DECEMBER, the very final month of 2017 and a month of happiness and sadness. I traveled to Penang for a week to spend some time with Abang and had a super duper fun time with my film camera. The sad part of the month was that Jonghyun left us and it was the worst feeling of the year. It wasn't the best news to end the year with and definitely had my heart broken as my dream to see them 5 at Korea was gone.

1-9 December

So Abang was posted to Penang for work and I took this opportunity to visit the Pearl of The Orient in December. I stayed for a week, clearing off all the remaining annual leaves I had and had a super fun time there. I revisited many places with Abang and also went to new places in the island. Check out my Penang adventures at:

👉 Penang Part 1: Food Coma Starts Now

👉 Penang Part 2: Food Drunk Day
👉 Penang Part 3: Eat Pray Eat

9 December

Upon arriving in Kuala Lumpur after my week-long trip to Penang, we headed straight to a wedding in KL and was reunited with ex-dodgeball team mates as well as Abang's friends.



After the wedding we attended Heineken's Live Your Music event where 88Rising's Joji, Higher Brothers, and Rich Brian performed for the night. It was my second time watching Higher Brothers and it was still high and crazy as always. Joji also had a lot of fans and the crowd loved him. Of course, Rich Brian was the star for the night as he had the loudest cheer and everyone was singing along to some of his songs too.

18 December 

The saddest news of the year was definitely the passing of Jonghyun on the 18th of December. It was such a shocking and devastating moment for the world. It was such a difficult week for so many of us and it definitely affected me in many ways. Thank goodness I had Vivienne to accompany me through this whole ordeal and I was of course there for her too. It took some time for me to fully accept that my SHINee bias was gone forever and that SHINee will no longer be a 5-member group. Nevertheless Vivienne and I promised that we should still attend their concert in Korea no matter what.


I would also love to thank Kristen who placed some flowers on behalf of me and Vivienne at the memorial area for Jonghyun a few weeks after his passing. Thank you Kris, means a lot to the both of us!


SM Entertainment has a temporary memorial for Jonghyun at the SMTOWN Coex ARTium which will be taken down soon. However, all SHINee fans are hoping that this memorial continues to be there or give a designated spot permanently so that fans all over the world can leave a loving note and pay respects to our beloved Jonghyun. If you feel for us and believe that his memorial should remain, please sign the petition HERE which requires a 30 seconds of your time, thank you!

26 December

A day after after Christmas was Bryan's birthday and as usual, a junk food party commenced. The kids had an amazing time especially the birthday boy who was smiling from ear to ear throughout the night.

Just like that and it was already the end of 2017. What a crazy year! I started two new hobbies, film photography and journaling, blogging with much more consistency (though I still have tons of incomplete and unpublished drafts), traveled to four countries, attended SHINee concert for the first time, took some weekends off for mini getaways within Malaysia, and went up a party cruise for the first time. It's definitely a year of learning and exploring new interests and also a year of travelling. I don't think I've ever traveled this much before in a one-year span, so I gotta say I broke the record for 2017.


Before the clock hits 12AM, I just want to say though there were many ups and downs in 2017, it has gotta be one of the years that I would remember just because of the many events and occurrences that I experienced for the first time. All I can hope is that 2018 will be better and crazier to top 2017! Till then goodbye 2017!