People call me with so many different names. Efarina, Efa, Rina, Ina, Frack..these are the common ones. Some other even call me according to their convenience, such as Effy, Ef, Efarin and one moron even playfully refer me as Ef**k(whaddahell?!) once. Besides the last one, I gotta say I actually least prefer the name Efa. It has never occured across my mind to even use this nickname in but somehow when I entered Standard 1, my class teacher called me with that name and ever since then until now, all of my friends called me that. I have tried to change this nickname in high school but don't know why my friends simply made up their mind to call me Efa because they say it sounded hipper. But tataula why... that nickname is kinda bleeuurrgghh. Bunyi macam my name has been truncated badly and not in any way do I think it sounds hipper. I prefer Efarina, my full name, because to me it sounds better than just Efa. I even prefer to be called Frack than just Efa. But since all my friends call me that, I can do nothinglah but just go with the flow.
The nickname that I love most is Rina or Ina, which is what my family members call me. They usually go back and forth between Rina and Ina, to which I am totally clueless why. When talking to me, they will use Ina, but when referring me to somebody else or when writing email to me, they'll use Rina. Contohnye, "Ina, pegi masak nasi" and "Suruh Rina masak nasi". Chotto hen deshou? Pelik,kan? But the reason I like this nickname is because it sounded more affectionate and womanly. When people call me with this name, I somehow feel closer to that person. Even if that person is my mom's colleague. So perhaps in the future, I can get rid of this Efa nickname.
FASHION BREAK Model Ji Hoon a.ka. Prince Shin Goon. Love tall, hot men with glasses. Spreading the Goong love. Minna, join the camp! Learn the rich culture of a royal family.
Totemo totemo tsukareta. It has been a busy, tiring weekend for me. Starting from Thursday late night, I went to the gym with some friends and did some workout and played badmintion from 11pm - 1am. It has been ages since I've done any sort of sports, so by the time I woke up the next morning, I had muscle aches. It didn't help that I had to wake up early for a Japanese quiz. Later in the noon, I had to work from 12-3pm. Then, an hour later at 4pm, I went out again with a friend to attend a Japanese Speech Contest. The ceremony was for about 3 hours. It was amazing how those 2nd, 3rd and 4th year students speak fluent Japanese. Though I don't understand most of what they're saying since I am still a first year student, the talent amazed me. I aim to be among them one day. My favorite contestant, a 3rd year student, with speech title "Nihonjin no Watashi" won the 1st place for his category so I was delighted. His encounter of being half American half Japanese and how his friends kept asking him whether he's a Japanese when he is truly an American and how him in the future will identify himself as a Japanese is interesting. Kinda remind me of my own situation where some people always mistaken me as a Chinese or a Hispanic.
After the contest, my friends and I went straight away to watch Pride and Prejudice play at the university theater. It turned out that the play lasted for 3 hours! It was enjoyable and funny but I could've enjoyed it more if I wasn't so tired and hungry at that time. With "perut kosong", we headed straight to Buffalo Wings at 11pm for late dinner. Met Hayashi and Hasegawa and a whole group of other Japanese senseis there. *Side note: Hasegawa has somewhat become hotter these days..too bad he's not my sensei anymore, hahaha. Get back home at midnite, feeling very tired.
And today, gotta work from 9am-2.30pm. Phew..long 5 hours with an empty stomach the whole day. I lost all my strength when I got home but since my friend is holding my card, I have to wait for her to get home in order to buy food. That is at 5.30pm. But then, I had to attend the midwest games meeting, which lasted for more than 2 hours, so I have to put off my hunger of not eating the whole day until 8pm. Now, I am REALLY REALLY tired to even study and do my homeworks. Still gotta work tomorrow for another 5-6 hours. Plus, tomorrow is going be a busy shift for all of us at the hotel, so more tiring day. Sheesh..man, I need a rest and time for my drama escapade!
I don't know how watching a war movie could so much relate to my current life situation and led me to depression for the past few days, but it sure did. However, thanks to my friend whom I haven't talked for a long time, though problems are none solved, it felt much better to let it off my chest. Now I can concentrate on my studies again. Dude, if you're reading this, you're like my Will from the sitcom Will & Grace, my best male listener ever. Except that you're not gay..hahaha. It feels like the good old days when I used to talk to you always, I'm really glad.
