Marsha Maung: Write. Cook. Read. Watch. Try. Innovate.

Blogger, honestly, have fallen off the charts in terms of relevance, importance, and ranking. While I am trying to figure out the right way to get around that, I will be updating my wordpress site instead.  Honestly, I feel quite sad because I've kept this blog for a long time and it is kind of sentimental to me (yeah, I know I shouldn't) but things change, you know, especially with the internet these days. One day, we're finding friends through blogging, making connections all across the world with search engine and social media, and then now there's AI, a dying SEO and SMM scene, a thriving ad scene, YouTube importance, and AI, AI, and....AI.  I still feel that the world, especially on the internet, still needs the human touch. It's still here and we'll find the right balance.  For now, I will update my Wordpress site, like I said and pointed to up there. See ya!

We found a steal-of-a-deal at the frozen seafood section of a nearby mall. The deals were, not even kidding about it, damn affordable. As with most kids, we love fish but hate bones so, ever since they were young, I've fed them these easy/cheaper dory fish fillets.  The question was whether I want to steam them (easy), air-fry them (mid-difficult), or pan-fry (difficult and long and tedious). But I decided to go with the hard difficulty route because I want the soft white fish to be firm enough. There are hard white fish, and there's soft white fish. Go research them and you will find out more about the texture and temperature management.  Chinese communities are hard stuck on big, fresh fishes and prawns but they're not ingredients we can cheaply get in Malaysia. They're reserved for celebrations. So, we don't usually have them in this house. We're poor so, we usually make just chicken in as many ways as we can.  But since I found the fish fillet, I...

Sunset in Port Dickson It's been some time since I added anything new to this blog. So sad. Things have definitely changed by leaps and bounds since the pandemic hit us. Furthermore, my boys became adults during the pandemic and everyone now knows the difficulties and challenges of working from home.  Before that, it was just a bunch of us trying to convince the rest of the world that we're really working.  via GIPHY So, now I would like to spend some time reminiscing about what I missed..in general, not just post-pandemic.  Girly Stuff I have, for most of my life, tried to raise my boys (no girls in this family except for me - LOL) and at some points, I found it absolutely baffling when I could not understand men. I think it goes both ways when my woman-personality comes through and they're left 😟😂.  In exchange for raising men, I miss quite a few girly stuff. I miss painting my face and fingernails as cumbersome as I think they are. I miss talking to people about...

This is the kind of conversation I have with myself whenever I have to muster up the strength to cook dinner or lunch.  Me: It's a good thing! You're doing something healthy and great for the family! Let's do it. Me: But I'd rather watch handsome guys on Netflix. I'm so tired right now. I just spent the whole day working my ass off. I deserve a break! Me: Yes, that's true. But it's also true that you've been sitting on your ass all day. It's time to stand up and do something else. You can listen to a podcast.  Me: But I can't see anyone cute on a podcast. And it's going to take one hour and I'll be all sweaty and smell like food after that. I am going to need to shower after that. So bothersome. Me: You mean showering is bothersome? Me: No, I mean, the cooking, the heat, the cutting, cleaning, and figuring out what to cook and stock up next....ugh.... Me: So, you mean after sitting at the table working your ass off without moving your ass...

Source: My recipe on Cookpad For someone who advocated very actively about home-cooked meals and managing one's schedule to make healthy, simple, money-saving meals at home for the family, I sure failed miserably for the past 2 years since the pandemic hit. To be honest, the years of the pandemic, getting groceries was tricky and there was just general anxiety about going out...even if it was to get groceries and anything from the stores.  So, for the initial 2 years, I hardly touched the precious utensils in the kitchen. Food from before the pandemic sat expiring on itself. Sauces went bad, and frozen meat simply became permanent residents in the freezer.  I swear, I touched nothing in there. Lunch and dinner were all delivered to the home via apps, so were groceries whenever possible.  I didn't like ordering meat I couldn't quickly eyeball and check online - everything else was OK - so, I still made trips to the grocery store wherever I felt brave enough.  But now ...

