This blog is moving ......

Hey all,

I've decided to change the address of my primary blog to my own name. I'm moving my updates to a different blog, http://www.farah-faisal.blogspot.com/, since it's an easier address to remember and spell. It's been a great ride updating this blog, hope you'll follow me on to the next chapter!

Lots of love,
Farah

Blogging on the Bus ( or BotB for short)

Why is it that I didn't find out about the joys of blogging via email
earlier?? This is so convenient! Would have saved me from that one
year no update thing .....

I am currently stuck in a clusterfuck known as Seattle traffic, which
is so bad that I'm not even in Seattle yet and I'm in it. Uh huh, no
kidding. We are moving at a slow, snail pace, which basically means
that the bus driver hits the brakes every 2 seconds. Have you ever
felt that super nauseaus feeling you get when you're in a car and
someone else is driving and they keep accelerating and braking? Yeah,
I'm developing one of those right now. The whole physics of "a body in
motion tends to stay in motion" is knocked into my brain everytime I
get these vehicle-induced migraines.

I miss driving. At least when I was traffic, I was mad but i wasn't
nauseaus. Good thing I'm fasting; nothing to puke out. On the other
hand, bussing means I get to blog while we're stuck in traffc, which
is pretty cool :)

I'm going to start assigning words to my day that reflects how my day
was. Today's word is "sardines". Why sardines? Well, I need a couple
of the canned ones, for one. And for another, I feel like a sardine
packed in a can based on how closely seated I am to the lady beside
me. Note to other people: my ass is big. I am a big girl. If you are
similarly big, please sit next to one of of the skinny people. I don't
need to simulataneously be in a sauna while I'm on a bus. It is not
cute for me to get out of the bus and the whole side of one leg looks
sweaty because it has been in constant contact with yours for the past
hour.

I miss having a car. I need one of those Mini Coopers. Now if I can
just scrape the money for it .....

Starting off a fasting day with a workout

When you're fasting, it's not the easiest thing to get your body to do more than the basic necessities; brush teeth, take shower, put clothes on, get to work, get back from work, heat up dinner, eat. This morning I started off with a workout with my personal trainer Bri from SassyFit. A less strenuous workout in the morning is actually just right when one can't drink water or eat until 8pm, and that's what we did. Less strenuous cardio plus lighter weights equals still a workout but something I can handle while I'm fasting.

This isn't the first time I've worked out while fasting. Last year, when the fasting month was during fall and breaking fast was at about 7.30pm-ish, I worked out with Marissa later at night so that I'm able to break fast by drinking water and a protein shake, and go on to working out. Now that was pretty hard core, but somehow it was easier to push myself to do it when there's a trainer who's waiting for me to kick my butt in gear. as I try to do it myself at home, seriously all I want to do after a day of not eating is... eat. Sit down in front of the TV and just eat. So I told myself, fine, for this one month, do that. But once Ramadan is over, it's time to get healthy and work out again.

I am committed to getting on the healthy track train and get myself back to my old shape!

Breaking fast Seattle style

Soooo today is a Wednesday and I decided against cooking. So I took
one of my Kushibar gift cetificates and headed over there instead.
Kushibar is a Japanese izakaya place here in the Belltown area of
Seattle, and the food there is delicious. I'll save you the play-by-
play of what I ate, but the bowl over to the left there, the one with
the spoon, is a kimchee fried rice. Yummm. And of course, skewers of
meat and seafood don't dissapoint either. I miss breaking fast with
Malaysian food, though. Hopefully I'll get to do so again soon!

Craziness on the bus

Every morning I take the 550 bus to work (unless I'm working from
home). Usually the morning commute is pretty uneventful, but today we
are joined by two Chinese ladies speaking rapid Cantonese and
apparently not a lick of English except "sorry" and "thank you".
Within a space of seconds they manage to accost two seats from two
unsuspecting people who didn't know what to make of the constant
chatter and the inability to hold on to the bus rails (really the
ladies weren't that old).

One they got to their stop, the bus card they were using was not
working. Cue anouther 5 mins of excited chatter probably consisting of
"crap, card isn't working, how are we going to pay?". The bus driver
patiently tried to explain the fare, though after a while he waved the
ladies off the bus so that the rest of us can actually get to work.

For a second there I felt a twinge of jealousy of the old ladies. I
don't know know if they were visiting or actually living here, buy it
takes some balls to be somewhere where you don't speak their language
and you're lacking a common means of communication.

Maybe one day I can learn to be brave and do brave things.

Cutesey Wutsey Lil' Doggy!

