A good friday indeed

Blessed Friday everyone!!!

Church was awesome today. Loved the non-conventional Good Friday service: no long preaching, instead heartfelt testimonies, acoustic music, and beautiful backdrop. My favourite part was when Jared asked everyone to write a sin down on a piece of paper and nailed it to the cross. Literally. We lined up, took a hammer and nailed our "sins" to the cross.

The cross bearing all our sins.

One of the paintings painted during service.

Another artwork.

***

Some random photos from frequent unicol visits. Heh.

Sarah S. and Ah Chan.

A very huggable Ah Chan. No I'm not harassing him.

Cute!

Currently revamping my wardrobe. I have far too many casual clothes! Making space for the corporate ones... I gave back my Domino's uniform today with a heavy heart, half of me is happy to leave the fast food scene, half of me is wanting back a fun job where I can be surrounded by food all the time. =( Oh well it does take time to get used to a new job. Right?

Lights will guide you home

This dance is REMARKABLE.

100% top notch.

And I'm not even a "dance person". Given the choice of watching a dance or listening to a song being played, I'd always choose the latter.

Anyway, I saw this on TV last week and fell in love with it.


Beautiful, isn't it? I hope they win the competition (So you think you can dance OZ).

***

Easter weekend's here! *squeals with joy*

No more work until Wednesday! Time to work on the assignments, and have fun during the slumber party! =)

Me, the office lady

The busier I get, the less I blog.

Funny how this is the exact opposite when I was still back in high school, sitting for SPM and blogging 3 times a day. The new me, a 3rd year uni student just about blogs once fortnightly.

A lot of changes had happened in the past few weeks. I just started enjoying being part of the Domino's crew (free food, crazy/fun people, free rides home etc) when I got a call from Recruitments Agency. Earlier on, I applied for a data entry job at ACC through the agency and even sat for a computer test. I had gotten good results, but was just one day late as all the temps had been employed. So that's why I took up the offer at Domino's.

About the call. I was told there was an opening at another department at ACC. I thought: this is THE opportunity I'd been waiting (and praying) for all along! I didn't waste time deciding at all; an appointment with my current manager was set. The bonus is of course, the awesome pay. I'm getting more than the usual minimum pay, which is good. Part of it covers the fact that I have to now walk 40 mins to Otago House. Oh, will need more corporate clothes too. Sigh, now I have to think of a way to deal with my 15-or so pairs of jeans.

So yea that's the GREAT news. No more fast food restaurant/motel cleaning jobs. Now it feels good to say that I work for a big, respected corporation. teehee. Downside is, it's just plain boring. Nothing interesting at all about data entry: sitting in front of a computer, entering data from hundreds/thousands of forms. To cure boredom, I bring along my faithful iPod. But still, the good parts exceed the bad, and it's nice to break the habit. I think sometimes I get too comfortable doing the same old things that I feel bad or even scared venturing into the new, so this is a good chance for me to prove myself, even if it's working 20 hours a week and trying to juggle studies at the same time.

Be careful in what you pray for; you might just get it! :P

A time of celebration

Birthdays are always so fun. =)

I have no idea why so many people choose to have babies during Feb and March. Planning birthday parties/surprises and spending money on presents can get pretty tiring. heh. From mid February til today, there has been more than 10 birthday celebrations. Which means hundreds, who knows even thousands of text messaging and yapping around asking for plans for surprises.

I had never really enjoyed a meaningful, worth remembering birthday when I was in Malaysia. Well, except for once when my friends bought pizzas to school and had it smuggled in thanks to my biology teacher. But that's about it. The presents are predictable: decorative things, cheap jewelery, cards, and the occasional funny gifts from aunties etc. Nothing special stood out.

Everything changed when I came here. Apart from my 18th which I spent very miserably in Christchurch, the past 2 years have been too awesome for words. =) My last birthday was the best so far: my friends compiled home-made, silly, yet very touching videos and made a movie for me. I also got the most expensive gift ever: a brand new ipod nano 3G with personalised engraving! Most importantly, I was just lost for words at how blessed I am to have such great friends. :)

Getting a bit emotional here. Hehe.

Anyway. I wanted to make the point that the birthday presents and surprises are upgrading every single year. From the basic cards and cakes, we're now buying each other cameras, cell phones, expensive mp3 players, game consoles, etc. And from just the basic midnight surprise with a cake, we'd even gone to the extent of organising treasure hunts, beach bonfires plus mafia nights, surprise potluck dinners, and dinner at fancy restaurants. Who would believe that students can afford to do all these? The downside is, we're running out of original ideas for birthday surprises...

