When it rain, it pours!

Literally and figuratively.

Although the weather has been hot all week long after the downpours we had 2 weeks ago.
Well, all in all I would just like to say that I am thankful either way.

My workload is also experiencing a downpour. More of the cats and dogs variety.
Mind you, I'm not complaining..this is very good actually. I'll be swamped for the next 2 weeks with 3 projects; 3 editing and 1 ghostwriting (2 articles for 1 client). I just need to get organized and set my priorities right in order to make the deadlines. Off course my children come first (well, the baby does, his brothers can just entertain themselves hah!) but I think house chores may get pushed to the backburner for the time being. And this blog as well.

*sigh*

Can't complain. Not complaining.

I'm thinking of the money and the rewards I'm getting for myself afterwards.

p/s: I might throw in a post about said rewards sometime tomorrow (or whenever I'm able to). I just need to take pictures of them and upload them here soon. A teaser; one is yellow and the other is stack-able. Any guesses?

I suck as a freelance writer because...

I've neglected this blog for almost a week. *ugghhhh*

How can I promote myself as a writer if I can't even find the time to write on my own blog? Hah!
How uncool is that??!!

Anyway, in my own defense, I've been busy going to and fro between my local clinic and Hospital Taiping for my antenatal checkups. Thankfully, after peeing in so many sample cups and got my blood drawn so many times that the inside of my right elbow seriously resembles a junkie, the specialists at the hospital declared that my renal profile is OK, I don't have UTI or other pregnancy related issues i.e. high blood pressure, gestational diabetes. Syukur, alhamdulillah.

As of this week, I've hit the 37th gestation week. Looks like I'm good to go..you know where..heheh. Unfortunately, I still have a TCA with the ANC specialist at the hospital next week. I truly hope that Baby doesn't decide to enter the world anytime soon. Please, Baby? Wait till we're back at Tok and Wan's house, ok? Pretty please???

I have also completed 2 assignments for a client and currently working on 2 more articles. So far, things are moving along, slowly but assuredly. The dateline is 1st of April but since my EDD is the 4th, I plan to finish these articles at least by next week, before we head home to my parents'. Personally, after reading through the half-finished article No.1, I think I need to do more research. I haven't done that much lately since I've been relying more on whatever comes to mind. This trend cannot continue because my piece (so far) sucks and I intend to rectify that. 

With that in mind, I hope you all can forgive me if I don't update as much later, ok? Heh...

Nite..nite world! 

Banging my head against the wall..

I never seem to learn from my mistakes. *sigh*

Will be 'panda-eyed' tomorrow since I procrastinated (as always..duh) and will need to stay up tonight to meet my deadline.

Maybe I should learn to say "NO" more forcefully.........

Boring updates..

Been busy this week.

I've been going back and forth between here and the clinic and the hospital.

More EOD BP and urine tests. Bleeeeeeghhh...

I have to be at Hospital Taiping tomorrow for another follow-up with one of the OB/GYN and get my results from last week's urine test (not sure what it's called but for this test, I had to pee in one test bottle, hold it and pee in another bottle). Then, on the 8th, another TCA with my local doctor here at Bagan Serai's clinic.   

During this pregnancy alone, I've had to go through 4 U/FEME tests. Not that the tests were painful or anything, it's just the tediousness of such visits that gets to me. Hours were wasted waiting to be checked by the nurses and waiting for results from the technicians. But, I shouldn't be complaining, it's for Baby anyway. Luckily, from the results of all these tests, they know that my kidneys are fine and working properly. They are just concerned about the trace amount of blood in my urine.

Plus, I've had 2 assignments to complete and more of the same in the near future. Syukur, alhamdulillah. Guess I'll be busy even during confinement. My only concern about these assignments is whether I'd be well enough to handle them all. I've had my lil' bro go through a simple 'test' of sort to see whether he can be my assistant during my confinement. So far, he's done ok. Hopefully, I can rely more on him for my future projects. 

Well, that's all for now.

Will do that entry I promised soon.

Gotta break this cycle!!!

Feeling super duper sleepy!
Nothing new there. Been like this since 2 weeks ago.
Can't sleep at night, can't stay awake during the day.
*sigh*

Still have 2 more writing/editing projects to finish by end of this month.
Really have to focus more on my projects and less on this uncomfortable feeling that will not go away till Baby is out.

Heading of to bed now.
Ahmad's up, now it's his turn to watch the boys.
Ibu needs some shut eye.

Bye!!!

My busy days..

For the past 2 weeks, I've been swamped with assignments, one after another.

Yeah right..there were only three but since I always procrastinate and only get serious when the dateline is like Hellooo!!! TOMORROW!! I've had to stay up late just to finish them off. *sigh*

Seems like I never learn from my mistakes. I do them over and over and over....
A high school motivator once said, "Stupidity is when you repeat your mistakes again and again, expecting different results."

