The Proud Rabbit

      

       Once upon a time, there was a proud rabbit. He liked to show off to other animals that he was the fastest animal in the village. He used to tease others including his best friend, the deer that they could not run as fast as he could. The deer was upset by his bad attitude.

       One day, the deer decided to challenge the rabbit by inviting him to take part in a running competition held specially for both of them. The rabbit agreed without hesitating.

       ‘I am not afraid of you! Loser!’ said the rabbit proudly. He was so confident that he would win in the competition.

       On the competition day, all the animals in the village came to watch the competition. Once the whistle was blown, both the rabbit and the deer sped off at the starting point. Both of them were running almost at the same speed for the first few minutes.

       All of a sudden, the deer accidentally stepped on a stone. He fell down and hurt his leg. As he tried to get up and run again, he realized that he could not run for the competition! Despite the pain that he felt, he was determined to walk to the ending point on his hurt leg. The rabbit noticed the difficulty faced by his friend. He was happy that the deer would not be able to compete with him anymore. He continued to run as fast as he could and left the deer very far behind him.

       After a few minutes, the rabbit realized that the deer would be too slow to take over him. The arrogance started to haunt him. He decided to take a nap under a tree nearby. Time passed by. The deer was still struggling on the tract while the rabbit was far deep in sleep. Step by step, the deer had already passed the place where the rabbit was and he was heading towards the ending point. The other animals around were shouting excitingly to give him support. The loud noise woke the rabbit from his sleep. He was extremely shocked to see the deer who was almost reaching the ending point!

       The rabbit sped off like a hungry predator, thinking that he would be able to take over the deer. Unfortunately, his effort was in vain as the deer reached the ending point. The deer was announced as the winner. All the animals were shouting in loud cheer. The rabbit was so ashamed of himself for being so proud and over-confident. He began to change his attitude after that incident. He apologized to all his friends and he never teased them again. The deer was happy that his friend had turned into a new leaf.      

Family Gathering

      

       My eldest cousin brother has a son who has just reached the age of one-year-old three weeks before. Due to the Hari Raya holiday, my cousin brother decided to have a birthday party for his son and at the same time having a family gathering. Well, I couldn’t really remember when our last family gathering was. It seemed like it was on the night before the first day of Chinese New Year. So, I was very happy as I couldn’t wait any longer to meet my uncles and their families.

       Everyone came back from different places and gathered at my uncle’s house where the gathering was held. As usual, each family will prepare some dishes and we would have a ‘feast’ (I called it a ‘feast’ because there would be really a lot of food to eat!). My mother had been busy since the afternoon to cook the dishes so that we would able to be there by 7pm when the gathering started. My mother cooked a few dishes like fried noodles, chicken curry and stir-fried vegetables. Meanwhile, my sister and I went to buy a present for the birthday kid. We spent quite some time before making up our mind to buy a shirt and a pants for him. The moment we reached home, we went to help in the kitchen.

       Everybody was there by 7pm. My uncle’s house was full of noise and laughter again. There were already a lot of mouth-watering dishes on the dining table. There were fried chicken balls, sausages, fried chicken, salad, my aunt’s favourite dish--mutton curry and sweet sour fish. Oh My God! It has been long since the last time I saw so many dishes in front of me! It sounded like it has been more than a decade I didn’t eat anything. But really, I was extremely excited due to all the home cooked dishes there. In fact, I am quite ashamed of myself to say that even though I just came back from home to the campus a week ago, I had already started to miss those dishes cooked by my mother!

      We were chatting and watching television programs while eating. I was too glad to meet my younger cousin sisters who came from Seremban. After the dinner, the birthday kid just woke up in time. Then, my elder cousin brother brought the cake to the dining table. We started to sing the birthday song for him and he was taught to blow the candle. Although he is just one years old, he looked very happy too when his mother held his tiny hand to cut the cake. As my mother told me before, when I was one years old, I was very blur and couldn’t figure out what was going on around me. Kids nowadays are indeed getting smarter and smarter! Then, we presented him the presents that we bought. Having a round face, slightly slanted eyes, a tiny nose and mouth, he looks so cute and adorable that everyone just likes to hold him in arm and play with him. The party end at 11pm and we went back after the cleaning job was done.     

       It was really a nice family gathering as we were kept up-to-date about everyone’s recent life and therefore strengthened the family bond. After the holiday, we will be busy with our own daily life and will not have this kind of gathering too often. I am quite satisfied that I had this family gathering during the holiday.

                

An Awesome Trip

“Ladies and gentlemen, we had landed safely at Singapore Changi Airport,” announced the senior flight attendant.

