Dear blog reader, it is the school holidays now and I have been so busy trying to keep my younger boy occupied with fruitful activities including housework :-) and also visiting interesting places. I have asked him to:
* Try planting potatoes, papayas etc since he is officially in charge of my garden :-)
* Read as many novels as he can. The past two weeks, he finished reading Enid Blyton's "The Rilloby Fair Mystery", is at the last few chapters of Sue Townsend's "TRUE CONFESSIONS OF ADRIAN MOLE" and just started Will Hubbell's "SEA OF TIME".
* Paint as much as he can and this week, he has been working on his painting of pandas.
* Write some short stories (he started writing stories when he was four years old - the first one was called "Bushy Barney" inspired by a squirrel he saw when we took him to Penang Hill.
So far, he has started two short stories and I thought I'd feature his second story called
"Blakely's Journey to Noblicle". Do leave a comment because I can assure you that he has been bugging me for the past four days to put it in my blog!!! He is too lazy to type it in his own blog. By the way, my younger boy is 10 years old :-). FYI, he did it by himself with no help from me whatsoever and while typing, he hovered around and kept saying, "Don't change anything!!!!" and kept a watchful eye on the screen. Here's his story...Hope you like it :-).
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BLAKELY'S JOURNEY TO NOBLICLE - written by Nick
PROLOGUE
The city of Larousse was in danger. The fairy king's emerald crown had been stolen by SBSN (Secret Branch Society of Noblicle). The sun never shone again after that and the people lost their power because of the magic sunshine. Lives were lost when a trail of wagons crashed into the gates of the castle and strange explosions caused a fire that spread through the city. It was bad enough that the city was having drought problems but the Nobgoblins had to worsen the situation with their vicious attacks.
In a bid to defend his city, King Alteon, the fairy king, fought the leader of the SBSN in a hand combat and ended up being pushed out of the window of his castle. Before slipping into a coma, the fairy king put a princely sum for the Nobgoblins' heads. Two months later, he died.
Blakely, a villager from far off near the coast, heard about the reward from his grandfather and decided to go on an adventure to the city of Larousse for more information and to help them.
CHAPTER 1 THE FIRST OBSTACLE - WITCHES & LEPRECHAUNS
"Blakely, you don't have to do it. You will suffer pain and it might be hell throughout the journey," said his grandfather while Blakely was packing his bags.
Blakely did not mind the burden or the challenges ahead. All he wanted was for peace and sunshine to return to the city.
"Grandpa, goodbye," said Blakely while he put his magic sword in his bag. Those were his last words to his grandpa. He walked down the lane that led into the wilderness, where the leprechauns and medieval witches lived.
Soon enough, his intuitive senses told him that something was wrong. Suddenly, there were funny sounds coming from behind him. He turned around and saw something green and yellow moving in the bushes. Blakely was terrified and picked up a rock and walked to the bushes.
A cute little creature popped out from the bushes and smiled at Blakely. He was so relieved that it wasn't any leprechaun that could transform him into a rat with the snap of his finger. All of a sudden, three leprechauns pounced on him and captured him with their "Gravity Force Net".
Blakely was then taken to their hideout deep in the forest. He was tied up with the roots of strange plants and was forced to explain why he had ventured into their territory. When they threatened to imprison him forever, Blakely told them about his quest to Noblicle to retrieve the fairy king's emerald crown.
To his surprise, they all smiled at each other and then one of them said "You, a simple human being, have a good heart. We are happy with you and want you to meet our queen."
With that, they led Blakely to a secret chamber in the cave, a place that showcased the treasures and wealth of the leprechauns.
Blakely gasped when he saw a familiar face. It was a lady from his village who was being pampered by leprechauns and she was dressed in robes of a medieval witch.
"Sheila! What on earth are you doing here?" cried Blakely in surprise.
"My name is not Sheila when I am in this land that I own. You shall call me Alianor. Guards! Make him sit on the chair of heads! You still remember Grimlock, right?"
The guards forced him to sit on the chair and he was tied up again. These were no ordinary guards but Minotaurs.
Obviously, Blakely was not going to enjoy this conversation.
Sheila waved something in the air and soon they were transported into an empty room.
