While doing some work in the very quiet office (where is everybody??), the image of daffodils suddenly sprung to mind. Yup, it should be spring in the UK by now, my favourite time of the year. Emmmmm.... I miss this place:
Daffodils at Hillsborough Park taken from Panoramio.com
A quick search on googlemap and I found this:
Lloyds Pharmacy attached to Far Lane Medical Centre (a GP centre) was where I did my student internship in Summer 1998 and the first time I discovered Hillsborough. I loved the place so much that I moved to the area 2 years later and did locum at the pharmacy whenever I was free (and in need of extra $$$!).
Shepperson Road was the road I lived in when I moved there in 2000 while working at the Royal Hallamshire Hospital. Easily the best place I have lived so far... I just loved the house and the neighbourhood. The locals were so friendly and I felt belonged and at home almost instantly. I had a lovely garden too where we would held BBQs in the spring and summer and where my cat Petit (and her kittens) roamed free, stepping on my (tiny) bed of flowers at times...
Hillsborough Park was only 5 minutes walk from my house and I would frequently go there to feed the ducks, shoot some hoops (there were 2 basketball courts in the park) or just to enjoy the fresh breeze of spring and the beauty of daffodils.
Sheffield Wednesday homeground was also a short walking distance from my place. But errr... who would be interested in Sheffield Wednesday these days, I wonder?
I found this 360 degrees picture of the park too... cool eh? Think if I look hard enough, can probably see the roof of the old house in the picture!
Once upon a time donkey years ago, this song used to be my midnight lullaby. I was only 20 years old then, alone in the big but exciting city of London, loving the new change but struggling to adjust myself to the cold weather (well, relatively cold to me until I discovered Sheffield's winter less than a year later) and most importantly, missing the then 'love of my life' badly. It was at the beginning of winter 1996 and the whole world was at the brink of a huge economic recession (although obviously I wasn't aware of it at the time) and our sponsors decided to cut its spending and only sent very few lucky ones to the UK. I was one of the lucky ones, he wasn't.. so he had to do his 1st year degree in Malaysia instead. We thought it was a brutal decision especially that he already got an offer to go into Imperial College and especially that we were madly in love. 'How could they separate us this way?' we asked ourselves again and again.
Bear in mind that it was 1996.. there were no facebook, youtube, mms, skypes, YM etc yet. We had emails already but not many households in Malaysia had internet yet although students in the UK already had fairly easy access to it at campuses. 'Alamak' was the in-trend chatroom at the time, before the birth of mIRC. Oh, and not that many people have yet to own mobile phones too. So, the only affordable mode of communication (students were cheapskates, remember) between London and KL, between these 2 unfairly-separated lovers was by letters. We wrote and received 2-3 letters per week and each can be easily 5-10 pages, filled with either diary-like entries or song lyrics and photos, and of course romantic words. The Royal Mail and Pos Malaysia were our best friends back then and the ever-so-faithful receptionist lady at College Hall, Malet Street was my every-other-day postman, she would automatically checked my pegion-hole for me the moment she saw me through the main door, coming back from lectures. Of course, any letters from Malaysia received from her would be opened enthusiastically there and then with big grins on my face.
Those were the days.
I'll travel 'round the seven seas for you It's written in the melody I adore you I wrote my love a symphony To show you there's nothing I won't do..
This song was sent to me in one of those love letters. Only the lyrics obviously since CDs weren't that big in Malaysia yet (or rather expensive), but it was written ever-so-romantically that I would hold it in my hands, near my heart for quite a number of nights after that. When I managed to get hold of the song in one of my mixed tapes, it filled my room again and again for quite some times too. I know it sounds stupid now but I was a naive 20-year old girl, madly in love and missing him badly. Can't blame me for being cheesy eh?
Those were the days when I thought love conquers all. The days when 'till death do us part' was really my believe and not just cheap words adopted from fairytale books and movies. Oh well, lesson learnt. Painfully but wisely.
Fast-forward 14 years later. I am hardly a romantic at all now. I still believe in love and 'the one' but you won't ever catch me queezing my brain to write love letters or that sorts. Sorry but I have better things to do (work, study etc) with the remaining brain cells that I have now. Of course, the occasional 'I love you' and 'I miss you' are still there but more in quick smses instead of in time-wasting lengthy prose. Pity him I know but does it mean I love him any lesser than the previous? Definitely not. I know it, he knows it... so what's the problem right?
Insya'allah we'll be walking down the isle soon and now, seven seas mean nothing more than the seas I want to dive in this year and next..
When I saw the comment box last night, I thought it was a nice surprise. I thought my Haloscan comments were upgraded to the nicer version i.e. Echo for free. Boy I was wrong! Today, I found out that Echo is only provided for free for 2 weeks or so before I will be asked to pay $12/year for the service.
So tonight, I have decided to ditch Haloscan/ Echo before they ditch me when the free-trial ends and change to Blogger's free comments instead. I DO NOT get ditched ok? And as an act of protest, I've changed the blog's layout too!
I used Haloscan since the inception of this blog so it is actually sad to lose all those meaningful comments (from friends and strangers alike), especially from 2004-2007 period when I was a bit more active penning my thoughts in here.
Oh well... there's no such thing as free lunch I guess so.. goodbye Haloscan, thank you for the 7 beautiful spam-free years and here's to a new beginning!
The last ever comment posted on Haloscan/Echo was by Ummi. Emmmm.... I am gonna miss those cute emoticons!
It's almost 1am but my eyes and brain aren't shutting off yet, so here's an update:
I didn't have much of a weekend this week because the two days were spent in a Kursus Kahwin. Yup, I knew one only need to attend it once in a lifetime and since I have already attended one almost 11 years ago (time flies!), I am exempted now. But, I still went.
I went for a few reasons:
1. I went alone the first time round and my main niat at the time was to get the cert to proceed with the marriage registration. Pretty much that was it. My then other half and I were in the UK at the time and we couldn't come back for the course together so alone I went. Although I couldn't remember much now, but I can still remember how I felt 'alone' at the time. Having to spend almost 2 days with perfect strangers learning about marriage was quite a torture (I was only 23 years old or so at the time , so please excuse my self centred-ness). All I wanted was for the course to finish fast and leave hence didn't pay much attention to the content of the course. This time round, I went with my other half and a couple more friends in tow. I know it sounds silly but I felt more 'belonged' so my focus was more on the issues discussed knowing that my other-half was learning with me too. Lebih penghayatan lah bak kata omputeh!
2. I went because I wanted to learn this time round and that was truly the main reason. 11 years ago, I was a young, naive girl, plunging myself into marriage thinking that love conquers all (how silly I was eh). Today, much wiser (I hope), I am blessed to be given the chance to have another go at marriage insyaallah and I just want to make sure I am well-prepared this time round - mentally and spiritually, supported by sufficient knowledge. If attending another kursus kahwin is one of the ways to achieve that, so be it.
3. I am a curious girl, as curious as a cat (ok, maybe I am just a plain kepoh!). I was curious to know whether the syllabus of the course has changed 11 years on or whether the course is still dominated by male chauvanists championing polygamy at every chance they could as how it was back in the late 90s. I am happy to say, things have changed and improved. The topics may not have changed much but the presenters are now well-informed, updated and most importantly, non-biased. I smiled to myself whenever they talked about women's rights in marriage because those were hardly discussed during the course 11 years ago. Frankly, that gave me some form of relief and a ray of hope... maybe JAKIM, JAIS & JAWI have managed to kick or dilute out their old MCP officers afterall...
