Road Trip to the North!

I was planning to blog about @p, but the pace of life have picked up again, and in a couple of hours, I'll be off to Taiping and Penang. So can't write much now, as I've just began to pack :P

See you in a few days! ^^

Solitude

is the name of this blogger skin. I love it! :)

Found their site through April, and now fixing it up beginning with the 'about me' post which is the previous post and now linked at the navigation panel up there.

And this site even thought me how to upload a blogger skin without having to redo all my widgets! :D Previously, I'd save each widget individually, then reload them again manually.

Next, will be mah wishlist :D Which I decided to do not too long ago but haven't actually gotten round to doing it!

About the Ayinpire

As the address of the blog says:

Ayin is me.

Ayinpire is one of my newest online nickname, which ain't that new anymore. But it's uniquely me. Unlike my old yet still active kittenz. Sometimes paired with numbers, either 747 and 23. Well, this is the online me.

In the real world, I'm also known as Naz. Short for Nazreen. Let me explain about Naz and Ayin, since it's one of the mind bogglers to many about my identity. My family calls me Ayin, a nickname I acquired before I can even remember. The story is that, I could not pronounce my real name and kept on saying Ayin, and my dear family decided to call me just that.

As I grew up with my big brother myuu sailing the Optimist (yea, those times!), sailor-people who knew my family then knew me as Ayin. So in the sailing world, I'm Ayin.

However, academic-wise, at all levels except my degree, I was known as Naz. All the way from primary school, secondary school and then my first university where I did my diploma (which in Malaysia is somewhat between pre-uni and a bachelor's degree).

Yet it was during my diploma days, where online gaming and networking started to grow on me. Even though I've been exposed to the internet when it was nothing but dial-up, irc and playsite (where my first ever username online was paw) at an early age, it was now that I started to expand my network through online games, beginning with neopets (yes, I would readily admit it :P). I still enjoy mmorpgs better, but they're just too time consuming now. But anyway, back to the 'topic', in the online world, I'm Ayin.

This carried forward into my bachelor days in UNSW. My housemates called me Ayin because that's what was written on my messenger. It caught on to those people around and close us housemates, but not far enough to my coursemates. So I was half-half known as Ayin and Naz there.

Now that I've started working, my colleagues call me Naz. As that's how I'm introduced to people around there. However, there are some people in my office who has been introduced to me as Ayin from my uni days, so, it causes some confusion in others. xD

So that's the story of Ayin :)

I respond to Naz, Nazreen and Ayin equally well that I wouldn't notice at all if you switched calling me between Naz and Ayin.

What about ayinpire? I bite. So Ayin + Vampire = Ayinpire.

Stress and Moodyness don't mix well

Today's a good day.

But not yesterday, not the day before. And a couple of days before that too. I had a mix of being stressed out and moody at the same time. And moody here is pretty much being at that snappy kind of person who gets annoyed so easily at small things.

Moody is that time of the month.

For some funny reason I'm not moody today.

So far so good.

missed gym. work. lunch with awesome ppl. work. PRIME. drop by the shop for onions and garlic. cooked dinner. dinner. blog

now with Miss April uploading a new blog template, I wants one too! :D

She's mah super cool colleague, whom I speak lolspeak with almost on a daily basis. Posted aboutz me once too :o I certainly wanna return the honour someday. This post definitely is not enough.

Nevertheless, even on good days, things can still go blah. But when it's a good day, it's a good day, where small things do not annoy you. Today's small thing that I can recall is my car's hand break not working :P It won't go up.

Hmm I have a bunch of random stuff in this post :D

BiO. Now HERE's the climb.

Back in Office.

I reckon that the remaining rest of the year, and the year ahead, will be a steep learning curve for me. Now I'm onward into attempting to finish my research paper the best I can, then there's some fill-in-the-job for someone who's leaving my team to further her studies (wishing her the best of luck and best wishes!), and then there's the Annual Report and Financial Stability Reports coming.