I read 2 books in 2 days. It's sooooo overboard.  Granted, I have a tower of books yearning for my touch by my bedside but still...it's kind of OTT . I guess it has to do that my little break from work is ending and I thought I needed to scram and cram. I will post the reviews after this because they're of different genres and I have polar opposite opinions about each of them. I have also been speaking to quite a few people about work and life and am slowly putting pieces of life back together. Isn't that nice? Yesterday, the tasks of 'TikTok' video and 'new article' flashed red on my Trello board. It means they are overdue and I have been procrastinating. Bad. So I did them all day and into the wee hours of the morning. I am testing out various content platforms so, if you're a friend who suddenly saw a barrage of video updates from me (on Facebook and Instagram , mostly), now you know why. Working on consistent content, text and/or vid...

It's funny how when you're not really thinking and then something sort of goes off in your head and you KNOW it's something. You can't put your finger on it and if someone asked you to explain what it was, you'd probably shrug it off. But it's these little things that can bring about unexpected things. I just started off a new website , in case I've not announced it, and I was just scrolling through Linkedin (as usual, being careful not to click on anything too political or religious, it's LINKEDIN, for crissakes, right?), when a gong went off in my head. I REALLY liked this post, this girl and what she's doing. I want to write about it. No, I will . And that was how it started. You can read about it here on the website . But for a barely-a-month-old website, it experienced a sudden jump in visits because of how much people can relate to not just Ruchika Pandey whom I wrote about, but also me who just pounced on it. At last count, the pos...

Being sensitive is a flaw...that's what I have always thought about myself as I was growing up. After all, that's what been fed to me every time something got to me. And things easily got to me...hey, I was a teenager and a growing adult. Yet, people applaud when I sing, act or write. My question is this - how do you think people are able to perform well on stage, whether they sing, dance, act or speak? It is when they open themselves up to whatever it is out there, whether praise or attack, be vulnerable and showcase what's in their heart. That, my friends, is also sensitive. Because of this part of us that we are able to connect with people easily. I feel whatever others feel the moment I meet their eyes and when they tell me something. I don't know what you call it but I absorb the fun, the excitement, the wildness, the unknown, the sadness, the fear and the bewilderment all the same way...with wide open acceptance. So, when people are not genuine, I know tha...

Remember the time we used to blog in complete peace? How not every single person, dog, kid or guitar have an internet account? Remember Multiply, the site before Facebook? Oh my, how I long for those days. Bloggers and writers are met with hate once in a while, the same way your words can heal or positively impact someone on the internet, it can also bring on the wrath of 'insulted' people...especially these days. Not to say that it didn't exist back then because it did. I remember someone told me to 'stick to writing, your singing sucks and don't deny it because it is THE TRUTH ' on Multiply when I tried to record my singing on sucky equipment (rewind 20 years before smartphone apps) and brazenly 'showcased' it to my 'friends' on the internet. I argued that it was not THE TRUTH because it was merely his OPINION (and he's entitled to it) not because I am the best singer in the entire Universe  but I have been told that I don't croak....

You know you have at least one friend on Twitter or one relative on Facebook who is overly obsessed with their looks or are paid to promote something they have absolutely no faith in. And you also perhaps know of people who are continually told that they look young, beautiful, gorgeous, inspiring, skinny, bla bla bla... Well, I was the last one. Not that I am gorgeous or anything (puh-leeeeezzzze) but when you post a nicely EDITED picture of yourself, people will give you compliments, right? While I appreciate the compliments, it makes me feel awfully fake. Yeah, I put on that top in order to look thinner. Yeah, I put on some makeup so that I look like I DON'T have makeup on. lol. We have apps for that, folks. Anyway, I am not Essena Oneill and she is done with looking pretty for everyone else. She is, a little like me, (although I grew up without the pressure of social media) a very sensitive being with lots of good intentions. She wants to move mountains, make changes, go...

