 comments

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

BBC's top 100 books

Janvier tagged me with this meme on Facebook but I prefer to do it here. :D

According to the BBC, the typical adult would have read 6 out of the 100 books on the following list of best-loved novels in Britain, at least. I'm not sure how accurate this list is since some of my favourite books are actually not on the list! But anyway, for the fun of it here goes...

Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put an ‘x’ after those you have read.
2) Add a ‘+’ to the ones you LOVE. (++++ means LOVE a lot..haha)
3) Tally your total.

1) Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen X
2) The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien X
3) Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4) Harry Potter series - JK Rowling X+
5)To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee X ++++
6) The Bible - (some popular excerpts here and there)
7) Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8) Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9)His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10) Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (only read the abridged version, so not counted)
11) Little Women - Louisa M Alcott X+
12) Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13) Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14) Complete Works of Shakespeare (only read Romeo and Juliet, haha, typical girl)
15) Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16) The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien X
17) Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18) Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger X+ (the origins of the "vomity" feeling!)
19) The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger X+
20) Middlemarch - George Eliot
21) Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22) The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23) Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24) War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25) The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26) Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27) Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28) Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29) Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30) The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31) Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32) David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33) Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis X
34) Emma - Jane Austen
35) Persuasion - Jane Austen
36) The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis X
37) The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini X ++++++++
38) Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39) Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden X
40) Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41) Animal Farm - George Orwell
42) The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown X
43) One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44) A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45) The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46) Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery X ++++
47) Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48) The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49) Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50) Atonement - Ian McEwan X++++
51) Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52) Dune - Frank Herbert
53) Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54) Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55) A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56) The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57) A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens X+
58) Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59) The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon X++++
60) Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61) Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62)Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63)The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64)The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65)Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66) On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67) Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68) Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding X
69) Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70) Moby Dick - Herman Melville -(abridged only)
71) Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens X
72) Dracula - Bram Stoker
73) The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (abridged only)
74) Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75) Ulysses - James Joyce
76) The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77) Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78) Germinal - Emile Zola
79) Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80) Possession - AS Byatt
81) A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (abridged only)
82) Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83) The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84) The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85) Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86) A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry X ++++++++ (Awesome book, sad though- I cried)
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White X +
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom X+
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle X+
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton X+++++++++ (I always wanted to visit the Land of Tea Parties...hahaha)
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint X+
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas (abridged only)
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (abridged only)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl X+
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

OK, my score is 26. I only read a quarter of the books. Long way to go if I want to complete the list! :D


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posted by N.J.A.P.F. @ 11:54 PM 3 comments

Sunday, March 22, 2009

Decisions, decisions

I don't know why making decisions seems to get harder and harder the older I grow. And as soon as you decide, there looms another choice to be made. Sigh.

I often wish, it were as easy as simply flipping a coin.

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posted by N.J.A.P.F. @ 8:41 PM 0 comments

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Try and try again...

Most of the time, that's all that we can do.

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posted by N.J.A.P.F. @ 10:18 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Flecks of colour in shades of grey

Said the little ducky to his hippy friend, "You add colour to my life. Muchos gracias!"

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posted by N.J.A.P.F. @ 10:05 PM 7 comments

Monday, March 16, 2009

Tired

They come, stay for a while and then they are gone as they always do.

Leaving me alone, where I was, changed.

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posted by N.J.A.P.F. @ 8:57 PM 2 comments

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Old or new

A random thought occured to me in my semi-camatose state while being thoroughly pampered with an icy-cold, creamy mask slathered on my face during my facial earlier in the evening.

Lying there in the cool dark room, it dawned on me that sometimes with all focus on shiny and bright new experiences, the old and by comparison apparently dull and mundane, are overlooked.

How do we balance between the yearning to learn and experience more, and yet, treasure the old that has always been there, but maybe not forever?

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posted by N.J.A.P.F. @ 9:01 PM 0 comments

Saturday, March 14, 2009

White hot!




This is my idea of perfection in a watch. I *heart* it so much!

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posted by N.J.A.P.F. @ 12:31 PM 0 comments

Friday, March 13, 2009

Drawing tables in the air

I helped someone today complete a task that was simple enough for me, but though for her mainly due to the technology barrier prevalent in her age group.

Seeing her eyes light up when it dawned on her which button to click to merge a cell, the sheer joy in her face and the sincere gratitude in her voice when she saw how colours could be added, really made my day.

I admire her tenacity, her initiative and her eagerness to learn. I marvel at her willingness to embrace something new and foreign, and I respect her perseverance and deligence at a task that to her was surely fairly monumental.

There should be more moments like these in the daily drudgery of life to stop me from sitting around whining and just getting on with living.

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posted by N.J.A.P.F. @ 10:46 PM 0 comments

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Two Down

I had a persistent headache throughout the day making me irritable, moody and emo.

I'm utterly glad that tomorrow is Friday already!

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posted by N.J.A.P.F. @ 11:08 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

One down

Today, I achieved the first of a series of somewhat important tasks I'd committed to complete.

The pride of accomplishment was undeniable, but tinged, with the frustration of unappreciation and an underlying fear that more, will be what is asked. Like an insatiable parasite that will continue sucking until a mere empty husk of the former being is left behind to crumble into ash and dust, and dissolve in the rain of time into nothingness.

Someone touched me when they bothered to asked, why do you still care, why do you still wait? What will happen if you fail to complete?

In the very depths of my heart, I know the answer is a BIG FAT NOTHING!

But I am who I am. I'd like to think that, taking pride, is something I cannot change.

Or am I just being stupid?

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posted by N.J.A.P.F. @ 11:15 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

My new bathroom plant

This (pic left) is a new plant in my bathroom. About two weeks ago, I bought a big plant at Ikea which cost me a mere RM 3.90, split it into two small pots, kept one and gave one to my housemate.

At first I was a little worried that the plants would not survive but they seem to be doing just fine. I think this would make a very nice and thoughtful gift for anyone. So simple too!

The little plant really makes my bathroom look much cheerier. Just the thing to vanquish the early morning blues I'm often prone to. :D


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posted by N.J.A.P.F. @ 11:01 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, March 03, 2009

At a loss for words...

So much has happened and there are so many thoughts swirling in my head. But, for once in my life I find it hard to translate my thoughts into words.

Is it life that has become so complex that it trancends mere words, or is it just me losing touch with something I once loved wholeheartedly?

Edit: 11-Mar-2009. I'm making a concious effort to write more often from now, even if it's only one or two lines...

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posted by N.J.A.P.F. @ 10:29 PM