"Alright, Blakely, you want to see the Nobgoblins pay for their evil deeds, don't you? Well, the Gordon you have right now is going to help you to get what you want," said Sheila.
"This is a Gordon? What are Gordons used for?" asked Blakely.
"You will need this book. Although it is quite hungry, it is still useful," replied Sheila while taking out a book from a puff of smoke that appeared before her after she summoned it. Then she gave Blakely the book with a faint smile on her face.
To Blakely's horror, the book was slimy and breathing. "Is this drool from somewhere or someone?"asked Blakely.
Sheila said, "It's the book's drool. Remember - the Nobgoblins are very merciless creatures. Before you go to Noblicle, please go to the red swamp of Tyrantland. Find Snubby the imp and he will reward you with something after you accomplish the mission that he gives you," said Sheila."Farewell my brave friend and I bid you good luck."
Sheila then summoned a ring of fire that teleported Blakely out of the magic room.
Blakely then found himself in the wilderness again. "I'm going to find Snubby no matter what, even if it means death." Feeling tired, he took out his tent which was kept in his bag and set up camp on an empty plot of land to rest for the night.
........to be continued.....
This week, I said goodbye to four students - Eugene whom I taught for EIGHT years (he survived hahahaha!), Tony whom I taught for four years ( I SURVIVED hahahahaha!), Hobart whom I taught for 5 months (he won a JPA scholarship to study engineering in UK after scoring 13A1s) and Michelle, whom I taught for seven years, who is leaving for Taiwan. As it is, I am now officially in retirement :-) and a full-time home-maker, blogger and have to finish writing my sixth book before I am written off!!!
Eugene will be off to Taylor's College for his A-levels while Tony will be doing his Foundation in Architecture in Taylor's College and Hobart will be going to MARA at Banting to do his International Baccalaureate. I will miss the boys but I will miss Michelle the most. Thank God she will be away for only six weeks! She came to me when she was a little girl who used to protest and cry at my doorstep but she has grown to be a lovely and beautiful teenager who can write creatively with much style and flair.
What will I do without Michelle? Each time she comes to my place, she brightens my life - not just with her homework or her protests (which by the way are getting more creative!!) but also with some silly YouTube video. Today, my son and I nearly had severe stomach cramps because of this silly video...
Please click on THIS LINK to enjoy some good healthy laughter (believe me - you might even fall off your seat!!!) and if you want to enjoy the chipmunk version click THIS LINK, and for the original version by Mariah Carey, please CLICK OVER HERE.
For the first link, I hope you did not miss the way the guy hit the high notes at 3:05. I give him credit for his showmanship and for the way he seemed to enjoy what he was doing with no hangups about his diction, pronunciation or enunciation. :-)
Have a lovely evening, dear reader :-)!
Often times, there are those of us who wonder if it is worth it to be kind to others, especially if we have been hurt many times in the past. May this story inspire you to continue to be kind to others...but may I add...do it with wisdom so that you do not end up as a victim of unscrupulous persons...I have removed the file for the slides because it takes far too long to be uploaded for many blog readers in Malaysia.
Due to the fantastic screamyx speed, please click HERE as an alternative.
Have a nice day.
A cowboy named Bud was overseeing his herd in a remote mountainous pasture in California when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced out of a dust cloud towards him.
The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses and YSL tie, leans out the window and asks the cowboy, 'If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, will you give me a calf?'
Bud looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, 'Sure, Why not?'
The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his Cingular RAZR V3 cell phone, and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo.
The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg, Germany.
Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses a MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response.
Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-Tech Miniaturized HP LaserJet printer and finally turns to the cowboy and says, 'You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves.'
'That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves,' says Bud.
He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on amused as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car.
Then Bud says to the young man, 'Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my calf?'
The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, 'Okay, why not?'
'You're a Congressman for the U.S. Government', says Bud.
'Wow! That's correct,' says the yuppie, 'but how did you guess that?'
'No guessing required.' answered the cowboy. 'You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew to a question I never asked. You tried to show me how much smarter than me you are, and you don't know a thing about cows...this is a herd of sheep. . . .
Now give me back my dog.
