Nagasaki One Day Trip

22nd February 2013

This was the last trip I went in Japan before I came back to Malaysia on March. It's a three days trip with two other friends, SK and Ari. Actually, I went to Nagasaki before, this time we stopped in Nagasaki because we wanted to go to Huis Ten Bosch the next day and there's a lantern festival in Nagasaki Chinatown (in conjunction with the Chinese New Year).

First, we went to Nagasaki Peace Park. The weather was nice and the sky was blue, so I managed to get many beautiful photos! The first time I was here, it was raining heavily, soaking my pants and shoes. This time around, finally I could leisurely walked around, reading all the information boards, enjoyed the fresh air.

Nagasaki Peace Park

Hidden Riches by Nora Roberts

Read another romance novel. To me, ending is very important, sometimes I would read the last chapter first before I proceeded to read the earlier parts. Hahaha! I did that even for movies and dramas, I would read the synopsis online first, if it's a sad story, I would normally skip it, if the story was really good, then I would first prepare a box of tissues. So, romance genre is a safe bet, normally the ending will be satisfying and happy. However, for this book, I read the last chapter first, just didn't have the patience to read from the first till last page!

Hidden Riches by Nora Roberts

Go Green with Baby Diapers

My mom helps to babysit a baby during the day for quite some time. Well, she gets to earn extra money and it's a way to pass time. I just realized that she re-use diaper's cover. Well, it's a trick that many mothers knew, just sharing this out for those who don't know.

1. Take a used soiled diaper, make a hole at one side, remove all the cotton, wash it and dry it under the sun (it helps to kill germ too!).
2. After dry, take a clean cloth, fold it and insert through the hole made earlier.
3. It's good to use! (after use, have to clean both the cover and cloth)

Green Diapers

Praying for Success in Exam

Exams are big in Asia. In Japan, temples or shrines make big bucks just by offering prayers and charms to the students. In any shrines in Japan, I think we can find a lot of charms (not free, of course!), ranging from safety, love, good luck, exam, etc. Well, hard work is necessary, but sometimes, luck is important. (^^♪

Train stations also offered this kind of services for exam candidates, I saw the notice in Kumamoto Station 熊本駅 and Nakatsu Station中津駅. I was kind of in awe when I noticed that!

The photo below shows a notice for exam candidates in Nakatsu Station. The notice was about the handling out of amulets that have been blessed in a local shrine. That's sweet! Sometimes, holding this kind of amulets make people calmer, less anxious, especially during exam time.  

合格祈願

Save Money on Food

Read something interesting in The Guardian today, due to the worsen economic condition, more and more austerity blogs popped out. In these blogs, the bloggers blogged about budget recipes, how to save money, how not to spend money, etc. The most famous is agirlcalledjack, she blogged how she survived with £10 a week and still managed to feed her child with nutritious food. Many articles were shown in The Guardian about families living just above the breadline too.

With the hike of petrol price recently, there is a possibility that ripple effect will cause more price increase in food, cooking gas, etc. Well, I cannot change the price of petrol, nor can I prevent the price increase of other stuffs, so what I can do is save more and spend less.

One thing that's very important is food. Some people argued that it's cheaper to eat out for a single person because it's just not economical to cook for one person. Some said that one can cook in a big batch and then freeze the rest. Well, I tried that before when I was in Japan, I cooked a big pot of chicken curry and for the following five days, all I ate for dinner was that chicken curry. It's still ok until third day. On the 5th day, I think I almost vomited out. When I told my friend about that little 'incident', she told me that no one do that, people will freeze excess food, but no one will eat it continuously for a few days. (^^ゞ

Selangor ⇔ Johor with Public Transport

24th August 2013

A friend of mine (MK) came back to Malaysia for her maternity leave holiday, since we haven’t met for a long time, another friend (SY ) and I decided to go to Johor Bahru to visit MK and the baby. Both of us are not used to long distance driving, so we took express bus. Well, SY and me, we stayed in Japan before and public transport was our major of mode of transportation. Travelling in Japan is quite a breeze because the public transport is on time and the schedule is easily available online. (*-*) For train schedule, if you don’t like to refer to the online schedule, you can always buy a train schedule book 時刻表 from the book shop!

Back to our Johor Bahru trip, compared to Japan, finding public transport information in Malaysia is still not so difficult thanks to the helpful netizens. Well, for the express bus, it's quite easy to find the information online. Now, buying express bus ticket is available online, easier compared to few years ago. I had never have to buy express bus ticket because I studied in the same state as my hometown. Before any long holiday, my course mates would go to the bus station to buy ticket in advance. It was a waste of time and money. Luckily, nowadays, one can book a ticket online in the comfort of one's home.