As for details about sailing.. Having two regattas back to back, my memory has jumbled itself up. When someone asks, 'how did it go?', I am unsure on which regatta to describe. 'Did i win?' is also.. subjective.

So I'm prolly not gonna describe about my experience and adventure until someone asks me about something which is 'blog-worthy' in my opinion :P

Here's my silliness from a few months back for not applying sunblock on some skin :P

Yes, it hurt. :P

Does reality bite?

It's a Sunday. And tomorrow is a work day.

It's been two weeks since I've been in the office, and away sailing. Now on this fine Sunday morning, I've just completed my laundry, and currently settling my bills. My credit card bill is > 1k.

Sailing can indeed be expensive. Thankfully the charges came mostly from the first regatta, and I had sponsors for the match racing the following week. So anyone looking for sails, do checkout Quantum Sails ;D They're amazing! Our team got some of the nifty items from this page:

• Q Short Sleeve Cotton Tee Shirts
• Small Sailcloth Duffel Bag

Thanks to Ai Li for the photo!

The expenses incurred during the Raja Muda includes and not limited to:

• Accommodation @ Pangkor & Penang
• Entry fee (RM300)

What other expenses did I incur during the month besides the usual phone bills and such? Car servicing: RM400

Nevertheless, I am thankful :)

I can afford it ;p

Back to 'normal life'

I arrived back in KL about 5 hours ago, and just finished unpacking most of my stuff.

By this time, I've pretty much forgot stuff that happened, whatever it may be, during the Raja Muda Regatta :P

Anyhow, updates later, I'm now gonna enjoy my loooovely own bed!

When the night has come

"Stand by me" was the one song that I kept thinking off while I sailed through the night. Especially the part 'when the night has come, and the land is dark'.

There's so much to tell about the Raja Muda Race that I participated in, but being a no good story-teller, I've no idea how to tell it in a non-boring way. So here goes anyway.

The facts first:

• There's three main passages to race. Port Klang - Pangkor Island - Penang Island - Langkawi Island
• In all three passage races, we started off around 1 pm.
• We arrived in Pangkor Island at about 8 am the following day, Penang Island about 4 am the following day, and Langkawi at about 9.30 pm the same day (yay)
• I sailed in a Hunter 49 boat
• I threw up a total of 4 times: thrice on the first passage, once on the second, and none on third!
  

One thing for sure, is that I learned a LOT from my first offshore racing. I really don't know if I'll do this again. Not next year for sure. Nevertheless, I certainly do not regret going for it.

To be continued...

Here we go!

Just waiting for Rudy to come by in about 35 mins, while eating my breakfast and doing some quick browsing around the internet before I'm offline for a week.

Then fly back to attend BNM's annual dinner (50th anniversary, woohoo!) and then fly off to Terengganu Sunday morning (22nd) for match racing! (my first match racing competition, whee!)

Last night, I didn't sleep soundly. I guess the nervousness has turned into more of excitement now. Really can't wait to experience this off-shoreness stuff.

Off we go!

When's the last time I've been as nervous as this?

Next weekend (14th onwards), I'll be in a big race. It's gonna be my first off shore racing, and definitely will be racing through the night. I've already started dreaming about it when I sleep at night.

I'm so damn nervous about it.

Kinda sad that after all these years sailing, I've only started keelboat sailing this year. The sailing I did in Syd, even tho it has a keel, still felt more like a dinghy. (A very fun one that is! Wish they'd be available in Malaysia someday)

I'm quite anxious too, to get started. Part of the reason I'm rather nervous is that last I heard, there's only six crew altogether on board manning a 49ft yacht. Shifts? Perhaps none =p I reckon there'll be more people tho!

I remember while in Sydney, since training was from 4 to about 7 pm, I get a little nervous as the day starts to darken, and we're still out on the waters. Now I'll be sailing through the night!

Yet after this experience, I'm certainly eager to do more offshore racing. It feels like I'm 'completing' my being a sailor somewhat!