Look at how cute this dog is! His name is King and his owner is one of
the aesthetitians at Spa Noir in downtown Seattle. I went in to have a
facial again and there he is. Such a cutie. Makes me feel extra happy
to come in every month when I get to see this buggy wuggy.

Testing no 2 posting from a phone .....

Bleurgh, test one failed ......

> I just wanna see how this works. If it does, you should see a
> picture of the dinner that I did last night. Spaghetti with black
> truffles and mushroom with a side of zucchini blossoms stuffed with
> goat cheese. Yes, I got fancy there for a bit.
>
> What are zucchini blossoms? They are flowers from the same plant
> that produces zucchini. There's some more info about them that I'll
> save for a later day since I have to run off to a meeting. Byes!
>

And the new lineup for Dancing With The Stars Season 11 is.....

For all DWTS fans (I'm one of them I have to admit), here's the new crop of Stars (or "Stars" depending on how you see it) is....

The ladies:

1. Brandy Norwood (as in singer Brandy, of 'Moesha' fame, also of the song "The Boy is Mine" fame. That duet with Monica was awesome)
2. Jennifer Grey (from Dirty Dancing. Can't believe she's 50!)
3. Margaret Cho, comedian, also on "Drop Dead Diva". I enjoy watching her comedy specials, but she's probably the most tattooed person the show has ever had. She'll be fun to watch.
4. Audrina Patridge, from "The Hills". If you never cared about the MTV cult hit then you won't know her.
5. Florence Henderson, from "The Brady Bunch". Respresenting the Octogenarian Bunch.
6. Bristol Palin. Wait what? This is supposed to be Dancing With The Stars! Granted she was in the news for being preggers (oh and her mom was running for the Vice Presidency) but really? Don't you need to at least do something in the entertainment business to be in the lineup? At least the reality "stars" had/have their own show.I'm perplexed by the choice. She better be interesting, she looked beyond terrified in the interview yesterday.

The Men:

1. David Hasselhoff. I mean it's the 'Hoff. 'Nuff said.
2. Kurt Warner, token sports guy. I don't know enough about sports to comment on him.
3. Kyle Massey. Disney Channel actor/rapper. Oh right, Disney owns ABC. I actually know this kid, I thought the show "That's So Raven" was kinda cute.
4. Rick Fox. Hunky, dreamy actor/another sports dude. Beyond handsome. Was married to Vanessa Williams, reportedly cheated on her. Okay, so that takes him down a notch on the hunk-o-meter.
5. Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino, of "Jersey Shore" fame. Single-handedly responsible for runing the word "situation" for people everywhere. And don't get me started on how mindless the show is. Having him on the cast means that we'll see abs galore this season, on the account of him pimping out his fitness DVD.
6. Michael Bolton. Yep, that's right. Michael. Bolton. "When a Maaaaaaan Loves a Woman" Michael Bolton. I wonder how many people back in the '90s had sex to one of his songs? I wonder if he's still dating Nicolette Sheridan, a.k.a Edit Britt from "Desperate Housewives"? Maybe he's making a desperate attempt of his own to be relevant again.

So there you have it, folks. Your "dancers". I've use so many quotation marks in this post, but one needs to be accurate when "reporting", lol. Season 11 is going to be EPIC! I'm so excited that none of them are obvious dancers, like the Pussycat Doll last season or ice skaters or gymnasts. They're just regular non-dancers, though I wonder if Jennifer Grey is going to have an advantage despite being 50. I'm actually pretty excited for DWTS to get back to basics!

I miss you, Tom Bergeron! You are the best host on TV right now and I'd watch you anyday over Seacrest.

I've been a bad, bad blogger .....

Seriously, who has a blog, and then doesn't update for 2 years? 2 years?? ADD kittens have more attention span than I do. I think this says something about the last 2 years .... that things have come and gone and happened and not happened, and everything was just too difficult to put into words. To write on paper (or in this case, type on a screen) just makes things seem more .... real. Definite. Immovable. Part of my history. Unchangeable.

The last two years has been an exercise in patience and letting go. The former I have experience, the latter is something I'm still working on. But I've let go of a few things in the past couple of years that I never thought would happen in this stage of my life: my car, a guy I cared about, friends who have been either let go so that either they can be happy, or so that I can.

Oh yes people, I am a carless Seattleite now, and have been for the past year. Make no mistake, I'm not turning into a hemp-wearing hippie, it's just nice not to have to worry about things like how much you're spending on gas, insurance and parking. That leaves you more time to worry about things like when the next bus is coming and are you going to be late for work because the bus is late...... lol, okay, it's not that bad, if it was I would have bought a car by now. The nice thing about living in Belltown is that the bus is always just a couple of blocks away. And the nice thing about flex hours at The Company is that you're never late for work, you're just working late.

