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We’d booked out tickets to Melbourne through MAS’s Internet booking last week (lucky us…they were having a huge discount for Internet bookings!!), and we thought today would be a good day to go collect the tickets from KL Sentral.

Wrong, wrong, wrong!

We were stuck at the MAS office @ Sentral for almost an hour. Worst of all, we had to make a detour because the usual road leading to KL Sentral was closed to construction, and we ended up taking a long ride through Central Market and Puduraya which cost us another 30 minutes. Furthermore, we had already caught a glimpse of the massive jam leading to Midvalley when we were going to Sentral, and we had another 15 minutes left to get our tickets, survive the jam, find a place to park and rush into MPH to attend Yvonne Lee’s talk about her new book, The Sky is Crazy: Tales From A Trolley Dolly at 3pm. There was no freaking way we were going to make it.

Then…bright idea from yours truly: Lets try taking the KTM commuter! It’ll be a fun adventure! (I have to shamelessly admit that I’ve never been on KTM before. Today was definitely the first, and possibly, last time!) We’ll be able to beat the jam AND get there on time!

Yeah, right.

We ended up waiting an additional hot and sweaty 10 minutes for the train to come, another additional 10 minutes for the train to slowly chug its way to Midvalley, and another 5 minutes to squeeze our way through the human traffic in Midvalley. Suffice to say, we were late and we just managed to catch…oh…the last 5 words of her talk?!? *groan*.

Nevertheless, I still managed to get her to autograph a copy of my book…heheh…and had a nice catch-up talk with her hubby, Julius (who used to teach me piano…best music teacher in town!!). Incidentally, both husband and wife have opened a music center in Paramount Garden, so I’m planning to drop by next week for a peek (and possibly beg Julius to teach me piano again. Or drums. Drums sound good!). Julius’s parents were also there, and they still look extremely young…I haven’t seen them since our wedding back in 2002 and they don’t seem to have aged abit!

After the talk ended, I lingered around in MPH looking at books for Photoshop CS and Mac OS X Tiger. I was halfway carrying two huge doorstoppers of a book to the counter when I remember…sh*t. We didn’t drive here. So back the shelves they went. I ended up buying the latest book by Freya North, entitled Love Rules (note to self: update library list!), while hubby found a landscape photography book published by Lonely Planet.

We left MPH and once again, braved the crowd of shoppers to search for a small camera bag for my Canon camera (the one that came with the camera is too big for me to carry around in Melbourne). As usual, whenever you come out shopping with an item in mind, you can never ever find it. It’s like Murphy’s law or something. After going to 3 shops, we gave up and made our way back to the train station.

The weather was really really humid…it’s one of those days that makes you feel sticky all over even though you’re just standing in one spot and doing nothing more than breathing. We waited about 10 minutes for the train to come, and when it arrived, we got shoved in to the last carriage and sandwiched amidst smelly breaths, sticky arms, and…well, lets not go into details. Was I ever so glad to get out at the stop at Sentral. Never again. I miss my personal space. Close proximity to strangers freaks me out.

Oh…and a quick disclaimer (cause I know how some people will probably have something nasty to say about my complaints, etc. etc.): this is MY experience. Not yours. So if it’s really not that bad, then good for you. And I know how lucky I am to have a car, so you don’t have to tell me. ‘Nuff said.

After a quick stop at McDs for french fries and ice cream, and RM9.60 in parking fees, we were heading back to home sweet home. Hubby’s now out taking a walk and pretending to be healthy, and I’m, well, typing this post-lah!

Sent a quick SMS to M…she (and P) has arrived at Singapore, and they apparently enjoying a really good tea at Canele Patisserie-Chocolaterie. Where she finds these type of yummy places…I really don’t know, but looks like she’s one great person to go travelling with!! =))

Since it’s one more day to September, I decided to take stock of what I’ve done in the past month (yes, it’s been more than a month since I started my sabbatical!). The boredom that most people anticipated that I would feel having nothing to do everyday did not materialize as I have spent most of my mornings and afternoons glued in front of my iBook. In the beginning, it was to set up my new MT powered website. Then, I had to transfer my old posts over to the new webbie (I still have Jan and Feb’s posts left to go…*sigh*). So it’s been one thing after another to occupy my brain and my time. Occasionally, I have lunch and nice long talks with my mum, and I’ve met up with my Citi colleagues for lunch a couple of times. I’ve been out with WS twice, once for breakfast and to rebandage his stitches at Pantai, and the other time for lunch after taking him to the clinic for his sore throat. I’ve cooked dinner for hubby every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. I’ve gotten two adorable bunnies and have time to spend with them everyday. I’ve started Japanese lessons. I’ve learnt a smidgen of Movable Type’s tags. I’ve taken a photography course and I’m learning to shoot photos using my D-SLR. In short, I’ve been doing much more and feeling much happier in the past month than in the past 3 years. I feel more relaxed, less uptight.

What happens next? Well, webbie-wise, I’ve just started setting up my photo gallery, so the layout and stuff is going to take quite some time. After that, I have to transfer all my photos over from the old webbie. I’m going to digress a little bit here and get abit geeky: I would’ve liked to use this amazing software called Photon (it integrates with iPhoto, so, sorry, PC users!), unfortunately, there were some problems when I installed it and I kept on getting a ’server error’ message whenever I tried to upload the photos, so I gave up in the end. Without any similar software, looks like I’ll have to create the entries one by one…*whimper*. As for the layout of my photo gallery, I initially wanted to use Doug Bowman’s superb layout which he has generously made available here. Unfortunately (again), I had some problems setting it up, so I had to trash that idea as well. The design that I’ve finally settled upon is a much simpler layout, and I’ve tried to make the look and feel similar to this website by using the same style-sheet, but different colors to keep some sort of continuity within the ‘khianlengnsooyin’ urmm…range. Some of the plugins that I’ve downloaded to inititally use with Doug’s layout have come in useful, ex. MTGrid, which “enables you to easily constuct tabular pages out of entry or category listings“. A really useful plugin to have around when creating a photo gallery!

Back to future plans.

Well, I’ll be going to Melbourne with hubby on the 12th for a week. I’ve also planned to start my yoga this month, as well as Feng Shui and Bazi revision. Dance classes have been planned, but I’ve yet to sign up for any. *blush* We’ll also be joining WS, P, M, Boon and WL for a PIKOM volunteer program on the 10th. M is taking us to Bangsar Tea House on the 9th. My mum’s birthday is on the 2nd. I have a farewell lunch to attend tomorrow…for 4 colleagues that are leaving Citi, TI and A included (since I ‘left‘, there has been 6 resignations. Record breaking, this one!). So I can safely say that the first half of September is more or less chock-full with activities.

I have a sneaky suspicion that 3 months off won’t be enough…