Anyway, I think I'd like to list them just in case anybody who read this blog (local) would like to hire me. *wink wink*

1- I did some data entry for a school teacher who was too busy with other stuff.* Data entry is the simplest job I get and although the pay is small (I usually charge RM0.30/data depending on the difficulty), at least I earn some pocket money for me & my boys.

2- This is the first time I get to do transcribing. A client sent me a CD with a 50min video in it and instructed me to write down everything that was said in the video. I was stupid enough to think that "Well, it's just 50 min, that's not gonna take long to finish.." and took my time doing it till 2 days before the dateline. Hahah..I finally had to stay up all night the night before I had to email the finished document to my client and suffered terribly the whole day. What made this assignment hard was because I had to rewind the video again and again just to really catch the conversation going on in it. All in all, I earned quite a lot for this one (and we celebrated by going to Pizza Hut and had ourselves a set for 2 of the cheesy wedges pizza, will definitely order this again next time we go there) and had secured a contract with this client for more transcribing projects. Alhamdulillah.

3- The last one was a translating project. This one was actually sub-contracted to me by another fellow 'technical writer'. Her son had to be admitted for dengue fever, so she couldn't make the dateline and asked me to cover for her. So, I translated 8 pages of a journal and still waiting for my payment to get through. This project was quite easy enough, so no complaints here.

Personally, I think editing and proofreading is way easier to do than translating but truthfully, each projects comes with their own challenges. I did paraphrasing once and I definitely find this the hardest of all because I have to be very careful with my wordings since I need to keep the context the same, just worded differently. I really struggled with this project but I did get paid quite a lot, so I really shouldn't be complaining. heheh.

Well, today after finishing all my projects, I finally crashed.
I've been sleeping on and off again all day. The boys kept me from having one long break but then again, this is nothing new. Just woke up from my 3rd nap today *grin* and decided to write this post as a reminder to myself to not repeat this mistake again.

* The data entry project was actually eye-opening for me. I found out that in our community, there is a high number of single moms who had to support their children on meager wages. Most of them lost their husbands due to death; medical, accidental, some to divorce (I'm only presuming since they don't have any death certificate attach to their other documents) and there are also grandparents who had to support their grandkids with money doing farming only.

Kind of made me realized just how lucky I am....

Getting back in the groove...

I've finished one assignment, got 4 more to go.
The first one should have been easy, actually it was easy but my mind made it complicated.
I kept second-guessing myself while i was writing it because i kept thinking back to that time when i took that business writing course.

I kept thinking, "No, this is not good enough..", "I probably should write it this way..no..I should write it like this..", "Wait..this is not working..."

I kept thinking back to that girl who is 10 years younger than me. She was my classmate and she always get high marks for her writings. I've read through a few of her work and I have to admit, she has some pretty good contents.

Well, I've submitted that assignment anyway, so, no use worrying about it now coz I have one more of the same assignment to do. Just have to pick a different topic.

Wish me luck!

Forcing myself to post!

*sigh*

I've been wanting to post since....my last post but every time I log into my blog, clicked on the 'new post' icon, my mind would go blank. Or one of my boys would call me, to do something with him. Or Ahmad would need help finding something (as always...). Or something...you know?

Well, anyway, I am forcing myself to actually write something, anything today because I pity my blog. Not that I have lots of visitors here (Hai Aina!!! I see you!! hahaha) but it is nice to know that some of my friends still stop by to read it (Hai Adik! Zarin! Azza! -name-dropping- but who cares, right? hehe).

I can honestly say that I really envy writers who really depend on their writing for a living. Because if I were to be in their shoes, I'd long be booted out of the publisher's list for not writing anything in a very a long time.

I, however, have been busy proofreading a thesis and writing a few articles of my own, as a ghost-writer, that is. The thesis is done, I'm just waiting for the payment to come through before emailing it to its writer. The articles are in progress and I've just gotten a call this morning for 2 more articles, from the same person. So, I guess I'll be busy for the next 2 weeks, trying to complete these articles. Hopefully, I don't get a 'writer's block' while completing them because that would be a disaster! After all, I am trying to make a living doing this kind of thing.

I do have other things I want to post about but for now, I think I have to get back to my articles. They don't get written by themselves, now, do they? Heh.

Enjoy your days!

  

A summary of incidences..

Wow, it's been a long time since I last posted something here.

Work is still at the trial-and-error phase though my office-mate cum partner-in-crime has been really understanding and great at showing me how to do things here. Even though we are almost 10 years different, age-wise, I think she is very much more mature than I am. She delegates wisely, stayed cool when we were swamped with completing tender proposals and always ready to answer my questions regarding our company.

The past weeks has been about learning my way through the intricate network of documents pertaining our company's service-business. I updated the list of outside workers (those working at the site) plus their current contracts and their updated salary. Other than that, I mostly assisted my office-mate with day-to-day workload.

