Surprises can come in various way, various method and in various occasions, especially on birthdays and anniversaries. Some people would celebrate such special days by surprises that someone with romantic events such as a surprise birthday party where she/he never had the idea that she/he would be thrown balloons the moment she/he opened the door. It could also be just a romantic candle light dinner at a fancy restaurant or driving she/he in a limousine teehee.

But the most common birthday surprises, or specifically called birthday prank, where the birthday boy/girl be thrown raw egg, flour, or even the wastage from drainage. I remembered pranked a friend by pouring cooking oil on her.

Well, this might sounds sad but I never experienced both kind of surprises my whole life. My parents did held a birthday party up until I was twelve but the party wasn't a surprise since I knew about it and I never had a serious relationship with a guy before so yea. For the last 10 years, I spent my birthday just living my normal daily routine so being a typical girl, I really want to experience such surprises. I think it's okay to add 'experiencing birthday surprise' into my bucket list, right?

If a girl ever told you that she hates surprises, trust me, she lied. Even guys love surprises, how could a girl hates surprises?

Oh and actually it's my birthday today, 30th January, turning 24 this year. So surprise me with a birthday wish, will you? Hiks.

Till then,

Lya.

Kdrama Goblin : The Great and Lonely God has just concluded last week. Goblin has officially landed as my most favourite Kdrama of all time, I'm still having a hard time to get over it. It does have flaws here and there but the overall story satisfied me. If you're wondering, Iris (2007) was my most favourite Kdrama before Goblin took over. So here's what I like about this drama.

So I've been asked by adik Khaidir to post an entry on a brief on architecture. First of all, I'm sorry Khaidir, if this post took too long as I've been busy with works and my cousin's wedding ceremony, also trying to figure out proper words with encouragement in here. Might as well say that this post is for you guys whom are in high school, especially Form 5 students as I'm listing a glimpse of what you need to know before taking architecture as your course.

There is no definite answer

Unlike accounting where there's answer on how to balance the numbers or medic where you'll learn of answers to cure illness, architecture, or more precisely, art, has no definite answer. There is no wrong or right in art as everyone has their own creativity. One could design animal-like building, another could design nature-like, but both are on the right path. The crucial part is whether your right path is acceptable or not, this, the lecturers are there to guide you.

Is not all about drawing buildings

This was my first misunderstanding on architecture. The first two semesters, or at least in UiTM, you'll do sketching and creative works. such as interpreting mood into visual. Only on semester three you'll start learning real architecture, designing building but you'll have to take construction into consideration which might make your imagination design to put in hard work.

To prepare mentally and physically

In architecture you will have to pull an all-nighter (this might apply to all courses) especially when it's nearing to the submission deadline and your design got rejected in the last minute. This is where you have to prepare your physical, your health, as you won't dare to be sick and repeat the semester. Though it sounds like there's no life for architecture students, but hey, we do know how to have fun and we have fun events such as the workshop (click).

Architecture lecturers and seniors are brutal during submission, they'll directly condemn your design like "design kau ni buruk tau tak" in front of the whole class or even tore your drawings. This is why you must not skip the class as in class is where you'll improve your design, gaining help from them before exhibit the drawings on submission day. But bare in mind that these people will help you despite all the sarcasm they spout off.

High cost

When you're in your early year, you'll have to spend money on water colour, drawing tools, model making tools and stuff and they are expensive. When you're in your final year, you'll need to spend money on printing, where one A1 paper costs RM5 but you'll at least spend on 8 A1 papers on every crit session, where there'll be at least 4 crit sessions. But it all depends on you, if you don't waste your money on useless things and hipster cafes every weekend, you'll be okay.

You Must Have Passion

You don't have to be creative or good at sketching as these could improve but passion is the one thing you must hold on to survive architecture. I know that we shouldn't compare the difficulties of different courses but I still think that architecture is a very very very tough course, even to those who have the passion. So passion is the most important thing you must have because at least, when you have the passion, you'll enjoy doing it despite all the struggle.

So there's my two cents on introduction to architecture, I hope it'll help you making the decision of whether to go for architecture or not. But just know that no course is easy or hard, it all depends on your effort.

Till then,
Lya.

When I was a child, I always thought that being an adult was what best define happiness. With tons of money, they could buy whatever they want without the need to whining and begging with puppy eyes to your parents. Not to mention the scolding you get from those actions.

Now that I'm an adult, I know that having money, having the ability to buy whatever you want still couldn't make you happy. Satisfaction, yes, but not happiness.

To me, being happy is the most difficult thing to achieve but it doesn't mean it never happened along my twenty-four years of living. I had my happy moments when I went travelling, when I got my first bike, when I achieved good grades for SPM, when I graduated, well the lists go on and on.

However as I'm older, I find myself desperately searching for living a happy life instead of experiencing happy moments like what I've been through. You know, the feeling of having a positive vibe all day, when you can't stop smiling everyday and keep looking forward for tomorrow. I have yet to live such life.

But I do think that there is no greater happiness than to make someone else happy. I'm blessed to have my family and friends whom I know would always be there for me. I'm the happiest when I got to make these people happy. I'm the happiest when I see the smiles on these people's faces and I would risk anything to make sure those smiles would never fade.