As for the boy part .... let's just skip the boy part. I could never talk about him when he was here, anyway, no point talking about him now that he's not. Let's just say that it's never a good idea to want someone who was never really available in the first place. Lesson learned, moving on .....

Friendships have a funny way of working out sometimes. Or not working out. The person you originally befriended can evolve into someone else you don't know. Sometimes the evolution is great, but in order for them to move forward, they need to leave you behind. Or vice versa. There were definitely some case (okay fine, ONE case) where I needed to leave people behind in order to be a better person and not get associated with the negative energy. I needed to love myself enough and do what was better in for the long run. I tried, gave it my best, be the best person I could have been, and since it still didn't work out, move on.

So that's two years in a nutshell. I know, it's not a lot, nothing about the places I've been and the people I've met and everyday happenings in life.... but I want to move forward. Look onwards and, hopefully, upwards. On to the next chapter...

p/s: "bebygurl" is a stupid name for a blog, and I wish I had named it something different, but oh well, stuck with it now!

Feed The Fishies! Click on box.

Seriously, it's so soothing to feed them....

Lolcats ‘n’ Funny Pictures of Cats - I Can Has Cheezburger?

Painted my bedroom!!

I spent all day Saturday painting my bedroom, with help from my friend Hitomi. I wasn't even painting the whole room, actually, just an accent wall in my room, but it still took us a good 5 hours to get everything done. Now I have a newly painted wall, and new curtains and shelf to boot. Best of all, I put up the curtains and the shelf myself :) . Hahah! I'm handy now! I can actually operate a drill and not poke myself in the eye in the process. So proud of myself.

My room now has an accent wall that is yellow, pink and green in color. Kinda like a mosaic. Who cares that normal people don't usually color their walls that way. And who cares that my curtains are so pink they barely let light through (that's the point, actually). My room is still a work in progress, but so far I love the work that's being done. Many thanks to hitomi for helping me out.

Ramadhan: fasting in Seattle

So we've been fasting for a little over a week now. Having the first day or Ramadhan align with Sept 1st makes it easy for me to remember things :) All in all, it's been a trying first week. I mean, we *just* came out of summer, so the days are still longer than the nights. It's pretty damn annoying to have to wake up at 4am because you have stop eating at 5am. Then there's the waiting for sunset to come so that we can start eating. And sunset was 7.50pm on Sept 1st.

It has gotten progressively better since then. Sunset is now at 7.35pm, which is close to the Malaysian sunset, so that makes me feel a bit better. Sunrise is at 5.15am, which gives me an extra 15 mins of sleep that I didn't have before. Although I have to admit, a huge part of why it feels so much better now is pretty much because my body has gotten used to it. The first week is always, always the worst. It doesn't help that I still go out late at night and am totally dead by the time 4am rolls around and I have to eat my sahur. Hopefully the next few weeks, I'll be more diligent about going to bed at a reasonable time so that I can face the day better rested and with better clarity.

I went to the Northdate Way Idriss Mosque the Monday of last week, and I have to say that I was sorely dissapointed with how the sisters' area was set up. I know there wasn't a whole bunch of us, but the classroom they had set up for iftar is too small to fit even the ladies who were there. I found the experience too cramped and full of people yelling and kids just getting in the way. I don't mind small children, in fact I love kids, but the parents basically let them run amok all over the classroom, which resulted in spilled drinks and food. Which, of course, made the already cramped classroom unbearable. I relish the sense of community one gets when going to a mosque and praying with fellow Muslimahs, but that experience just left a me bit traumatized and I haven't gone back since. I really should probably give it another try, though. Maybe it was just a one-time thing, I dunno.

Fasting has been interesting of late. I get a lot of questions from people who are intrigued by it and want to know what the rationale behind it is. While I do tell them the religious aspects of fasting, usually I supplement them with whatever scientific details that I've read about based on research on fasting. Apparently fasting allows the bodily function to rest from chruning food, and instead allocated resources to repair cells instead. So you are basically "repairing" your body while fasting. A lot of people get scared when they hear the "no water" part, but studies show that as long you hydrate yourself plenty during the time you *can* eat, it shouldn't be a problem at all. In fact, drinking 32oz of water before sunrise even allows you to exercise during the day, I've been told. Who would've thought?

anyway, Ramadhan mubarak to all who are fasting this month :)

He's Just Not That Into You

I've just finished reading this book (well, actually I finished it two days ago), and i gotta say, for such a small book, it sure packs a punch. It certainly got me feeling a lot of emotions: anger, sadness, mortification.... and acceptance.