Then, we were hit with tender proposals upon tender proposals. We've completed 10 tender applications (my first experience with completing tenders) just yesterday and our boss had just brought in 10 more tenders. *gasp* Each one as thick as a Webster dictionary, maybe even more. 2 of them are due by the end of the month while the other 8 are due by 15th next month. Each and everyone of them have calculations in them, meaning we're going to be bent over the pages with a calculator by our side.

As per my side-business, I've only got one project this whole month. A friend of a friend asked me to edit 5 pages of her MSc project proposal. Unfortunately for me, on the day I was supposed to e-mail her the completed documents, the internet connection at the office was suspended due to unpaid internet bills. Duuuhhh. So, I had to improvise. I saved the document into my thumb-drive and took it home with me.

Oh, and by the way, my broadband modem is currently MIA. !waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! I don't know what happened to it. Ahmad said maybe someone stole it since the day I found out that my b/band modem was missing, he said 2 of his mother's friends came over with their children. Maybe one of the children took it home with them. I myself am thinking that it could be Nazrin who loves to play games on my lappy. So, maybe that day he pulled out the modem and played with it and left it somewhere. I've searched around the house but since Ahmad's bundles are all over the place, I might have missed it. We've reported it to Maxis and the person I spoke to on the phone informed me that my b/band account is currently suspended. During this time, I will not be charge with anything and it will last 3 month. If I ever find my modem back, I'll only have to pay RM20 to reconnect my account. However, I think I need to terminate this account and buy myself a new modem instead. No internet at home is not good for me because.....

In continuance with my previous story regarding my editing project, I had to go to the nearest cybercafe in order to email my customer's document to her. I always hated going to cybercafes. I hate their dark interior, the closeness (no privacy!) of each computers in it and the worst, the noisy gamers playing online games. Not forgetting the smell of ciggies and BO and sweaty teens. Most of the gamers in these cafes are school students wasting their allowance on hours of mindless games. So, getting back to my story, when I tried to send the document through email, Yahoo! flashed me a notice. My email was scanned and deemed harmful to the recipient due to the presence of Trojan virus in my document. SAY WHAT?????!!!!    

I've never had this problem before, so I panicked. I needed to send that document that day and my email was blocked?? So, I scanned my thumb-drive (while all the noise in that CC were making me progressively uncomfortable) and found Trojan infection all over my documents. DANG!!! The only option I had was to delete all the infected files but I can't do that because most of the files I kept in there are not backed-up. Stupid, I know but I never thought something like this could happen. *buhuhu*

The next day, with the internet connection in our office still blocked, I went to see a friend in USM, I went to the MSc room and asked to use her lappy there since they have LAN. The moment I clicked on my thumb-drive's icon, her lappy's scanner flashed red. Then, it completely blocked my thumb-drive. Nothing we did could open the files in it. I was getting really frustrated by this point so I went to see another friend there who is a computer-technician. I asked him to repair my thumb-drive the best that he can and he hasn't call be back yet. I'm still waiting for him to contact me regarding my 'sick' thumb-drive. I had to call my customer and told her the unfortunate events that had befallen me. Luckily, she's a very understanding person and wasn't mad at me for being late.

Thankfully, my boss paid the late internet bill and we now have access again (thus my updating my blog heheh). I think, the virus came from this computer I'm using and it has infected my thumb-drive. I'm saying this because when I attached the documents for my customer and emailed her from here, the email went through with no problems at all. Anyways, I'm just glad that I was finally able to send her the edited proposal and get my payment for it.

Well, I guess that's about it for now.
Have a nice day, folks.

So much to update but so little time.

I am the worst procrastinator ever!
It's already Sunday & I've got plenty more pages to go. Ughhhh!!!
Why do I keep doing this to myself?

I also want to update on several projects that I've been doing.
Hopefully, I'll finish proofreading early & can update but I'm skeptical.
Anyways, I've turned off the TV, the boys are down for the night & I'm all revved up!

Yes.

Any minute now.

JUST DO IT ANIS!!!!

Ok, ok, I'm really going!

A sigh of relief..

Alhamdulillah, I've finally finished editing a manuscript for a PhD friend and before that was another manuscript, needed to be proofread urgently by a MSc student. Didn't think it would take this long to finish, she (the PhD friend) gave me the hardcopy 2 weeks ago! Since she said it wasn't urgent, I pushed hers aside while I read through the other manuscript. But I'm glad it's over, I couldn't focus on anything else this past week because I needed to finish editing it before my test next week.

