As a student, the two words which will give me more excitement and motivation compared to anything else are the words “semester” and “break”. The best part is when these two words are joined together. After surviving the 4 months long of one semester, all I want to do is to do nothing – like, literally nothing. During my stressful exam period, all I could think of was the things which I want to do when my holiday comes. My mind gets so preoccupied that it actually has an imaginary ‘things-to-do’ list stored in my brain that can only be activated after exams. But now that my break is finally here, it is easy to let time fly pass just like that. It has happened to me before – I keep telling myself that I need to do ‘nothing’ in order to enjoy my semester break but my plan backfired and I ended up being really unproductive doing literally NOTHING. Therefore, this time around I had to make a conscious effort not to let history repeat itself.

I’m currently enjoying the second week of my break, and it’s been pretty productive thus far I must say. My main goal this semester break is to spend more time with my grandma, family and friends. I just thought it would be nice to share a few of my holiday moments with you!

My sister and I set up our first booth at a bazaar!

My sisters and I have our own online boutique and it was our first time setting up a booth at a mini Chinese New Year bazaar. It was quite nerve wrecking at first because it was our first time and we didn’t know what to do and what to expect. But thank God it turned out pretty well! I’m glad to have done something new in the first month of the year.

Spent priceless quality time with grandma!

As Chinese New Year is just around the corner, my grandma is most looking forward to this time of the year. I made a trip back to my hometown Malacca, about 2 hours away from Kuala Lumpur, to spend some quality time with her and also to help her prepare for the biggest festive season of the year for all Chinese people! Living with her for 5 days made all the difference. I could experience firsthand of how she lives her life every single day. It can be quite lonely at times especially when she’s home alone. Then it dawned upon me that too often we get so sucked into our own schedule, our own lives that we forget that our grandparents are ageing day by day. I strongly encourage you to take a couple of days off from your city life and hectic schedule, and use those two days to spend some quality time with your grandparents. Seize the day.

Quality time with my sisters and friends!

When I’m studying, I stay in the university hostel. Because of that, I don’t get to see my sisters as often – only during Fridays and weekends. I’m so happy to be able to bring my sisters out for a ‘sisters outing’, go for a meal, go to church, and just to do stuff together. It was really fun!

Besides that, I also managed to catch up with my group of friends by just chilling and sipping a cuppa over brunch. Times like these are really hard to come by. So I really treasured every moment of it.

And I tried this!

After years of salivating over a ‘rainbow cake’ on Tumblr and Pinterest, I finally tasted this colorful cake – and it’s actually quite delicious!

This is by far my most productive and eventful semester break. Now I know that I can enjoy while being busy! “Doing nothing = enjoyment” is a misconception. True pleasure comes when you know you’re making full use of your time.

I have another 2 weeks to go before my next semester starts. What I’m really looking forward to is the Chinese New Year celebration! Can’t wait to eat all the Chinese New Year cookies!