I've accepted a long time ago that I'm not perfect, and I kinda left it at that. I'm not perfect, and I make mistakes. What I haven't accepted was the fact that it was okay to not be perfect, to not fit into The Guy's definition of a perfect woman, because ultimately, the person I'm meant to be with would still think I'm perfect in spite of, or because of, my faults. The Guy might not like the fact that I have a small, babyish voice, but The One would find it endearing.

When it comes to matters of the heart, I figured that since I'm not perfect, I shouldn't really expect the guy I'm with to be perfect. Now that's a really dangerous road to go down, and the book made me realize that. Because once you have it in your head "Oh, he's doing something that I don't like, that's okay, he's not perfect, I probably annoy him, too", then you start ignoring the vital signs. Big, fat, juicy signs that hollers He's Just Not That Into You. You start forgiving things that you shouldn't be. You let the fact that he makes you cry at least once a month slide, because you keep remembering the good times and oh how good the good times were and this is just a small bump in the road and we'll get over it .... And the excuses keep on coming until one day, you realize that you were the bump in his road and he's completely over you.

Reading the book was tough for me. It made me face facts. The signs were there and I didn't want to see it; because of that I let The Guy have the power to hurt me. I let him dictate how the relationship, if you can even call it that, play out to his advantage. The book made me see my past relationships, dates and crushes in a different way. I used to think that maybe if I had done things a little differently, be more sophisticated instead of emotionally vulnerable, then things could have been different. I realize know that there was nothing I could've done to keep his interest. What I do have control over now, though, is how I behave once it's apparent that a guy is not into me enough to want a lasting relationship with me.

So for me personally, I need to remember these tenents:

1. If I'm the one who usually calls, but he never calls me first because talking on the phone is "not his thing", then he's just not that into me.
2. If he never wants to hang out with me and my friends at all, then he's just not that into me.
3. If I'm the one who's always making plans, and he just goes along with it, then maybe he's really not that into me.
4. If he doesn't want the "boyfriend" label because he "doesn't like labels", then he's really not that into me. That's just a step away from not wanting to be the "husband" because he doesn't like labels. If he's into me, he'd want everyone to know we're together.

Life is complicated enough without having the man in your life be the wrong man. I'd rather be by myself and happy, than be with someone and be miserable. And the first step to being happy? Love thyself :)

We're Live! Live Search that is

As some of you might know, I'm currently one of the user researchers for Live Search (www.live.com). It's a tall order in trying to compete with Google as the primary search destination, but I feel like we're making really goo, solid strides towards in. To celebrate the Olympics, we have been changing the image on our homepage daily. Unfortunately, if you're in Malaysia, and you're keeping the Malaysian settings, then you can't see the rich image yet. Very boo :( . But if you change your options to US, then you can see it :)

Current image in the US market (we change this twice daily)



This is what the page looks like in China:



And here's what it looks like to the rest of the world, as for now:



I gotta admit, pretty freakin' sweet :) I'm checking the Live Search homepage daily now, it's so exciting to see what new image is going to crop up this time.

Aih... updet updet

So I haven't updated this thing in a loooong while, like what, 8 months? Ooops, sorila pakcik makciks, been busy busy bee lately. With the new job and the visa stuff and getting to meet new people and trying not to blow my head off when things get really stressed, life has been quite eventful and unfortunately, my blog has suffered over it. Aih.... well I'm updating today, aren't I? With a new cute kitty pic to boot!

I am now living in Capitol Hill (not the Washington DC one, the one in Seattle). I moved away from Belltown a little over a month ago because the rent was skyrocketing. I'm super glad I made the move, not only is the new apartment more economical, I get a bigger space and I get a roommate :) . Rachel is really cool, and with Rachel comes an opportunity to talk to someone during the weekdays (instead of just weekends) and also free coffee :) . Me likey the lattes and chai tea at Joe Bar (it's a coffee shop that's around the corner of my apartment. Bill Gates went there once, if that matters to anyone).

Anyway, I've been taking salsa classes for the past 2 months, and am a happier person for it. Nothing makes me feel better than twirling around on my high heels, dancing to latin music. Considering that I've lost some weight primarily through dancing, I dare say more dancing ns needed in my life :) Maybe swing? Tango? I want to take a hip hop class just for the fun of it, but there isn't one near where I live. Boo indeed.

Oh, and I forgot to mention a teeeeny weeeny bit of new info: my hair is pink now. Not all of it, but a good two inches from the bottom is bright pink. Atomic Pink + Hard Candy Red to be exact. My mom's gonna freak if she finds out :)

More Cute Kittens!

Hehehe... I love me some cute kittens




more cat pictures