a fresh 2009

During the last month of 2008,
I had three different roles in different conflicts in life.

First, I was the bad person and I lose friends,
after unintentionally hurting them by my jokes, complaints, and comments.

Then, on the next few weeks,
I was the observer who watched a group of friends avoiding one particular person,
after he gave hurtful remarks to the rest of the whole group.

Finally, soon after that,
I became the person who is directly affected by the complaints and ramblings of a friend.

Looking into that, I pondered on the lessons that were given to me.
I realized that gossiping is not the best way to settle things.
It kills relationships, and it sustains the bad image of the victim of the gossip.

I also learnt that friendship is a two way thing.
Just as much as I need the acknowledgement from my friends,
I myself should appreciate them and take care of their delicate feelings.
Such a little joke or comment or even useless ramblings, would make someone else upset.

Recently I and my new bunch of friends spent the 1st of January at the beach in Port Dickson. There were so many people at Teluk Kemang, so we opted for Tanjung Tuan instead.

I was unofficially elected to decide on the theme and program of the picnic, so I said that everyone may wear green top- to celebrate a fresh new year, to appreciate the environment, and also true friendship.



I bought eight lunch boxes, and I gave them one each, as a step to encourage people to use a long lasting container rather than using non bio-degradable polystyrene that would harm the nature and animals that would accidentally eat it.

After that, I passed small cards to everyone, and we had a nice time writing about the good things that we appreciate about all the members of the group.

These cards were compiled together and handed to the particular person that we write about- as a celebration of him as a friend.





In life, we always talk about the disadvantages of our friends, and things that needed to be improved on, but we have forgotten to acknowledge and appreciate the advantages of our dear friends. That very activity was a chance to acknowledge everybody.

Then of course we jumped into the sea!!

It was memorable.