19-year-old Tania, here!
It's only been 25 days since the new year, but so much has happened!
Allow me to keep you up to date.
1. Spent my New Year at Putrajaya with the fam bam
Okay, let's face it lah. It was really boring. I know some people stayed home in bed when I got the chance to stay at a hotel during NYE, but I would've much preferred staying home. We stayed at Pullman Hotel for 3 days, 2 nights. Yes, 2 nights. That place was like a ghost town, .....literally.
Here's the thing! When we got there, I swear I had a weird feeling about that place. Such a huge space, with absolutely no one there. Putrajaya is so far from the city, there's only two malls (basically one, because Alamanda is dead), no one was there on a business trip because it was a public holiday and also, the annual Putrajaya NYE Firework Show was cancelled due to financial purposes. So, duh it was occupied by other things. Of course, I didn't want to scare my lil' sister - but more importantly, I didn't want to scare myself ok.
30th Dec, 2014: So, we checked in - very quickly, 'cause no one was there. Mum & dad were not there when we entered the room, just Iman & I. The room was huge! Incredibly gaudy, but huge. Tall ceilings, very gold and our room came with a cute balcony overlooking the Putrajaya lake.
We were there for quite some time.. Ok fine we had to be kicked out because they were closing, LOL.
Later that night, however.. I slept pretty early, as I do everyday. By 11pm, called it a night and snoozed off. Was rudely awakened by my dad's crazy loud snoring that sounded pretty strange. It was raining that night, so imagine lah! Papa's snoring + heavy rain falling on our open balcony. Safe to say I couldn't put myself back to sleep after that. First thing I did? Check my phone.
So, woosh slid my phone to unlock, noticed the time - 3.48am. Ok, fine. Totally normal.
As I was staring at my homepage, thinking about who would be awake at this hour to bug, I opened.... Facebook. Oh, I assure you. Before this, Facebook would have never been the first app I would open. Since I had filtered my newsfeed to only show me statuses or updates of certain people, my dad's post on how horrible the interior of the hotel room was popped up. The next thing I saw was the 32 comments that post had. First thought was, "Wow, Facebook is such an old people social networking site now". So, as I read pass all his Architect friends' "Ala, normal lah Din. The best hotels are usually in KL City! Hang pi Putrajaya apasal" comments, stumbled upon several "Whoa you're there? Heard one of its wings are haunted, bro!" or "That place is spooky, take care!".
-_________-
Really? REALLY?? Out of all the posts on Facebook, couldn't I have stumbled upon a funny parody video at 3.48am IN A HAUNTED HOTEL?? Was this some kind of sign????!!!
So I just nervously laughed it off....and slowly curled under the sheets....and recited Ayat Kursi a million times. Then, I fell asleep! Thank God!
31st Dec 2014: After what seemed like a horrific night, woke up feeling pretty jumpy, constantly looking back as I walked from my hotel room to the elevator. Mum had to go to school for a meeting and Dad pulak was meeting up with one of his friends somewhere in Putrajaya. So, Iman & I headed over to the coffeehouse for the complimentary breakfast buffet.
Iman & I were pleasantly happy with the variety of food they offered! Dim Sum? I mean, come on!
It had everything I loved in one place. Dim sum, kuey teow, smoked salmon, scrambled eggs, fruits!
Other than the kick-ass breakfast, there was absolutely nothing to do there. The huge breakfast left Iman pretty sleepy so she stayed back and took a nap, I went to IOI City Mall just to kill time before the new year arrived. Dude.. That mall is huge!!!!!!!! Apparently one of the, or the, biggest mall in South East Asia. But if you ask me, I wouldn't go all the way there - biggest mall in the World or not. Too far and WAY TOO DEAD.
Since it was NYE, we didn't want to just stay in the hotel room. So, we went around Putrajaya! I actually really enjoyed myself! Syukur Alhamdulillah, my dad has been blessed with quite a number of interior and exterior designing projects at Putrajaya, so he knew the place inside out. I've never actually seen any of papa's projects, but heeeeeck they were beautiful!
That's my dad, in the dark shirt and white pants.
The building is the headquarters of all the developments in Putrajaya, totally forgot what they're called
Those random boxes on the building? Those are actually floating meeting rooms! How bloody cool!
That bright arc things are actually elevators to the floor on the bridge. And on the bridge, those are also meeting rooms, overlooking the road stretching to the Prime Minister's office.
The masjid-like building behind it is the Palace of Justice (Istana Kehakiman).
This is the Putra Mosque (Masjid Putra)
This masjid is located beside Perdana Putra, which houses the Prime Minister of Malaysia
So ding ding ding 12am arrives and we're in the hotel room. Iman & Papa are on the balcony shouting "Happy New Year!" ...to the non-existent hotel guests. I, on the hand, was Snapchatting the night away with Mama..from the bed. Totally slept at 12.08am.
Here's the fun part again! I was sleeping on the extra bed on wheels they usually give extra guests, right? In the middle of the night, I kid you not, I felt like the bed was moving. And because I am an extremely light sleeper - you can even tap me with a feather and I'd wake up - I immediately woke up. Bed was perfectly as it was when I slept, parents & Iman both sound asleep. Thinking it was probably some dream illusion, went back down to sleep again. As I fell into a slumber, was rudely interrupted by the blinding light from my phone suddenly popping up. First thought was
"Ish damn stupid lah, who's awake at this hour????!!!"
Then, of course lah my eyes diverted from the on-going WhatsApp party notifications to the time. I don't even know if I want to believe that this was a coincidence or just somebody playing with my phone settings, but it was 3.48am. Semi-freaked out (Ok, I might have freaked out more than I should've), campak-ed my phone to the side, and basically forced myself to think of happy thoughts, and I slowly fell asleep.
1st January 2015: You do not know how much I was looking forward to seeing daylight after last night. Checked out around noon. When we were about to leave, we were greeted with a warm "Thank you, ma'am. Hope to see you soon!". I have never given such a fake smile to a stranger in my life.
Started off the year deliciously. We decided to have my ultimate favourite cuisine ever - Chinese food! So, on the way back home, we dropped by Mandarin Oriental Hotel to eat at their Chinese Restaurant, Lai Po Heen.
Tak sempat take anymore pictures, we were way too hungry!
But I made sure to take this - Durian Crepes (above) and Mango Pancake (below)
The rest of the day was pretty chilled, didn't do anything except go on an unnecessary shopping spree I'm way to embarrass to talk about.
Will update the rest of the days on another post, since this one's way too long. On the meantime, I'm on other social media platforms that I update every day!
Twitter: @tania_zainudin
Instagram: @taniazainudin_
Ask.fm: ask.fm/taniazainudin
Kisses,
Tania