Non-alcoholic? When I was young or now? lol Anyway, my favorite drink happens to be none other than (no, not wine) coffee. If I were to venture a little further for the sake of my all-encompassing need to encompass everything liquid into this category, I would include soup too, actually. Generally, speaking, I love all types of drinks except fizzy drinks. Well, I like them but I don't allow myself to drink too many within a single day. There are very few people in my life who don't drink coffee and one of them is my mom. She could be drinking coffee early in the morning and STILL can't sleep at night. God knows why. But that is the stance she has taken since forever and she will stick to it. One of my best of friends don't drink coffee either....come to think of it, I've never asked her why. =) There's something about the aroma, the piping hot liquid, the sweetness and (depending on the type of coffee, of course) sometimes bitterness in the drink that is...

I have been writing and blogging for ages, much like the writer from Zen Habits who wrote something about this and I completely agree with him when he said that even for experienced bloggers/writers, you can never escape the fear of being judged. Worse still, the fear of being caught writing lame stuff for a perceived learned audience. It is a fact that I no longer enjoy the kind of readership that I used to enjoy. But it is all out there, the (lame) and (good) stuff that I have ever written since the dawn of the internet. A large number of blog posts I wrote were wiped out when Wordpress took out my earlier blog for being a little 'politically incorrect' but it is a fact that once you get yourself out there, you are subjected to fear, judgement, and rejection. But isn’t this what life is all about anyway? Writing in public, especially about your own personal thoughts, opinions and life is scary as hell. It is pretty much like public speaking. And there are very few of...

Told myself i have to blog about something today so, here i am. I am on my phone so if u r a grammar-correcting activist, dont continue reading. Lol. I am not sure if i have the patience to manually capitalize each and every 'I' and i am not really sure how to spell apostrophe w/o autocorrect. I hope the spelling is correct, oh hell. Lol. Anyway, just wanna share an article i saw on Time about the advantages and disadvantages of optimists and pessimists. I was born a natural optimist. How else would one explain a legal officer jumping ship from a desk job of suing people to a rock band member, right? after becoming a mom, the reigns of control in my brain turned me into a pessimist. A parent is supposed to be an all-knowing being, choonow so, in an effort to know everything, i had to be able to read the future. Like predicting the next time my kid is gonna want to poop, fall or is he going to be a doctor. This type of thinking naturally turns people into co...

I do not fault bloggers for taking on sponsors and I do not fault sponsors for sponsoring bloggers but.... ....reality strike. How many of us who are readers and crawlers of the great big In-ter-net actually give sponsored bloggers the time of our day when we know that the blog posts are sponsored. I mean, come on, there are very few bloggers who would actually tell it as it is. 'The chicken is a little salty for my liking' 'There were some dust mites in the bed!' 'The pool water was a little greenish' 'The LCD display came with a hairline crack' Watch the sponsors walk away. Hence, I find myself walking away from sponsored posts unless the blogger tells it like it is. The whole point of reading the entire article is to find creatively expressed opinions from another person who was given the privilege of enjoying something that I may consider PAYING for, right? So, I don't want to waste my precious time reading sugar-coated blog posts...

Man, what a terribly tumultuous Jan 2014 it has been. The weather, politics and everything is just a little too chaotic as a starting point for a new year. But I am glad that everyone hung in there and we made it into February. Let's hope for a more pleasant month and the-rest-of-the-year for everyone. As usual, Chinese New Year brings us a splash of red everywhere and it has been kinda fun gathering with family and friends who have flown in from near and far, bonding, catching up, playing around and just sharing some really good times. But what I love the most about holidays is the SMOOTH TRAFFIC. Instead of choked up roads filled with cars and bikes everywhere, we spend 15 minutes on a 15 minutes journey from point A to point B. Instead of spending 45 minutes on a 10 minute journey. See? All but ONE SINGLE CAR on each side of the road. For foreigners, the reason for the sudden smooth traffic is because many people who live in Petaling Jaya, my nook in this count...

