pelf-ism is contagious

Yesterday, I yelled at a st*pid woman who freaking reversed her car into mine, with my boyfriend standing IN BETWEEN my car and the opened door.

We were leaving the library after calling it a day, at about 8pm. It was raining, so J drove the car to the roofed area just outside the library. While we were loading our laptops and books into the car, another car, driven by some st*pid woman, reversed into mine, knocked my car door and trapped J between the car door and the car frame.

When I realized what was happening (I was also loading my stuff on the other side of the car), I asked J whether he was OK. He was in a shock, and took some time before telling me that he was alright. Just as I dashed across my car to freaking scold her head off, the st*pid woman driver emerged from her car.

I yelled at her for reversing without looking what was behind. She apologized and repeatedly say that she did not see us, and that it was unintentional. One of her friends even tried to blame us for parking our car behind their’s!

So I’ll be sending my car to the service centre one of these days because the door needed to be knocked back into shape. And I’m making sure the st*pid woman pays for it

So how did your weekend go?

This is what happens when I am too absorbed in my writing. I get up in the morning, make a mental note to update my blog so that mushrooms don’t grow all over it, then I go to the library and engage in a writing frenzy until lunch time. When I go out for lunch, I make a mental note to write a blog post as soon as I get back, but when I return to the library, I forget about the blog post and dive head-in into the unfinished thesis.

Dang. I hate this.

Perhaps, when I’m done with my thesis, I will write a list Dos and Don’ts if you intend to pursue a post-graduate degree. I’m not sure about MBAs, but in research, it isn’t all nice and dandy. In fact, it’s far from nice and dandy, though I must say that satisfaction is guaranteed

As if all those writing aren’t enough to rob me of my own “me time”, I spend my waking hours mind-mapping about the things that I wanted to do for my other two blogs. I plan to install this Goldfries’ Random Blogroll plugin so that it would pull random blogs from my blogroll. And then I plan to get down and work on my custom 404 pages for all my blogs. And I also plan to look for a few regular writers who wouldn’t mind contributing an article a week to The Giving Hands (please leave me a comment if you are interested, OK?). On top of that, I have been working on some posts on my turtle blog so that when I launch it, you will have some articles to read about, instead of just ONE article Ouh, I almost forgot to mention that I have more than 600 unread items on my feed reader. Can you guys please slow down?!

It’s Deepavali today (HAPPY DEEPAVALI & HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO ALL MY READERS!), and the library isn’t open, so I am planning to do some “thesis housekeeping” at home — rearrange the paragraphs so that they flow more easily and nicely, fill in whatever missing information or statistics, list all my tables and figures and appendices, cross-check my list of references, you get the drift..

But before that, I have three community service announcements to make:

• Have you voted for Edrei, who was recently listed as one of the finalists of the Best Asian Blog category in the The 2007 Weblog Awards?? Voting closes on Nov 8th (yeah, today) and at the moment, he’s in a bottleneck fight with a few other bloggers, so get all your friends and blog buddies and give Edrei one last push, OK? Click here to vote.
• Remember Enveluv, the company that sends our Hari Raya cards to our friends for FREE? Well, they’re now giving out a 32 inch Samsung LCD TV to the person who designs the prettiest Christmas card. On top of that, you will get your name printed on thousands of Christmas cards to be sent all over Malaysia. Now how does that sound?? Click here for more information about the design competition.
• Joseph and his wife recently made a substantial donation to Operation Smile, a children’s medical charity that was founded to provide children in poorer countries with surgery to fix cleft lip and cleft palates (I blogged about it on Giving Hands earlier — Have you heard of Operation Smile?). Joseph has pledged to donate to another charity if he receives more than 15 valid comments on his post within a week from Nov 6th, so do drop by and give him some support and comment loves!

That’s about it today. Hopefully there will be good news the next time I publish a blog post

I have had a very slow week, in terms of writing, publishing, commenting and blog-hopping. In fact, I haven’t been spending as much time as I would love to on my blog because I have been too caught up with writing up my thesis. I have set myself a deadline which I hope to be able to honour so that things get done, and I could get on with my life. It definitely isn’t fun going to bed every night thinking about the unfinished thesis, and whether I would ever graduate with a Master’s degree next year.

Anyway, did you know that I was invited to guest-blog at Domestik Goddess some time ago? And because Jen writes about arts and crafts, she suggested that I write about crafty friends/bloggers I know. My first article, which featured April and her hand-made jewellery was published on Nov 1st. My second article would be published on Nov 15th, but I shall not disclose my second “featured blogger”

Ouh, and I have recently given my charity-based blog, The Giving Hands, a face-lift. I am currently using a simple-and-clean theme called Content Cream, by Mohsin @ Blogging Bits. I am almost done with the tweaking, so you know what to do now, don’t you? And I am working on trying to keep to a posting schedule (which has yet to be determined due to the current thesis-writing frenzy)

One more thing, Edrei was recently short-listed as a finalist for the 2007 Weblog Awards Best Asian Blog — how cool is that?! I mean, how often do you find a Malaysian picked up for such an award? So, do us all a favour, and vote for him, will you? The voting will run until Nov 8th, and you can vote once every 24 hours! So please make every vote count!

And now, some link loves for my top commentators:

• After a little “talking to” (I wouldn’t call it convincing because I wasn’t trying to influence him), littlebro, my ex-housemate, had finally decided to revive his blog, which had been left since 2 years ago. Check out this tribute to yours truly!
• Chen shares an East Malaysian signature dish — jungle fern!
• Does your Mum keep one of those very ancient irons at home? You know, the one that uses coal, and is drop-dead heavy it makes you think how anybody would use that to iron clothes? pearl has a picture of the classic iron!
• Is your blog dying? How do you tell if you are slowly (but surely) abandoning your blog? Wayne Liew shares some points on how you can ensure that your blog doesn’t die
• French blogger, Zhu talked about her experience as a receptionist in Hong Kong and why she wouldn’t get herself a handphone
• yenjai shows what you can do with the barcode sticker that comes with a new book.
• What do you do if you can’t lock the boot of your car? You latch it, of course! And Pelfy shows us an example of how you can do it (and attract all the attention)
• silveraven has some pictures of a “bastard cut“! *gulps*
• Diana13 compiled a list of articles with tips on how to increase your blog traffic, write better, save time, make money online and some photography and security tips.
• A group of Muslims are trying to clear some of the misconceptions about Islam. Visit their website AskMuslims.com to learn more about Islam.

Do you realize the usual guys are getting all the link loves every week?? Come on, drop by more often, leave me more comments (and loves, and hugs) and you could be on the list next week