So...more good news. I finally got a part-time job at Lowell Center Inn & Conference Center. Harap-harapnye tak susah. I'm waiting for another job offer also, and if I get it, I'll be juggling with 2 part-time jobs. The money I will use to pay off my long overdue credit card debts. Hopefully after this I will no longer be miskin and can go travel more before I go back to Malaysia for good.
When I adopt a boy in the future as my kid, I want to use a Japanese name as part of his first name. Shin and Ryu. Docchi no houga ii to omou? Which name is better?
*Updated my layout so it looks more simple and mature than last time* *Once again, to those who want to leave comments, I don't have a tagboard so please use the guestbook*
Fellow readers, in your life, before you die, what do you wish you were able to do? Below are 10 things I wish I can do before I die(given that I don't die anytime soon):
1. Buy my parents a new, better house than what we have right now. 2. Own a BMW car 3. Date an East Asian guy 4. Go to Greece and Turkey 5. Marry an architect 6. Own a luxurious mansion by the sea 7. Learn to play piano 8. Belong to the upper class life 9. Work for a reknown international-status company 10. Have a great love like what I always seen on movies
Note my wish on number 10. I am not kidding when I jolt it down. That's what I've always dreamt for and I even have a picture in my mind of how it should be. I have only been in love once before and if I were to tell you my love story, it probably would have been as great as the dramas that I've watched since so many things happened during that years. Unfortunately, it doesn't have a happy ending. Hence, my wish for number 10. The rest of the wishes, if not obvious enough, are mostly money-related. Coming from an average family and always not having enough money for myself, I wish this poor life that I have will one day end. I have a lots of rich friends and I envy them. I wish some time in the future we'll be able to sit on the same chair without me pitily joining them. But I am grateful to have these rich friends because of their honest friendship, and sharing their side of life that I may or may not attain in the future. Just wait okay dear friends, one day perhaps I can easily spend money without worrying the balance on my bank account. And God, really, please let me marry a well-off architect..haha.
I have a sudden interest in watching Hyde perform, the lead of Larc En Ciel, one of the most popular JRock band, and since I love this song, so I thought I put it up here. Peformed by Nakashima Mika and music composed by Hyde. Pity to readers who don't understand Japanese because it'll be nicer if you know what they're talking about during the interview. Anywayz, I think Hyde is very attractive and interesting. He's HOT in his kind of way. Reminds me of Daniel Johns of Silverchair sometimes when I watched some of Larc's concert clips.
It snowed a lot a lot today. I think it started snowing from yesterday nonstop for almost 24 hours. All evening classes were officially cancelled by the university because of the heavy snowfall. I didn't go to any of my lectures but too bad I had a Japanese interview test, so I still had to walk all the way to Van Hise. The snow was so thick that when I was walking, my feet was actually buried in the snow and everyone had to jump over the snow when they wanted to cross the road. Crazy, ain't it? If I don't nail today's interview test, I am so gonna go mad!! Hahaha..
Okay , a bit of a good news. I had been selected to be one of the 100 participants to enter/attend Global Simulation Workshop cosponsored by various business and international organizations on campus but the main organization behind this event is O.S Earth, Inc. So what is exactly Global Simulation Workshop? Here's an excerpt from ISS.
How would you run the world? This exciting role-playing game will give you the chance to answer this question! Take part in this unique event where players will form teams representing different regions of the world, multinational corporations and global organizations that compete, negotiate, and trade for assets like wealth, technology, natural resources as they build the world they want to see. Source: UW-ISS
For more information, go to www.worldgame.org. Basically, there're going to be about 10 groups, in which will be represented as countries, corporations and global organizations who will exchange and manage resources in order to maintain the wealth of the groups. This is when skills and knowledge comes in because if you are too stingy or too generous, you may end up with nothing and makes your group go bankrupt. I'm pretty much excited to be selected to be in this workshop since so many people applied and the workshop itself will be a good experience for me for my future jobs. But reading the experiences of people who have participated before do make me a little nervous. What if I don't do well and bring my group down. Orientation will be next Monday and I hope to get good teammates. Let me tell you, running a country, even if it is a game, is not an easy task. I've done it during my 2 months stay in MMU, being appointed as a Minister of Education,it gave me headaches and emotional tantrums at certain times. Endless meetings, cooperation problems, "country's" problems, sarcastic and mean critics. But on the bright side, I got to know a lot of people, build up my leadership skills, widen my network and people noticed me. I love when people noticed me. Hahaha...blame that to my senior high school years being in the more popular girl group. Now in UW no more sparkles lerr since I couldn't find a group that I can fit in well. *The supposedly more outgoing group here is a little bit "different" than my KL buddies so tak boleh nak buat apelah kan*. I love my time there in MMU. It has been if not the best, one of the top 5 best time of my life.