Getting to the point of this blog post...

You're 21, Yan!!!

So glad that you're my flatmate this year. Gosh, it is really random thinking back about how we managed to get you to sign the lease. Hehe. You bring a certain kind of joy that no one else can, and I can't help but to smile/laugh along with you as yours is soooooo incredibly contagious. =D

Seems so empty without any photos. Will upload some soon.

Scam alert

Lighthouse Fellowship's first ever meeting this year was held last night. New flat, new faces, new testimonials to show how much God has blessed us! We had expected about 27 people to show up, but some couldn't make it. It was great, nonetheless, with about 20 people turning up (it is a LARGE number for a humble cell group which started out with just 5 or 6 people just 2 years ago). We're like a mini-church now!

I received a very dodgy phone call yesterday. I'm about 99.9% sure that it's a scam.

Lady on the phone with weird American accent: Hello, Miss Choooo-ah?
Me: Er. Yes...?
LOTPWWAA: Do you do international callings?
Me: Yes... sometimes.
LOTPWWAA: Where do you normally call to?
Me: (hah. I'll just play along here) US.
LOTPWWAA: Oh good. I'm calling from Global Telelinks, are you interested in our super cheap prepaid calling phone cards? The rate to call from NZ to US is blah blah per minute. blah blah blah about free minutes blah blah.
Me: ...
LOTPWWAA: ...do you have a Mastercard or Visacard?
Me: (holds the receiver away to laugh) Oh, I'm afraid I don't have one.
LOTPWWAA: (silence. a very faint sigh can be heard) How about a debit card?
Me: (hah. not gonna work, lady) Yes, I have applied for one but it's still processing, might take a few weeks before I actually get it.
LOTPWWAA: (another awkward silence)
Me: How about if I get your bank account number to do an internet banking transfer?
LOTPWWAA: Huh?
Me: (repeats question at least 3 times)
LOTPWWAA: Oh. Ok. The account number is 262-XXXXXX-M.
Me: Is this a NZ bank? (obviously NOT since no NZ bank code starts with 262 and ends with a letter)
LOTPWWAA: Yesssssss.
Me: Hmm. But I'll need to know which bank it is...
LOTPWWAA: It doesn't matter... blah blah blah.
Me: So how much does it cost?
LOTPWWAA: NZD25 for XX hours, but I'll recommend the 50 dollar one for longer hours.
Me: (RIGHT) Ok, I'll go for the 50 dollar one then.
LOTPWWAA: So I'll call back in a week's time to check if the payment has gone through.
Me: Sure. No problem. Oh just out of interest, where are you calling from?
LOTPWWAA: Philippines.
Me: Ooooooo. So where did you get my number?
LOTPWWAA: (obviously not so smart as she gave this info away) From the NZ phonebook! (sounds quite excited as well)
Me: I see. You sound quite young...
LOTPWWAA: Yes, I'm only 18!
Me: (very surprised) Wow. You know, actually I have a friend from the Philippines!
LOTPWWAA: REALLYYYY? (very excited and high-pitched)
Me: Yes. I know some words, eg. selamat
LOTPWWAA: Wow! chatter chatter chatter...

And so we ended up talking like old friends. I never ever would have thought I would befriend a tele-scammer.

I had no idea how I managed NOT to laugh the whole time.

How random is that?

I checked out the website that she told me about, click here. Looks like a proper company to me, but who knows what people can do to make things believable these days. One more thing: as shown on the website, it's based in the US, so why call from the Philippines all the way to NZ to get customers? Isn't international calling expensive? Ah, the irony of it: a company selling prepaid phone cards calling me (playing along with the scam to get their phone bill up teehee yes I'm a bit cruel I know).

But it's sad, really. An 18 year old girl in this industry. Does she even know that she's not doing the right thing? Based on my personal judgment, she's not particularly smart (or could be just new at work), having gave out information like WHERE she is and HOW she got my number. Professional scammers would have known I'm not falling for it and was interrogating them.

Apparently this is not the first time. My flatmate got a call last week about her winning a lottery prize for a holiday to Hawaii. And when she told Mr Scammer about not having a credit card, he just hung up the phone. The funny thing was, he was looking for a Miss Chooo-ah (is a surname that hard to pronounce? it's CHUA, people), but my flatmate answered it, her surname being very similar to mine.

Now I'm wondering if my name even got listed on the phone directory. And even if it is, how did someone from another country got hold of a NZ phonebook?

Ah, the funny things in life ;P