the mail comes

after TWO years, one fine day at office in teknion, i receive a mail from angkasa. being too caught up with getting some quality issue solved for a particularly fussy customer, i glance thru the mail and go on with my chores. i must have thought it was another mail from angkasa wanting me to verify some info in the registration form. after maybe 2 or 3 days, i casually sit down and read thru the mail, and found out that it was a request to attend a physical test!! i was shortlisted for the space program which i registered for 2 years ago! my first reaction was to shout out to kamahraj, asking if he has received anything similar. and he says no. he's the first person to hear about this piece of news. and get this, the physical test is to run (oh, no, did they say run?) 3.5 kms (as if running 3.5 kms is not enough) under 20 minutes! first time i was thankful for all the jogs i went for!

here, i need to go back a little in my life to write about my paranoia and how it began. i was skinny and fine during most of my teenage life. i pass my spm, and i go to a co-ed school, from st anne's convent to sek men badlishah, all these memorable places are still located in a small town called kelang lama in kulim. do not ask me what it was, it might be too personal to mention here, that made me go from skinny to 'gundek'! yep, that was my nickname at the age of 19! its a cruel world out there! let me enlighten you, gundek is very crude tamil for fatty! oh, how you wish i would post some picture of me to show what gundek means here! oh, ya, you wish! and the older i grew, the bigger i got. i stood tall among my friends, not the tallest, but definitely tall and plus the fatty tissues, it wasnt a pretty sight, the bulges at mid-abdomen seen clearly in that white top and white skirt they made us wear all thru out form 6! ugh! but my personality never wavered, so i still got invitations to become someone's girlfriend! i was friendly, that was all. i wasnt slutty nor sexy, never knew how to be neither, back then and now! one of my many curses. but i was always friendly, to anyone and everyone. back then, i was out of any school teams, therefore had no exercise whatsoever. and then stpm results gets out and my life was downhill from there. not being able to get into a varsity with 3 principles, my dad comes in to rescue. he gets me out of kulim and my grandma's house, and puts me with him and my mom in penang. i grew up with grandparents and aunts, and had all the freedom. not to mention a little bit spoilt, being the first grand daughter and niece and all. my dad was very strict on me back then and we didnt have a good relationship. we had lots of fights in that one year i lived with him trying to get thru another year of stpm. but i thank him for every fight we had then, for it had shaped me for the future. and then i pass my stpm at han chiang high school in penang in year 1991. then comes the happiest day of my dad's life, i get accepted to university of malaya in 1992 intake, for a bachelor of science degree course. my dad packs my bag, drives me to um and leaves me at the entrance of third college of um. and before leaving he says to me, i have brought you to this place, now its up to you to make something out of your life. i will always remember that moment! the reason i stayed fat is all we did in campus was eat and sleep. oh yes, of course, and go for classes. at the end of my studies, i stood at 65 kgs on the weighing scale. upon leaving campus and finding a job, i met this wonderful guy, mahesh, who helps me by teaching me ways to lose weight and stay fit. for which i am forever thankful, mahesh! the diet was two slices of bread with polyunsaturated margarine and a cup of milo-o for breakfast, an apple and soya milk for lunch and again, two slices of bread with polyunsaturated margarine and milo-o for dinner. plus, an hour of exercise every evening, sit-ups, jumping jacks, stretching and 15-minutes jog. and that, ladies, is how i went from 65 kgs to 58 kgs in couple of months. kids, please do not try this diet without the consent of an adult. and this diet could only be followed for a month, the most, at one time. upon losing all that weight, i was obsessed! my paranoia begins. and i weigh 53 kgs now, but still paranoid. my friends tell me i have issues! since that day, i have not stopped working our or watching what i eat.

thus ends the story of how i could possibly make that run of 3.5 kms under 20 minutes and pass my physical test!

and then ...

the day i signed up for the space program, i get a call from my brother, visva, from home in kulim, kedah, telling me about the space program! my brother and i were very close growing up, we still are, although he's now married, with two adorable kids and all. we grew up watching star wars and getting all excited about luke skywalker and tiny hairy creatures! so, i told him i've beaten him to it and has already signed up. he says, good, get as many certs as you can out of it! i bet he didnt imagine the kinds of 'certs' i actually got out of it!

and of course, i told my dad about it too. and as always, he said, go ahead and try! my dad, my biggest supporter and fan, thats the way he is. the most liberated dad i've ever come across. my friends would vouch for that too! i thank him for everything i've achieved and who i've become today. thank you simply doesnt cut it, dad! you are, ultimately, the best!

first few weeks, i checked for mails from angkasa everyday. as days and months went by without a note, i went on with my life. quality engineer, with couple of technicians, and a bunch of quality issues with the making of many office furnitures. and the company of my colleagues! the best co-workers i've ever had in my ten years of adult working experience. they took the term co-workers way over its limits, and to this day, we're still close. let me just say, they wouldnt throw a party without me!

as you can see, i almost forgot about the space program as 2003 ended, and then 2004 ended. had an amazing vacation for two weeks in june 2004 in new zealand, middle earth and the land of the hobbits! new zeland is definitely in my recommend-to-all-to-visit country! simply enchanting.

i'm getting to it, people.

first blog, first post!

now, that was easy! creating a blog, i mean. many requested i do that to share my life changing experience, if you can call it that. so, here i am. having created a blog, or have google create it for me. i hereby post my first message.

shall i start from 2nd march 1971 (fateful day i was born), or shall i just start with the day i registered online eagerly for a chance of a lifetime of being chosen as an astronaut.

those were the days i proudly tell kamahraj, my dear colleague and friend at teknion furniture systems, that i do not read the newspapers for there's too much violence and bad news all over them that i do not wish to enlighten myself with. and he tells me to grow up. one of those days in the office, kamahraj tells me of this search for the first malaysian astronaut announced by our prime minister. and i ask him, what do i have to do? he says, lets go online and find out. and the rest is history!

we enrolled by giving our particulars, very few, such as age, race, education qualification and job. i got excited about it and told zaidi and nazif and probably got them to enrol as well! i think it was zaidi, our process engineer.
for the next week, we checked the website for any info, but all we got was how many thousands have enrolled themselves. kamahraj and i were probably the five thousandth two hundreth somethings...
and the numbers kept rising by the minute. very enthuasistic malaysians! very inspiring!
i had no idea what i was getting into, if i qualified to be an astronaut (if i qualified to be an astronaut?!) thats a laugh! who gets to wonder that at the age of 32? out of no where! thats how this program started for me. a dream! and today, it stays a dream ...