So perhaps in next week Global Simulation Workshop I will be able to sharpen my leadership and problem-solving skills summore.
A video on how just one simple minor act can make girls go gaga. I can understand the hype but these girls screaming like that are beyond crazy..hahaha. From this moment on, I've decided to put a lot of Kimutaku in my entries since he has grown so much on me for the past 2 years, becoming one of my most favorite actors alongside Leonardo D'Caprio, Liam Neeson, Johnny Depp, Andy Lau and Takeshi Kaneshiro.
You know how Japanese movies are always weird and eccentric in some ways. Too much creativity, too much implied ideas and too subtle to the point that usually by the end I finish watching one, I go "Huh?", not understanding what the movie is actually about. But some Japanese commercial comedies is undoubtedly an odball worth checking out, not mentioning that the slaptick jokes can make you really laugh your head off. For instance, Kamikaze Girls and Desha Otoko are what you won't find in any Hollywood nowadays cliche comedies, entertaining and refreshing. Adding to this string is another movie that I've just watched recently: Otakus in Love or its Japanese title Koi no Mon. The movie involves a lot of cosplays, manga parodies and jokes(which some I can't understand because I am not an anime fan) and two weirdos who are in love but keep running away from each other. I don't know why do they run, is it because they're trying to imitate the dramatic scenes in romanctic comedy animes, or are they embarassed because one will somewhat barf just when something "nice" is about to happen? But Ryuhei Matsuda is so cho funny. Sukina actor ni naru kamoshiremasenne...
"Otakus" means nerds or geeks. Mon Aoki (Ryuhei Matsuda) is a manga artist, but his manga art is not drawn on paper as is the usual, but consists of rocks artfully placed in boxes, with written kanji characters on them. He is not selling and has a hard time getting food on the table. He runs into Koino Akashi (Wakana Sakai), who is heavily into cosplay (People, who like to dress up in costumes. In Koino's case, self made costumes of her video game heroes). After a night of heavy drinking Mon wakes up in Koino's bed – dressed in a homemade costume of her video game hero. As he thinks, he lost his virginity to her sometime during the night, he feels; he can live with the costume thing. However, when he finds out, that they didn't have sex – he's out the door. Koino does not want to let him go, and the chase is on.
During my 4 years as an undergraduate student at UW-Madison, I have come to realize that I have done NOTHING that can improve my resume. I am a member of 3 student bodies but I was never voted to be on the comittee. I have never participated in any club events. I also never participated in any research or summmer programmes, and I definitely have never done any internships. All the part time jobs that I have done on campus are some stupid simple jobs and do not in any way relate to my study field. With only a few months left before my graduation, I worry how my future will be. Will I be able to get a good job? How many interviews do I have to go to before I can secure a job? But what I worry most is that if I ever get a job, without any experience and my insecurities that my knowledge in statistics is still not enough; will I be good at it? Too many worries and too many questions in my head. It's the graduating crisis, I think. Plus, I won't have any friends walking with me during my commencement ceremony. "Depressed btol beb."
I called home last night and my mom told me the house is under renovation. Again. This time my family is enlarging the kitchen and the bedrooms. It's both good news ...and not-so good news for me. The good news is that there will be an extra room for my brother, and I will get my bedroom back. No more sharing with my other sisters. And I can decorate it however I want it. The not-so good news is because of that, I have to put my intention to find my own place on hold. That also means my movements will be limited and I won't be able to go out anytime I want or as late as I want that easy. Tak best...
FASHION FUN Two actors that I respected spotting the same fashion. And having the same side of hands put in the pocket too!
