Cheap merchandise is not good?

By:

Marini Mohd Thaib

            “Kalah Membeli Menang Memakai” is a proverb that shows it is worth to pay with a lot of money for something that is so in good quality. People will spend money for something good doesn’t matter for items, services, food or anything. Why is that some items/services/food are expensive? It is because it made from the quality sources, established branding, it is hard to do it and so many reasons.

            How about if you can buy something with a same usage but with the cheaper price? Maybe some of them will not having faith to pay for low quality stuff, at least that is what they are thinking of. I believe in needfulness rather than desire. Why we need to pay more for something that we can get with a low price? And yes…again people will say good things=expensive and low quality things=cheap but for me as long as we can have the same impact of using that thing no matter the price is, it should be no problem with me. Well, of course it is depending of what you are comparing of. For an instance, my friends love to buy food container with Tupperware brand. For me it is super expensive. A small container can cost about RM40++ and it can archive to hundreds ringgit for a set. I can have the same food container with the lower price as low as RM2. My food is still in a good condition and the food container is in a good shape for a long period.

            Second example is apparels. My friends spend so much money to buy branded handbags. My handbag is cheaper than theirs but my handbag can last in years without any damage. See…branded items can’t give you guarantee that they can have a “long life”. As time goes by they will fade like the cheap items too. So why pay for more? Another example, my friends love to buy  “batik” to make as “baju kurung”. It can cost you hundreds. Well, ask yourself, why we need cloth? So that we can cover ourselves, right? It is enough for me to find something nice to look but cheap as long as it can cover my huge body. A watch…it can show us time…so I don’t need an expensive watch to do that to me. I am using Casio and I still thinking it is quite expensive for me. Well, a lot of people will argue with my opinion. We need to pay more for a good stuff.  I agree with you. Maybe I don’t have so much money to buy the extravaganza things so buying a cheaper thing is the only choice that I have.

            However, they are a few of things that we need to consider of the price with high quality. I will not doubt that. For an instance…shoes. We need a pair of good shoes to support our body because our feet need to absorb our weight body and we need our feet to walk around. So we need to consider high quality shoes with higher price. There a lot of other examples not to mention here.

            It is up to you to spend more money for certain purposes. You can do anything with your money. It is none of my business. My concern is, why spending so much money on things that you can get with a lower price? Self-satisfaction? To show off? I don’t know. You are the only one who know the answer.

            Buying things that you need is a result of your hard work, buying things that you desire is a reward of your hard work. Which one is yours?

Status that should posted in FB but I didn't dare to do it...My hopes are gone

By:

Marini Mohd Thaib

I went to see a doctor last Friday and had a scan to confirm that whether I am pregnant or not since it has been 4 months I didn't get my period. The result was negative. My heart was crushed and I felt devastated. That's it. I am done. I don't feel to try anymore. I need time to gain my strength. For the time being I want to focus on my weight loss. No more thinking of TTC anymore. Maybe in July I will continue my treatment. 

This is my first time I am being open about my feelings. I never mention about my feelings of not having a child to strangers. Well, nobody is reading my blog any way so I don't mind to share it worldwide. 

Keep trying Mar although you are losing hope now and then. Allah has a good plan for you. He knows what is the best for you. Have a faith on Him!

Still hoping

By:

Marini

            It has been six years I have been married to my husband but there is no sign of any child. In the third year of marriage we had decided to seek for help so we went to LPPKN in Kuala Lumpur to ensure the problems we might have. After a few months of waiting for the result, the doctor diagnosed me as lack of progesterone hormone meaning that my ovum is not producing the “seed” at all while my husband’s sperms are normal (in a superb condition). In the other hand, I am barren or cannot have child on my own. Fortunately, today’s technology is advance and can help women like me to conceive.

            To make a long story short, it has been 2 years my husband and I are doing the treatment in LPPKN. I am sorry because I cannot tell the details about how the doctor treats me. I don’t remember what medicine that I took. I did my first IUI in 2013 but unfortunately that procedure failed. So I stopped the treatment almost in 2 years. It is not that I am losing hope but it just that I need to focus on my career.

            I have decided to continue my treatment in this year but I cannot proceed because I am late for almost 3 months. I have to wait for my period menstrual to appear. I never experience this late before. I had checked UPT five times already but the results remain negative. I am almost losing hope but as many as I read, I found out that there are many people around the world having such problem but they are still get pregnant. In some other cases, they still had period menstrual cycle every month but still get pregnant too. In conclusion, there is still hope as long as Miss P is not appearing.

