Lily of the Valley

Lily-of-the-valley is one of my favorite flowers. They are so cute and elegant! The scent is magnificent! No wonder many designer brand fragrances are using the scent of this flower in their ingredients. Even though I read that it is not difficult for it to grow, however I rarely see them. I will definitely plant them when I have a garden in the future.

Passport

How cool this is, renewing passport only takes 3 days now. 5 years ago, even though they said it takes 6 months, it took almost 9 months in order for them to send home and back to US.
Now, it only takes 3 days!
The ‘kakak’ (sister in Malay) who is a nice Malay lady is still working there. It’s such a pleasure to see her again, she’s always smiling and she gently reminded me, “lain kali datang awal sikit” (next time come early) Hehehe, they stop accepting application at 12:30pm and I was there 10 minutes before 12pm, but they were very efficient, they took my pictures, thumb prints and processed everything pretty fast and gave me a receipt to pick up my passport in 2 days.

It was nice to see so many Malaysian. And ah…. it’s so nice to hear my name being called correctly…LOL..I think this is the only place that can get my name right so far. American just can’t pronounce my last name, “Ng…where’s the vowel?..” ?!!? End up the easiest and it make sense to them to pronounce it as “Eng”, well, I can live with that, after all I’m too lazy to correct every single person. Then, I found out there’s another way people pronounce it, my Filipino colleagues in the hospital pronounce it as “Nang”… what??! No, not Nang, I corrected them. Then some colleagues came out with “N.G” (sounds like Angie) That’s ok, whatever, N.G. is fine too. and because of my last name, I’m famous in the hospital, Ms. N.G.!!!!

Anyway, here’s a conversation I overheard at the consulate between the clerk and a woman who wants to get her passport or some sort of document so she can go back to Malaysia ASAP.

Woman: Aiyo, I mesti balik loh, mau balik tengok doktor.
Kakak: Ini take some time…
Woman: Tak boleh tunggu lah. Perut saya sakit…mau balik tengok doktor, doktor sini tak bagus lah.
Kakak: @_@ oh, ya ke?
Woman : (she turned to us and said in Cantonese) ng dak la, zhoi ng fan hui, shang cancer dim ah? (but she’s smiling while telling us)
Not that she’s not worried but she’s a happy-go-lucky person. She was able to joke around with everyone.

Translation:
Woman: I have to go home to see the doctor
Clerk: This take some time
Woman: No, I cannot wait. My stomach hurt…I have to go home and let the doctor check, the doctors here are not good
Clerk: Oh, really?
Woman: Cannot…if I don’t go home to check, what if I have cancer?

Hmm….it is just pure joy to have my new passport in hand…
I’m coming home!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thank You

I was clearing up my drawer and saw a little book of mine where I’ve written down some of the meaningful quotes that inspire me. I saw this piece at the nurses station during my final semester’s clinical rotation. I like it very much because I can relate to it.

“Happiness keep you sweet
Trials keep you strong
Sorrows keep you human
Failures keep you humble
Success keep you glowing
But only GOD keep you going.”

(Picture was taken at the Longwood Garden, Pennsylvania.)

Without struggles, I may not have learned to be strong and be endurance but without happiness and success, I may not look back and feel grateful that I’ve come a long way. Thank You for everything…

The weekend at the Hampton

This trip of mine to Amagansett, Long Island was 2 weekends ago. I was busy and haven’t been able to talk about it.
Amagansett is next to East Hampton, both are places of the wealthy living in New York, they usually have their mansion or beautiful cottage in this part of Long Island.

Since I was there for my training, hubby thought it would be nice to meet me there and travel to Montauk together to see the light house, that’s at the very end of the island. And it’s just another 40 minutes to Montauk from East Hampton.
It’s really beautiful over there, I heard about Montauk a long time ago and we were talking about going there but we never been able to drag ourselves to travel there because it’s a 3 hours drive from New York City to the end of Long Island.
However, due to the limited time and it was pretty chilly, we didn’t spend that much time in the East Hampton but I will be going back there in the summer and we’ll share more of the pictures of the beautiful East Hampton.

This is part of East Hampton, it’s very quiet and peaceful. It reminds me of Europe.

On our way to the light house at Montauk.

Here’s the light house at Montauk, Long Island.

I think hubby’s photography skill has improved a lot.

We wanted to get closer to the water but it was very windy and chilly that Easter morning.

I was collecting some beautiful stones and pebbles, they are so round and polished.

And we will be back in the summer when the weather is much warmer…

My friend got up early in the morning and cut these daffodils from the garden for me before I left. They were lovely on my dinning table.