On that front, I'll be sitting for another test on the 23rd and I'm due for a business report, to be handed in by the 31st. As you may already know, I haven't done anything about that report, procrastinating as always. *sigh* However, I do have a 'rough' outline of the content I'm supposed to be writing for that report. So, I'm feeling quite relaxed, for now, heh. Wait till it's 2 days before the report is supposed to be submitted. Then you'd see me, pulling my hair out, eyes propped open with toothpicks and my boys crying endlessly in the background because I won't be paying any attention to them. How do I know all these? I've been there, done that for too many times to count. I never learn.

As for Ahmad, he's been 'busy' making a door grill and an awning for his friend. By 'busy', I mean taking his time completing something that can be done in under a week, if he is really focused. He took his sweet time finishing the order; waking up late, spending only 4-5 hours on it and heading out to his favorite hangout spot whenever he felt like it. And he's only going to charge that friend RM150! I mean, come on! For a 2 weeks job, plus the electricity and miscellaneous stuff, that cannot be the price he should be asking! After all, that RM150 will be gone in an instant when his motorcycle payment comes up, which is next week.

Man, I need to focus, I kept getting up to watch TV! It's Hawaii 5-0 now hehe.
Okay, I'm back..

Where was I? Oh ok, so, I have good news. Watch out for my sticky post (credits to Adik from Abjadmenjadicerita for the tutorial on how to make one).

Nite-nite for now, peeps.

A blessing in disguise.

So, yesterday was my second day of class and we had to do a PowerPoint presentation.
The presentation was just a simple one and it went well. Though I felt silly standing in front of my younger 'classmates', because a) I'm waayyy older than them and b) my spoken English has gotten very, very rusty from lack of use, while the other students spoke like they were born with it. Nevertheless, I did enjoy the class.

Later on, I get to meet some of my friends who are still at USM, doing their research for their MSc and PhD. Quite a few of them were thrilled to learn that I offer translating, editing, proofreading and composing services. They complained that most journal publishers will turn down a journal submission if the written English is not up to par.

I still remember MY own thesis drafts that I gave to my supervisor. The paragraphs and in between the spacings were so full of red-inked corrections, marked by my SV, my drafts looked like they were printed in red ink rather than black, heh.

Anyway, a friend there told me that one MSc student from Indonesia would like to ask me to edit/proofread his journal draft. His SV, my ex-lecturer was having trouble understanding his findings because of the language barrier (his English was rusty too, the student, not the lecturer), though his results were very good. Seems like most of my friends who are doing their MSc/PhD at the engineering campus were experiencing the same problem. They told me that if they had known sooner that I offer such services, they would've asked for my help earlier.

I did offer this kind of service while I was doing my MSc, 3 years ago. But back then, it was more of doing a friend a favor rather than a service-business. Plus I could only help go through their theses if I have the time. Looks like I already have the practice I need to really make this little service a success.

It seems like my attending the business writing class has open up the door towards 'expanding' my little business empire.<-- wishful thinking on my part :p

Okey then people, I need to proofread/edit my new assignment, or I will not get paid.

First day back to school!

Today is my first day back to school.

It was a 2 hours class and we already have a Powerpoint presentation for tomorrow.
Our lecturer asked all of us to present our Corporate Profile, for the company we have 'set up'.
It will be our 1st part of the required coursework (40%) for this class. The report has to be ready by the 5th week, so tomorrow's presentation is just as an overview of the report that we would need to hand in.

I'm with 2 other girls in that class, while the other boys grouped up amongst themselves. I am the only Malay there, while there were 2 Indians and 6 Chinese. Plus, they were ALL, waaayyyy younger than me. Huhu.

The Indian girl took the lead for our brainstorming session, in preparation for tomorrow's presentation. I like her way of thinking & truly grateful that she did so. I had no ideas to offer at all, plus I feel very outdated in the company of these 'younger' generation. (',')

Tomorrow will be a great day, I hope.

Yay! I'm done!

Alhamdulillah...

I have finally finished translating the paper and book I'm supposed to translate.

It have been an eye opener for me. Never did I realized that I don't even know some of the words in my native language I found in the bilingual dictionary. *gasp*

Nor did I realized that I understand English quite well but to translate it into Malay, I'm at lost for words. Haha. It was like I know what the sentence/paragraph/word means but I just don't know how to put it/them into Malay words.

Thank GOD for the dictionary. I would have been 'at lost for words'. <-- get it? hahaha, lame joke.

Anyway, I've also come to the conclusion that if I ever wish to succeed at work-at-home, I have to prioritize my time. I really need to make a list of the things/chores/work to do for the day and stick to it because I am a champion PROCRASTINATOR.

Personally, this has been my yearly-new-year-resolution which I never follow through. Hah! I'm fed up with myself :(

I've found some great organizational blogs that offers free calendars, lists, schedules and stuff to make their lives easier and more organized. I am going to pick their blog/brain so that I can actually follow through with the not-so-new-year-resolution thing.

Hopefully, 2011 will be a greater year for me, myself and mine.
Insya ALLAH