            Not having a child until now is very stressful. I am sad, yes, I am.  I know my husband is upset too but he knows how to hide his feelings.  Fortunately, I am so lucky because my family and my husband’s family never mention about this. People around me also stop asking me that heart-broken-question. So, I am so grateful. I live my life to the fullest. Not having a child is not the indicator that I am not happy with my life…with my husband. We are happy. I am the one who need to define my happiness. I am distracting myself from this problem by doing what I love to do, scrapbooking and reading. I am so lucky because I am surrounded with friends who are very supportive and they always guide me to look at the bright side. I will keep my mind positive. I believe that Allah knows what is the best for me. He has a great plan for me. I just need to keep praying, keep hoping and keep trying. I believe in miracles. Hopefully, my dream will come true someday. 

Scrapbooking helps me to release my tense.

By:

Marini Mohd Thaib

Everyone has hobbies. Most of us choose a simple hobby to kill the time like watching movie, reading, baking, cooking and so on but many people also choose an artsy thing as a hobby like drawing, painting, crafting and etc.  Scrapbooking is my new hobby right now other than reading. Reading will be my number one hobby, nothing can beat that. 

I am not a creative person (although many people tell me so)… I am not even talented in drawing and painting so it is hard for me actually to scrapbooking. What I can tell about myself when it goes into artsy thing, I am quite good with combining scrap papers into something very nice and I call it as a scrapbooking. It is all about making messy with pattern or colored papers and come out with a cool designs and decorations.

Nothing has to be perfect when scrapbooking, you can do whatever you want to do. Well, scrapbook is from scrap papers after all. When I was young, I like to keep pattern and colored papers even though it was a small piece of paper. I love to collect recycle wrapping papers also. I started to collect cheap embellishments when I was in secondary school. However, I am starting doing scrapbooking recently but why now? It is because the time has come for me to show my ability to scrapbooking. Last time, I didn’t have enough money to buy art materials because they are so expensive. My art collections were so lame. So I have decided to have a good and quality art materials so I have started buying these things such as Big Shot (so expensive…RM500) , dies (also very expensive…a small die is almost RM100), pattern paper, stamping, chipboard embellishments, charms and etc. However, I am still looking for the cheaper materials too. I have a friend; she always buys the art supplies via online. She has been spent thousands to buy those things. For me, buying the Big Shot and die cuts will be the most expensive art supplies that I ever bought. Other than that, I will keep looking for the cheaper one. Moreover, I love doing “DIY embellishments” to cut the cost. The finishing is not so smooth but I am happy with it. I want to emphasize here, my husband is not really support my hobby, so I need to spend my own money to buy these art supplies. Well, recently he shows the interest of supporting my hobby. Maybe he had realized that this hobby can give me happiness. Hahaha.

I have interest in card making when I was young. The designs of my cards were so simple by using stickers and colored paper only. I gave to my best friends my handmade cards at every of their birthday.  I have tried scrapbooking twice (3 years ago) but I didn’t continue it because I didn’t have a nice embellishments but I have decided to scrapbooking one day so I have started to collect embellishments a few years ago and the time to accomplish my dreams has come. Now, I am doing my scrapbooking a few weeks ago. I have finished decorating 9 pages already.

Why I want to scrapbooking so much? This is my passionate. That’s why I love scrapbooking. I am doing this for my satisfaction so I don’t really care if people don’t feel my decoration is nice as long as it is nice in my eyes, it is enough for me. (But people keep complimenting my design in FB.hehe). For the past of couple weeks, my mind was lingered about how to decorate my page, what color should I use, what embellishment I need to use, how to put all the decoration in one place and so on. As I look at the examples of scrapbooking design in the internet and books, my heart is pounding and I can’t wait to finish up my first scrapbook but I cannot proceed to finish it because I do not have a printer in my house. That is one big obstacle that I face. We really need a printer when we want to scrapbooking. As my idea pouring out from my head, it is so ashamed that I cannot complete the design which I have in my mind. Luckily, my husband has colored printer at his office but I prefer to use color jet printer in my office. The color is more sharp and bright. So every time I have an idea, I have to make sure myself to sketch it on paper then I need to figure out the DIY printed embellishments and I have to wait for the next day to print the design at the office. So, it takes time.

When I am scrapbooking, I feel free. I do not feel any tense. I love to see my desk get messy with artsy things. For me, that is an ultimate satisfaction. I can be more creative when doing this activity. It can make my brain works too while generating the idea so scrapbooking is also one of the brain activities. I will keep doing this scrapbooking until I am old. Who knows, I can do business in scrapbooking one day. Furthermore, someone has booked one scrapbook from me. I will try to make sure this hobby becomes my side income one day.

Pen off.

My Masterpiece...

By:

Marini Mohd Thaib

I have a few things that I want to show you... My passion towards art - scrap booking, doodling and quilling. I am quite lazy right now to explain in details. I will update the detail version very soon. Just enjoy my photos !