Happiness is subjective, it doesn't have a definite answer to what exactly the meaning is. You would know it when you feel it so it's you who should define your own happiness.

So have you find your definition of happiness?

Till then,
Lya.

There was an incident when I was a child, playing around with my brother and then suddenly an angry cat came and attacked my brother. He was literally on his back on the ground and the cat was clawing on him and I thought he could die from the attack.

I believed that I also was attacked by a cat before, as my parents told me on how I got the scar on my cheek. I can't remember the attack though. To these incidents, I hated cats and as my dad hates them too, my hatred toward this creature only grew stronger. Forgive me but I used to kick or jerkah stray cats to scare them off. That was awful.

Now that I grew older and often visit my uncle who has five cats, I started to love them too. These cats are so cute I can't help but to treat them like a baby, calling them 'sayang' and singing lullaby to them sometimes. 

Do you know that cats show their appreciation to their owner by giving 'present' to them? That's what happened to my uncle. One of his cats happily shoving a dead lizard to him, wanting a pat on the head and another give him a dead rat. It was cute and hilarious at the same time as my uncle ran around the house to avoid the rat but his cat wouldn't stop chasing him until he finally stopped to 'receive' the 'present'.

People please, even if you hate cats, don't treat them badly as they are fellow creature living with us in this world. It hurts me when I saw people simply hurt cats without any guilt, especially to stray cats in restaurants. There's even tons of reports about people poisoning these innocent cats. Just remember that everything you did would get back to you. I reflect on my behavior a lot whenever I see such cruelty.

Now tell me, WHO COULD RESIST THOSE EYES?

Till then,

Lya.

A love-hate relationship is an interpersonal relationship involving simultaneous or alternating emotions of love and hate - something particularly common when emotions are intense - wikipedia

I have a love-hate relationship with architecture, the field I'm in, the job I'm currently doing. We have this relationship waay back when I was in primary school. Since I'm good at drawing, might as well say that I'm the only one who can draw almost perfectly in my class, I've been dreaming of becoming an architect. The three section of 'cita-cita' in the report card, architect was always my first choice, little did I know it'll be one hell of a ride surviving to graduate.

The love and ambition of being an architect grew stronger for the first three semesters during my degree studies as I loved the assignments and all as we basically played with our creativity of sketching, painting and building models. Then came the first crisis on semester four, where we started to learn real architecture, designing spaces and took construction into consideration. That was when I started to hate architecture, I can't see the future of me being an architect as I know now that it'll be a torture.

The table then turned when I started working. I was not an excellent student, I was far from average but working life, the real deal, made me understands architecture deeper so I'm having fun as I love my job. But thinking of continuing master study in architecture suddenly exhausts me even though I'm yet to start, making way for the hate again lol.

Here is my favourite project I did, in semester five, as I got the best grade out of the eight semesters I went through here.

I started blogging in 2010, though it was way back but in 2010 was when I took blogging seriously. I was passionate with blogging back then but somehow I started to lose the passion and neglected the blog. There's even times when I didn't update for months sheesh. 

Honestly, it's only recent that I fall in love in blogging again and the growing love made me think of some changes or improvements I want to do with this blog in the near future.

After quite a long time searching for new template for my blog, I think I finally am satisfied with this newest template I changed, it's Rose Blog Free Version from Gooyaabi Templates. I've been changing my blog template for quite a few times for the past month and hopefully, I won't do any changes for the next year.

I think I need to create a blog title. I find it's nice to have the 'title'-by-'author' blog such as Chapters by Flavnesz, Awesomeness by Nurul Afifah or Funista Life by Jieha Nasir. But since I'm not that creative and too lazy to think, I'm afraid the blog title won't be created in any time sooner. Would you guys be creative enough to suggest me one?

Since I didn't know that it's actually illegal to simply download photos from Google search engine, I should edit my old posts as most of them used such photos. I'll remove those and upload photos I could find in my laptop or simply just use stock photos instead. Aside from the photos, I should edit any posts that I find are lacking. For now, I have reverted such posts to draft and will publish it again after I done editing them. I have no intention to delete any of the posts though.

Finally, I would like to have my own domain name, as that '(dot)com' sounds really good and professional. But since I'm quite preoccupied for now (with work stuff and master preparation) and I don't know how to get the domain (read : still too lazy to search about it), this too might take some time to be done lol. I'll make sure that I get the domain name before ending the year though.

Do you have anything you want to change for your blog?

Till then,

Lya.

Saying hello for my first post in 2017 *clap clap. I think it's still not too late for a New Year wish so, Happy New Year everyone! How did you spend your New Year? I hope you had a great start of 2017.

Almost everyone celebrated new year by enjoying concerts or went to watch fireworks or just watched live tv shows at home. When I thought I'll be one of these people, maan I was being delusional. I suffered severe headache for two days and when the clock finally hits midnight, on new year's eve, I rushed to the toilet, vomited the meals I had earlier.

Well, it definitely wasn't food poisoning as I had home cooked meal during weekend, plus it was headache, not stomachache so I figured the reason for me having such headache was because of stress. I did have lots to do and it pressured me because I had to meet the deadline, which was on Monday. I should learn to relax myself next time I'm under pressure.

Phew, what a nightmare.

Till then,

Lya.