SAMURAIS may just see a revival in Japan - after Takuya Kimura plays one in his new movie, Bushi No Ichibun.
After all, the 34-year-old actor is known to spawn job trends, with every profession that he portrays on TV getting an immediate boost in the number of applications.
Another sign of his massive appeal is the 500 reporters who showed up at the film's pre-production media conference last week.
Growing a beard for his role, Takuya plays a low-level samurai who swears revenge after his wife is stolen by another man.
Director Yoji Yamada (Twilight Samurai, Hidden Blade) minced no words when he announced that he is gunning for the 2007 Oscars with this project, slated for release early next year.
Already, it has received an offer to compete at the Berlin Film Festival.
First of all, congratulations to Jay-Z and Linkin Park for winning Grammy's the Rap/Sung Collaboration award tonight. Collision Course is surely one interesting album, the best mashups I've ever listened to in the recent years. Oh sangat happy dapat tengok Chester and Shinoda again. As usual, Mariah's voice did not dissapoint. Fabulous high-pitched voice. I just love her singing. Alicia Keys looked damn pretty and hot in that black dress. Grammy's Rock Album nominations prove that when it comes to rock, foreigners still rule. Only one nominations from an American band whilst the rest are Brit bands and a Canadian rock band, U2(who won the award).
So, talking about Linkin Park... I was wondering what is going on with them since I haven't heard of a new album from them for a long time. A simple search on their official website and I discovered Fort Minor. And Fort Minor is even touring local and international at the moment which includes Kuala Lumpur as a destination end of this month!
Fort Minor is a "solo" project by Linkin Park's talented and only emcee, Mike Shinoda. The album is very Mike Shinoda, I might say. It is only a bit more hip-hoppish as this album is made due to his interest in the hiphop music, but there is still flavor of pop rock in it, though not as heavy as Linkin Park's(maybe coz Chester wasn't in it). Being an emcee himself, I like it that he throws his turntables talent into the album. Similar to Collision Course, most of the songs are collaboration with another groups and singers such John Legend and Style of Beyond. This album is a worth try if you're a fan of Linkin Park and Mike Shinoda. I like it, so maybe you'll like it too.
Also, try listening to Berharap Kau Kembali by JRock, an Indonesian band whose music, according to them, is influenced by japanese rock. I don't know about that because it is hard to think jrock when you're singing in a different language, but Berharap Kau Kembali is one nice song.
Remember last week I was complaining about what to write for my Japanese Valentine's Day short composition? Surprise, surprise...my essay was selected as one of the two to be put up on our class homepage. For those who wanna read it and can read Japanese, click here. FYI, the story was completely made up! I didn't know where did I get the idea of writing that piece of story, it kinda just flew out of my brain the moment I started writing. Perhaps it is because I watch too many movies these days.
These days also, there're so much hate towards the world dwelling inside me. I wonder if those people who run amok have the same feelings that I do. I hate some conceited Americans who think shallow, and I can't stand their ethnocentricity. I hate some Africans Americans because they're too loud. As a matter of fact, I think they're just like many Malaysians in Malaysia, forever arguing about their special rights tapi tau memekak jer and tak pernah buat ape-ape untuk lebih maju. I hate reporters who always use this line to describe a pop male star:"As usual, 90% of the concert viewers are female". So what if it is? It is only normal for girls to adore an attractive pop star, isn't it? It's not like we girls can get good enough guys in real life. Similar to men who go crazy at the sight of sexy girl on screen or in Playboy. Fantasy is a good thing, so reporters go learn some new lines for your news reports.
Finally, I also hate myself for not seeing a bright future ahead of me. What will become of me? That dream I have to be the richest among all my family members so I can give a better life to my parents, I don't think it will ever happen. Realizing what my own limits are, I really hated it. It is nice to be a kid isn't it because you can always dream. But reaching the age of knowing what I am capable of only doing isn't exactly sweet. Maybe I should move to Hong Kong and marry a triad king. The fastest way of getting rich. If only I am capable of doing that.
Rina
April 26, 1983
University of Wisconsin-Madison
BS Statistics, Class of 2006
Likes: Heavy rain, dramas, learning Japanese
Dislikes: Cheese, mosquitoes, drunken men
