my other concern this few weeks:



i am getting rather hiao..dunno if it's due to the coming wedding or age..but here's my wish list for the next few months, apart from world peace and sufficient aid for those in need, and apart from a free stay at any one of the Aman resorts..how about

a no-need to wear foundation skin/complexion.

* i have been addicted to any kind of forum on skin care since a few weeks. went for a facial last week. and am interested in my fren who had gone for several sessions of chemical peel, with pretty remarkable results..tho sorry to say, that's not an option for me..hahaha..yes..i am getting slightly obsessed for that 'minimum coverage' skin again.

i am having those moments again as we watched them all together tonight.

...that you dont know what you will miss till it's gone ..i knew what i had, and i loved it ..but i let it slip away..so i cant help feeling slightly melancholic about it. i know it's silly and as cliche as it sounds..you just have to let the things you love go sometimes.. it's been my first and the best and will miss them lots.

i m getting a lot of 'projects' now and can forsee will be getting v busy. but i am happier. my conclusion is..i am a workaholic and too much time will make me think too much. it can get tedious and maybe warped..

so it seems now, we are strangely happy that we have work to occupy our time and mind..i am also not so strangely or surprisingly happy that when i am not thinking about work..i am thinking about our vacation together :)

thou shall not blog at work....

hmmmm..that is actually difficult..but i have to wait for him, and am quite done or dont want to do anymore things now..so,

last weekend, i spent the sunday at my aunt and uncle's place for the kenduri for their haj trip. it's the haj season right now, and those who can afford the trip,financially and physically, are ver lucky indeed.

i had read a section from one of my favourite books on the gathering at arafah that had moved me some years ago. unfortunately i dont have the book at hand, and may share it some time later. but for now, here are a few well written entries of a pilgrim's journey, written by a grandpa no less. so what did i tell ya, you never knew your grandpa can blog.

a lot of entries and long and lenthy ones. but worth the read.

Di Bawah Rang Ikang Kering
Random Ramblings of A Retired Retainer

part 1: http://bustamann.blogspot.com/2004/12/pilgrims-progress.html
part 2: http://bustamann.blogspot.com/2004/12/pilgrims-progress-wait.html
part 3: http://bustamann.blogspot.com/2004/12/pilgrims-progress-jeddah.html
part 4: http://bustamann.blogspot.com/2004/12/pilgrims-progress-makkah.html
part 5: http://bustamann.blogspot.com/2004/12/pilgrims-progress-arafah.html
part 6: http://bustamann.blogspot.com/2004/12/pilgrims-progress-mina.html
part 7: http://bustamann.blogspot.com/2004/12/pilgrims-progress-end.html

"......it is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. and as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. as we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others........"~Our Deepest Fear,Marianne Williamson

i shared the above quote with a friend, Su, some two years ago (2003), when we first read that quote together from a woman's mag, i think her eyes teared, and she told me her dream. her dream has yet to be realised, but i think in the last one year, she had indeed grown. i just want to have it up here as i do some reflection of my own...and i think it makes a good start to a new year for me to remember it again.


i have also been meeting up with some old friends and getting some invitations. few nights tis week, today and the next week. it's meetups that happen i guess when we realise we need to take stock of ourselves and our relationships, or maybe its the time, a new year or an old one ending that we see people wanting to reconnect. a lot have changed though some had not. and i have met and spoke and opened up to friends whom i wouldnt have wanted to share some of my stories..

and i told a friend whom i have known for years, why it is easier for us to share more now, coz i guess we realise we are normal. all of us have the same fears and insecurities. if you can see through people with all their fears and insecurities, someone told me, you can probably be somewhat more forgiving. and nothing about me is exceptional. if i am a sad case in some of my stories, so are others, maybe they just dont want to tell me theirs;

yet at the same time, i think everyone is capable of leading extraordinary lives. my friends who have the chance of travelling far and wide, to places that i can only dream of, at times when few can go..i would want to envy them for leading such lives. then i think for the rest of us, going through day by day is itself a miracle, and if we can have it, nothing less than extraordinary, as cheesy as it sounds, like its coming from a self-help book. but our days will be so if we know ourselves what make them so.


i know mine have been, becoz of you. the journeys that we shared, the ones we are going to discover and the new dreams that we set together. life has been, and will be..




be happy. 2005.