Before (when it was brand new and wasn’t damaged and cracked):

After:

I’m pretty chuffed with it. Not bad for a car that’s almost 20 years old.

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I’ve been noticing a trend lately especially since Instagram came onto the scene and that is girls really like taking photos of themselves and then uploading them. And it’s predominantly a girl thing. I can say that because I follow guys on my Instagram and they don’t post any many pictures of themselves as the girls do. I don’t know about male celebrities *cough*selinalovessungkangtoomuch*cough but between regular guys and girls? The girls win.

Before the invention of the “like”, to be creepy takes effort. You have to leave enough comments like “OMG you are so beautiful!”, “Wow, marry me!”, or “No seriously. Marry me” before you creep someone out. Now with “like”, being creepy is effortless. It’s an impulsive and spontaneous thing. You see something you like? You “like” it. Tap-tap. Done! Omg she’s so hot.

Seriously though? What’s with all the toilet selfies?

The question then becomes: how many times can you like a girl’s selfies before it becomes creepy? I asked this question on my Facebook and I got only two answers. Thanks Facebook friends! My cousin JC says so long as she keeps posting them, one should keep liking them because that’s what they really want. Attention and lots of it. Which is kinda true.

I like this x1000

And Selina says one does it until she blocks you. Which is a non-answer. Thanks Sel!

(source: People of Walmart)

Wahahahah! Ok so back to the question. How many “likes” does a stalker make? To understand that, one needs to question why a girl uploads photos and photos of herself for everyone to see. It is to fish for compliments is it not? So it’d behoove us, the audience to clap and approve, right? So my answer is, it’s never too creepy to “like” if she likes people looking at her.

I will leave you with a sub-genre of the selfie: the flexing selfie. Hey girls, never stop doing what you do. Ya-yer.

(pictures are from all over the Internet)

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One of the stops on the cruise was Tauranga. There’s a famous beach town called Mount Maunganui in the area but we merely drove past it (v. pretty with lotsa nice houses) because we were set to visit Hobbiton, the sheep farm/set where they shot the LoTR and Hobbit movies. It was about an hour and a half drive away from the port.

Our guide at Hobbiton told us that one reason Peter Jackson chose this specific area to shoot the movies was that for large swaths of it, you do not see any roads or power and telephone lines. This photo that I took on the way there shows this to be true.

Sheep farming is THE industry in this area.

Obligatory tourist shots.

The place is spectacular.

But we were told that a lot of things were not real. Like this tree above Bag End. Apparently all the leaves were painstakingly stuck onto the iron tree frame by film students from the area.

Going there and back to the port took us a good part of the only day we have at this place but it was well worth it.

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I once liked a crazy girl but it didn’t eventuate into anything because spoiler alert, she was crazy. My friends told me after that it was just as well that nothing came out of it because they knew right away that it wasn’t going to work out, and even if it did I would have hated myself for getting into it. That’s the thing about having a crush or being in love with someone, you develop tunnel vision and become fixated on what you like about the person and nothing else. There’s no balance and you are not objective about it.

Even if my friends had said something, I would have probably brushed it off. Even if I knew in the back of my head that what they were saying was true, I would have stuck it out anyway because “I wanted to find out for myself”.

On the other hand, a relationship that seem totally wrong to you can work for the people involved. Unless there’s blatant abuse in it, who are we to criticise what makes them happy? Some people like being in dysfunctional relationships and the excitement and variety that they bring. Some people like their relationships to be a roller-coaster ride. Sooner or later, they would want to get off the ride but until then they are thrilled and they are happy.

And there are people who choose looks, finances, status and stability over everything else, and they are happy for it. To boil it down even further, money works for women and looks work for men.

We are all different. We all find different ways to be happy and they are all very valid.

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Our ship docked at Wellington early on a Sunday morning.

What struck me immediately about Wellington as the capital city of New Zealand was that it felt slightly more alive than our own capital city, Canberra.

Even though parts of it look just like any other Australian city, it seems so much more nicer and interesting. Or perhaps it was just visitor bias.

It was definitely enhanced by the beautiful waterfront.

On the day I saw kids diving off various piers. The above is the bigger one and this was what they were diving into.

And at another spot, more diving.

We didn’t have enough time so we took a very brisk stroll around the national museum – Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. But from the little that I saw, I knew this was a great museum. So if you are vising Wellington, block out at least an hour or so to visit it.