Sometimes I feel kind of sad whenever I check my Feedly RSS because over the years, I have subscribed to quite a long list of favorite bloggers. Nowadays, whenever I load the feed, I realize that I have to find more blogs to follow because a lot of those favorite bloggers have stopped blogging and sharing. Admittedly, once upon a time, I considered it too. What with having someone flagging my old blog for being politically insensitive and all that (it wasn't REALLLLYYYYYY politically-motivated) because it was an age whereby Malaysia was not really prepared for free speech. Real free speech. Or freedom of having an opinion....and a blog. So yes, I thought that I might as well stop or go anonymous or something because no one was really reading, anyway. I've lost my old blog. But it was then that I received an email asking me 'How come you are not updating your blog anymore? Miss your posts!' There, right there, written on my Karma sheet '1 life touched' an...

Most writers will not hesitate to define themselves as creators of the articles or blog posts that they have written; although I would love to consider myself the creator of this article, the truth is that it was inspired by another article written by another writer. So, in this respect, am I still the creator of this article, since it is sort of modified to sound like me and written with different words? Writers and bloggers alike will not hesitate to agree with me when I say coming up with something completely original to write about is just about the most amazingly painful thing to do on your off days. That is how some writers or bloggers stop doing what they like to do. Their well have run dry or they have received too many negative feedback from people (who have nothing better to do than to ruin other people’s day) who read them. Things like that happen all the time, trust me, but I am one of the few who prefer to bulldoze my way through. Thankfully. Otherwise, I would be a par...

...that there are grammatical errors in some of the blog posts. Refer to disclaimer on the right. It has been there for quite some time because of the same reason, someone brought it up. That there were grammar errors. Yes, I know the right term is 'grammatical errors' and not 'grammar errors' but I want to use the term Grammar Errors badly. I don't know how to say this but if you are a writer, you will know what I mean when I say GIVE ME A BREAK! If I have to scrutinize, re-read, proof, edit, proof again and THEN post, it would be called work and not blogging. Blogging is when I share the things that I want to share with others and not to impress anyone. I work from home and don't normally do my work on my bed. I use my tab and phone to blog too so, sometimes, the ability to read and edit is just limited (read: I don't have a huge ass phone) and the task becomes extremely tedious. If I were to be a perfectionist about this whole blogging thing, I would ...

If you've noticed, my blogging activities slowed down for a while. Hey, who can blame me!? Try juggling everything under the sun and tell me you have time for something as silly as blogging. pptthh...as if it's paying the bloody bills. =) But it's fun. Really, it is. Even if no one is reading it but what the hell, right? Anyway, came across this blog entry about a 2011 wordcount blogathon and thought to myself, 'Why Not?' (Because it doesn't pay the bills!!). My sister and some of my friends' been running off into sunsets, challenging themselves and pushing their bodies (and minds) into the next level by running marathons. Me? I've been.......oh, shut up. So, if I can't find the time (nor will my body be able to tackle it) to run a marathon, I'll do a bloody blogathon, damn it. And hey, you know what? I get a badge for that, you know. Not some silly digit to pin on my shirt. Take that, hah!

When I look at my blog and previous blogs, I suddenly realize that I used to be so much funnier and more regular with my postings so, I sit down wondering what the problem was. The problem is Twitter....and Facebook. If you are a blogger, you will also be familiar with a problem we call laziness. Sometimes, we just have nothing fancy or funny to say so, instead of making ourselves sound really silly, we decide to say nothing. And one day of saying nothing could easily lead to ten days of saying nothing. Then a month. Then before you know it, you've stopped blogging. I've never had this problem before because I write a lot, anyway, but I do occasionally have a problem with trying to find something positive, fun and exciting to say. But I say it anyway. These days, I find it all the more difficult because if I had something to say but am too lazy to think of a nice way of saying it, I Tweet it. or I update my Facebook status. There, I have a limit to ensure that I don...