 My first attempt of card design

My first attempt of scrap booking

 My new scrapbook cover page

 My Travel Journal cover page

Design of my scrap booking

 Cover page of my diary

 Cover page of my diary

I made this for a friend

 I made this for a friend 

My first birthday card designed with quilling

Sold this to a friend - my first sale

My favorite quilling design

My first attempt of doodling. I felt amazing

Some of my doodlings. The other doodlings are not been captured

I am working on my first scrapbook now... Will show you the finish product soon.

Thanks for viewing...

What about UNO?

By Marini Mohd Thaib

Let me tell you something about this card game. I learned to play this card game a few years ago.  For the first time I played this game, I felt in love with the excitement when playing this game especially when playing with our close family members or friends…the laughing… the way we wants to avoid other players to win…the smiling face every time we win the game…and of course the feeling of our heart pounding every time we say “UNO Card” because we know other players will plan to draw any “Draw +2” or “Draw +4” type of card to us.

                I always play UNO with my officemates every time we have a free time especially in a semester break because we have nothing to do in the office…and of course we are doing something wrong because we are not suppose to play UNO during working hour. Well, we know that but we still do it. Sometimes, I feel so guilty and I played in fear…scared if our boss caught us while playing it. In fact our boss caught us once when he was looking for me. I felt so embarrassed at that time. I met him after that and I apology in behalf of my friends who was still playing UNO. Luckily my boss didn’t scold us and he said “It’s ok, working so hard is not good, we cannot be serious all the time so we must release our tense”…fuh…I feel so grateful…of course I must feel grateful because he still gave me higher marks for my SKT although he knew that I played it  a lot. Thank you boss!

                We play UNO everyday recently.  Well, I can say that I am addicted to this game. If I have to choose, I will choose playing UNO all day rather than sitting at my desk surfing the internet. I don’t say that I have nothing else to do but I feel so bored when thinking about doing administrative tasks.  I can’t wait for the new semester to come because I can spend my time by teaching. So, to kill time I play UNO with my friends. It seems that everyone is enjoying playing it. We play UNO noisily although we know our boss is in the office and he can hear us making noises.  It is so funny when suddenly we hear someone knocks the door and everyone is keep silence because we are so worry if that person is our boss…and of course that person is not our boss but one of our friends who wants to join us in that “happy room”.

                We play UNO for hours without realizing that we get salary from this “job”.  So, please don’t follow this bad habit. My point is this card game can give joy to me. Whenever I stressed out, playing UNO is one of the ways to release tense. Forget the smart phone which we can get so much pleasure from it, just give me a deck of UNO card…and of course with the players (usually my officemates) and I can be a happy person in just a second.

                Yes…I love to play UNO card.

 Pen off.

Believe in yourself

By:

Marini

Dear my beloved students,

                This is a letter to you from the bottom of my heart. I am not a motivator, I don’t know how to make a sweet sentence to soothe you but I will use my life experience to touch your heart. As a teacher, I see a lot of my students’ behavior in my classes. Some of you are good in character and some of you are a little bit naughty. I don’t really care about your behavior because I believe that all of you are a good person. I believe that and you should believe that too.

                Some of my students approached me personally and told me their problems especially problem in their studies.  They told me how hard for them to survive just to obtain the diploma certificate.  Let me tell you something. Your journey is still far away. There are a lot of obstacles you have to face ahead you. Whatever problems that you face, you have to face them with a strong heart. You are still young. There are a lot of things you need to archive in your life so what you need is…believe in yourself. You can do whatever you want to do. You can be whatever you want to be. There is a potential inside you to be whatever you want to be, all the energy to do whatever you want to do. Though there is a time it may seem too difficult to continue, just hold on to your dream. One morning you will awake to realize that you are the person you dreamt of, doing what you wanted to do.

                Simply believe in yourself. Be yourself. Follow your heart. Ask yourself what you want to archive in your life and keep looking to that dream. After all, room for improvement is always our biggest room.  Don’t afraid to make mistakes. Doing mistakes is always being our good teacher and with that experience we can be a better person each and every day.

                I am what I am now simply because I believe in myself. I came from a not-so-rich family (but no so poor)… I have a lot of family problems but not a broken family. How do I want tell you my story? It is quite private. I don’t really feel comfortable talking about my family, my past. It is just enough for you to know that it was a hard time for me to grow in this family.   I had a determination to change my life style. So I studied so hard and I pass all the examinations with flying colors. As I grow older, I had challenged myself to archive my dreams…to be a teacher. I faced a lot of obstacles especially my family problems but I survive until now. I followed my dreams and here I am…teaching all of you. 

                Yes, I believe that every one of us has our own problems but we have to find our inner strength. Build up the motivation within ourselves. Keep telling ourselves that we can do anything. After all, mind is so powerful.  I wish you all the best. May Allah lead you to achieve your dreams and always follow your heart.

  Arios…