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The saying goes that if you don’t expect anything, you will never be disappointed. That’s a very pessimistic view of life but paradoxically it can also be the one that gives you the most joy. Take your friends. Everyone has a core group of friends that they can count on one hand, or two hands if they are lucky. These are the ones that you usually expect the most of, the ones that you know you can count on to lift you up whenever you needed it.

Then there are friends who are great for having fun and partying with but you don’t really expect much out of them. Although they are fair weather friends they can still serve a purpose in your life. They occupy the more frivilous parts of your life. They are like fast food – not the best nutritionally but satisfying in the short term so long as you know that that’s what they are.

Don’t expect them to lend you money, go out of their way to do favours for you, or are truly genuine when they are around you, and you will never be disappointed. To expect more is pointless.

The trick is to know which type of friends are which but like everything else in life, it gets easier with experience. And if you are really lucky, your genuine friends are also the ones you have the most fun with.

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In the game of courtship the potential for miscommunication and misunderstandings is high. There will be times when the girl doesn’t know a guy likes her that way and the guy can’t tell if she’s really into him or if she just enjoys his company, which will lead to the inevitable confession and question, “Do you feel the same way about me?” And unlike the movies, chances are that she really just enjoys his company and conversation and nothing else.

So now she has to reject him. If he had only been less clueless and realised early on that he won’t get into her pants anytime soon and not stuck his neck out like that. But here we are. To most girls’ credit, they will choose to use the soft rejection by saying “I hope we can still be friends”. Which sounds so much like bullshit because it is – once a guy wants to be more than just friends, he can’t go back to just being friends – but it is the nice way of letting someone down.

And praise be to the subset of the nice girls above, who after rejecting you nicely, can still manage to be around you and not be all awkward about it. I know these girls exist because I know such a girl. But you know what? Some guys cannot handle that and it is better to just yank that band-aid in one swift albeit painful motion, so to speak.

These same guys cannot be left in the friend zone thinking that they still have a shot. And with these same guys, it is probably best that you reject them in the most cold and blunt way possible. You cannot offer them a single sliver of hope because these are the ones who think persistence works even though we all know that it rarely does.

Luckily for the rest of us, even though we may sometimes think of our female friends in a sexual way (come on we’re guys, we are just wired like that) we wouldn’t give up the friendships that we have with our female friends because man, how dull would it be if all our friends were other dudes?!

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I won’t bore you with much of it so here are some of my favourite shots of the day.

These pics show you how it looks like from the upper decks.

The Ooi clan, minus me.

Going back out to sea after the last sounds of the day.

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The tumour hadn’t spread so Snoop does not need further surgery or chemo.

The post Snoop doesn’t need chemo :) appeared first on Mooiness!.

I knew dogs can get cancer but somehow it never crossed my mind to stop Snoop from lying under the sun for all of the 12 years that I’ve had him. He was always a dog that loved the sun – he loved it so much that my mom nicknamed him “The Aussie Dog”.

It was a mistake of course, to think that slip slop slap does not apply to dogs. Around late November, I spotted what I thought was a bloody pimple around his groin. It started out small and then gradually bigger, till one day it started weeping blood. I won’t gross you out any further except to say that it burst and left an open sore. I thought it was just a skin thing so I kept it clean and dab on a little bit of Dettol every day.

Then I left for my holidays in late January and had to leave him in a boarding kennel for 3 weeks. When I got back the open sore was worse. I made him wear a cone whenever he’s indoors which stopped him licking it constantly. That allowed the sore to close up a little but its size never reduce. Two weeks later I took him to the vet and was told that it is skin cancer and it should be cut out immediately.

The night before the day of the surgery I took a closer look and found three other little reddish bumps that looked suspicious. These were cut out along with the big one. The tumour is currently being analysed to see if he will need chemo, in case the thing had spread. Fingers crossed!

Here’s him after I got him home from the vet.

All this means that I can’t leave him outside alone anymore – he just loves the sun too much. But yeah, learn from my lesson and don’t let your dog lay under the sun too much especially when the sun is at its hottest and strongest. Also, I can’t emphasise the importance of pet insurance enough – this op to cut out the tumour and the lab work to analyse it cost me around $1000. With my pet insurance I should get about 50-60% of it back.

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