I looked at my watch as three of us walked towards the MRT station. It was 8.30am. The MRT brought us to Chinatown. There are stalls selling souvenirs at both sides of the streets. After buying some souvenirs, we went for lunch and took MRT which headed towards Little India where the hotel located. From the name itself, everyone knows it’s a place where most of the Indian shops are found. Although it’s small, but we found it hard to get to the hotel by just referring to the map. We kept wandering at the same place as if we were lost in a maze. At last we decided to ask for help. One of the shopkeepers showed us the way kindly. After thanking her, we headed towards the hotel according to the directions she gave. Finally, we managed to find it.

On the first night in Singapore, we went to Night Safari. The place was crowded with tourists as it has been the winner of Singapore Tourism Awards’ Best Leisure Attraction Experience for seven times! There are two options for us to either explore the place using the walking trails or take a 3.2km tram ride along two loops from the rocky Himalayan foothills to the grassy plains of Equatorial Africa. We chose the latter and discovered many types of unusual creatures like Hyena, Flamingo and Malayan Tapir playing and eating in their lush habitat. When we went to the walkways and the trails, we had the chance to get really close to many animals including the flying foxes, leopards and porcupines. After that, we watched the night shows at the amphitheater. The creatures that performed including the Otters, Slow Loris, Indian Wolf and others. One of the fascinating shows was three otters picking up the rubbish and put into the recycle bin accordingly. The idea is to encourage us to recycle. Isn’t that creative? The animals and the trainers did win great applause from the spectators!

On the second day, we spent the whole day in the Universal Studio Singapore (USS) on Sentosa Islands. USS is an awesome theme park which includes The Lost World, Far Far Away, Madagascar, Ancient Egypt, and Sci-Fi City. Each of them has its own well-designed attractions. For example, the thrilling indoor high speed roller coaster, the river raft ride through dinosaur habitats at the Jurassic Park and the death-defying stunts and explosions in the Water World ‘live’ water show. My favourite is none other than the Shrek 4-D Adventure at Far Far Away. Everything there including the restaurants, washrooms, signs boards and the workers are tourists friendly that it explains the number of tourists visiting the place every year.    

At night, after spending some time visiting the Casino, we took the MRT back to VivoCity and then took another MRT to go back. But an unfortunate incident happened when we found out that the last MRT were not going to Little India. Three of us were panicked. We tried to seek for help and finally we got the help from the enquiry counter near the MRT station. We hired a taxi but another “disaster” came when the taxi driver told us he didn’t know the exact location of the resort. So, we got down by the roadside at Little India and ended up walking for a few blocks of buildings. We were quite worried about our safety as it was already 12am.

On the third day, we went to a few places like Merlion Park and Explanade and took some photos. Then, we went to several places on Sentosa Islands like the museum and Underwater World. The most unforgettable part on that night was the “Song of The Sea”. It is the first-ever world class water show which won the international award. The combination of dramatic effects, lasers, water jets, fire and music is really amazing. I just love the show very much!

The four-day-trip to Singapore came almost to its end after we visited Bugis Street and checked out from the hotel on the fourth day. Through this trip, I have learnt that wherever I go, I must obey the rules and regulations stated to show my respect. I also realized that I shouldn’t feel shy to seek for help from others when I face any problems. Besides that, taking Singapore as an example, although it is a small country but it keeps developing! Hence, I realized that I need to keep improving by eliminating my weaknesses and upgrade myself from time to time to gain better success in life. 

Being A Grandchild

                                          

    

     "Grandpa! Grandma!"

     I used to call them while running towards them and gave them a hug the moment I stepped into the shop house.

     When I was small, most of the year end holidays were spent with my grandparents. At that time, grandpa was only in his early seventies while grandma was in her late fifties. Grandpa owned a shop selling watches and clocks. That is where we will spend our time every time we visit them in Ansun, Perak.

     Grandpa and grandma are always happy to see us arriving at the shop. They used to reply our call with a warm smile. Those smiles were things that I missed so much until today. As usual, grandpa always welcomed us with a surprise. He loved things that come from nature. He used to dye his hair with the natural dyeing materials. There was one year when he came out with his yellowish brown coloured hair! He looked so young! He told us that it was from Henna flower that he planted behind the shop. He even said that he would try purple colour next time!

     Usually after dinner, grandpa would bring me to the shopping center next door. I can still remember the way grandpa hold my tiny hand and brought me to walk around the shopping center. Grandpa seldom bought toys for me as he knew I'd got many toys at home. Instead, he would give me something handmade. One of the special gifts that I got from him was a diary made by himself. It was a simple diary but the papers were bound together neatly by strings. It was a present for me when I was eleven years old.

     As I grew older, he seldom brought me to the shopping center. Instead, he started to advise me to study hard in order to score well in exams. He always told me that time is gold and hope I will distribute my time in a very good way. That diary was presented to me so that I could jot down everything in it and spend my time according to the plans. Grandpa knew me well. He knew that I was not getting enough of general knowledge. He used to advise me to read the newspapers and listen to the news daily to know the happenings around me.

