Slice Of Life #247 - Chinese New Year - Tuesday, January 28th, 2020

    "Thank you very much," I told one of my relatives, accepting a red packet from him. I added the red packet to my pile of red packets.
    I was in Ipoh, my dad's hometown to celebrate Chinese New Year. I liked Chinese New Year, not only because I got red packets, but also because it also allowed me to rest. It also gave me extra time to do homework (which, honestly, doesn't really apply to me because I complete all my homework before Chinese New Year to avoid having to do homework during holidays like this).
    I also loved going back to Ipoh, as I got to go eat at amazing vegan restaurants that have things (such as cakes) that are vegan that cannot (or are hard to) be found in Selangor.
    Unfortunately, this year, we only had 3 days (including the weekend) of holidays because of Chinese New Year (sad), which didn't allow me to go back to Ipoh for too long.
    I like to open my red packets after Chinese New Year, which means that I have to wait for 18 more days before I can open the red packet - which is really testing my patience. For now, that's what I'm gonna' do. Wait for 18 days to pass until I can finally open my red packets. That's all for now!

Slice Of Life #246 - Badminton - Tuesday, January 14th, 2020

    I smashed the ball hard, then took two steps to the middle of the court. I turned quickly and ran towards the net to hit a drop shot. Then, I turned again and repeated the same thing.
    I was at my badminton class. My teacher was a person who used to play doubles for the Malaysian team. "Come on!" He urged me. "Keep going!"
    I was taking badminton lessons more frequently now, especially because my teacher wanted to train up my skills in certain areas because he thought that I had the potential to train in his "elite group". Today, he was training my ability to react to drop shots and hit the ball to the back of the court to try and make the opponent run.
    My badminton coach's goal for me was to hit 20 consecutive shots running back and forth, but I had passed that goal by a lot, as I was already at 80 shots. I breathed short, shallow breaths as I ran back and forth, clutching my badminton racket.
    Time flew as I hit the ball again and again. Finally, I managed to get to 150 consecutive shots before my coach stopped me. "Great job," He said.
    I grinned from ear to ear. I had done it.

Slice Of Life #245 - Happy New Year! - Tuesday, January 7th, 2020

    I know that this title would have been better last week, but last week, I happened to be in China, where I couldn't access Google, so I couldn't slice. I currently am sitting at the dining table, eating my breakfast. I'm eating it later now because it's the holidays and I'm waking up later (not really a good thing), so I'm eating later. My mom's made pretty good pasta for me to eat this morning, but the drink tastes pretty bad because she put some turmeric in it (just trying new things).
    China was pretty fun. I got to go to Lijiang and Kunming, where there was lots of beautiful scenery every time we turned a corner. I managed to get some pretty good photos because of the good scenery there. In Lijiang, I got to go to the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain and the Black Dragon Pool (see picture above).

This picture wasn't taken by me, but I had taken an almost identical one from the same place. The picture here is taken from the Black Dragon Pool, a national park in China. If you look closely, you can see the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain covered with snow looming in the distance.

    In Kunming, I got to go see the Stone Forest, which basically is a forest of stone, if you look at the picture below. We spent a whole day there before leaving to go back to Malaysia. The stone forest used to be located in an ocean, but the water from the ocean caused the rock to erode and eventually, the rocks started to look like this (with some help from tectonic plates, of course). In some places in the forest, you still can see some lakes and fallen rocks due to earthquakes, making the Stone Forest a really interesting place.

This is the bird's eye view of Stone Forest, although not all places in the forest are like that. There are lots of very interesting places in this stone forest, and I hope that you have a chance to go there sometime!

    Well, this pretty much wraps up what I have to say this week. Bye!