     As time went by, grandpa was getting older too. There was one time when we went to visit him, I noticed that grandpa's laughter was not as energetic as before. That struck my heart hard. Grandpa was neither doing the dyeing job nor the hand making business anymore. The moment i went to the back of the shop, most of the plants were already taken care by grandma. Looking carefully at grandpa, I noticed that the face that used to looked so enthusiastic that almost every good happening would go into his direction was now full of wrinkles. The well built body was not there anymore. Grandpa had lost weight.

     The moment I received the cruel news from mom, I knew this day would come. But I just didn't expect that it would come so fast. Grandpa had left me, he left the whole family. The moment I paid the last respect to him, he was lying in the coffin, so peacefully. I stared at his face, a face that was so familiar to me, a face which used to be decorated with smiles and laughter, was showing some signs that grandpa had actually been fighting against the illnesses with all his will. The longer I stared at his face, the more ambiguous the image became. Without any control, warm tears dropped down my cheeks. Sadness washed me in drowning waves. Reluctant to be apart from grandpa, my shoulders shivered and I broke into tears...

     Although grandpa had left us for more two years, his love and teachings were all well remembered in our hearts. I can still feel, that grandpa is always with us.

    

                              

                                                                       

                                         

Being a Tuition Teacher

     Everyone has some special experiences in their life. Yet it's quite unbelievable that i actually have the experience of being a tuition teacher for a few months while waiting for my STPM result. Well, those kids are the children of my sister's friends. They are cousins. Both of them were only in standard one.

     Kids nowadays are burdened with heavy load of homework and tuition. They are only 'available' during the weekends. Hence, the tuition class was usually on Saturday since Sunday is the family day. I went to their house on every Saturday. It was actually a one-to-one tuition class. The mothers preferred this because they knew their children would not be concentrating if there is other people around.

     To teach the seven-year-old kids, the very first thing to do is to know well the way to attract their attention to what you are going to teach them. I found it difficult at the beginning because I had not known their characters very well. But as time went on, i got the chance to understand them more and hence everything went on quite smoothly. Two of them are almost equally intelligent, but in different aspects they have different strengths and weaknesses.

     One of them is very good in Chinese and Maths but she did hate Malay and English. She would find it hard to read in English. So most of the time I would be teaching her those two subjects. But kids are kids, they are very easy to get bored and lost their attention very quickly. Even I hate to do the same thing for a very long duration of time when I was small. So, i would have to switch to her favourite subjects or else she would start showing some attitudes. Since the duration of teaching her was not long, I couldn't really see the improvement in those two subjects. But what really relieved me was that she started to show some interest in Malay and English.

     Meanwhile, the other girl, who likes Malay and English very much, is quite weak in Chinese and Science. She likes to ask questions especially when she is learning science. Sometimes she came out with many logic but confusing questions. To be truth, I always worried that i might give her the inappropriate answers! But e of her strength is obvious. She can grab things very fast although sometimes she is quite careless in counting.

     Besides getting the opportunity to know these cute kids more, I found that they turned me into a patient and understanding person. They did bring some laughters to me because sometimes their attitudes were just too funny. In fact, we have become friends after that. During the last class, I brought them some presents to encourage them to do well in heir studies and to my surprise, they even presented me some souvenirs which they bought during their holiday trip.     

    
    

The Heavenly Shelter

Home,

is a place,

where we get sheltered,

from the sun and rain,

storms and snows.

Home,
is a space,
where it is always
filled with care and love,

warmth and laughter.

Home,
is a place,
where we can share

the happiness and sadness,

with the one we loved.

Home,

is  a space,

where it is always there,

for us to grow and learn,

to achieve greater success in life.

Home,

is the one,

and only one door,

which opens for us,

at all time.

Wind

      The wind is a great magician after David Copperfield. It has the power to change the shapes of the clouds, from a cute adorable gold fish to a fierce teeth-clenching bulldog; from the face of an innocent baby to an incredibly beautiful, fine-boned face with an elegant high nose. Sometimes, it is so strong that it transforms a deadly stand still nature on earth into an alive small town which is full of swaying of trees. The wind is also able to manipulate the human being’s moods and emotions. When it is here, it brings endless happiness to those who are encircled with sadness and sorrow. It also brings new fresh hopes to those who are frustrated with failures. The great magician might become a positive feedback stimulator if the cool side of it touches the skin of the lonesome ones. Just like the magician, the wind is too good in making things around it to be more awesome than ever. Whenever it goes in the direction from the sea, it brings the warmth of the true love to those loving couples who are walking by the seaside as it gently kisses them. As a magician, the wind is doing a great job in helping the human being. With a little of its existence, the sailing ships sail smoothly on the sea while the housewives might happily find their clothes dry up at the end of the day. It can even be used to generate energy too. So, have you ever wonder who is the greater magician?