Sunday, January 29, 2006

CNY

Today is the first day of Chinese New Year and as a new daughter-in-law, I followed KS back to Melaka. It has been eat, EAT and EAT since then. Oh, and sleep too.

We went to Masjid Tanah this afternoon to meet up with the rest of the clan. What is good about this family is that all of them stay in Masjid Tanah and since it's a really small town, they have a yearly pact of meeting at one house and everyone exchanges ang pows. Can you believe we were done and over with visiting within 2 hours? Back in KL, I would still be going around visiting and eating and sweating in my new clothes in the hot CNY weather. I appreciate the efficiency of this visiting method.

Oh, KS received his birthday gift from his sis in Perth - the U2 Vertigo Tour DVD. Since she couldn't get the tickets for us, she thought the next best thing was to get the DVD, bless her. We have watched half of it and hope to finish it by today but since we have guests downstairs, we'd rather not make too much noise.

Speaking of the guests downstairs, they are my father-in-law's school friends. It's great to see them get together once a year even though they've left school for more than 2 decades. One of them happens to be the brother of my ex-HR manager back in my previous company. I was introduced to them and one of the wives was sitting on a separate table from the men. She was surrounded by 3 sons and after shaking her hand, I threw them a glance and she introduced the bunch of them with a wave of her hand, "These are my sons". What followed next is the most obvious things people like to say, like "You having your lunch?" when you're busy stuffing your face during lunch time or "Eh, what are you doing here?" when they bump into you at the shopping mall. In this instance, I embarrassed myself with a "Your sons are already so big!" as though I have met them when they were crawling on their tummies.

Hence, I'm quietly sitting upstairs blogging and avoiding further embarrassment.

Friday, January 27, 2006

Mortification

Embarrassing moment of the day: Looking downward at my boss’ water tumbler as he was holding it, while saying loudly, “Why? Is yours small?” when someone else commented he drank too little with such a small tumbler.

What You Want?!

The memo is finally out and it’s official. Banks do not work on Saturdays anymore. Exactly what I was looking for, or was I? Now that I’ve come to appreciate being in town on a Saturday, I guess I wouldn’t mind another few more months of working alternate Saturdays.

Talk about not being easily pleased.

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Mandarin Oranges!

I’ve been receiving an endless number of Mandarin oranges and other food gifts from my office suppliers. In my old company, we normally tell our suppliers not to give us oranges or shout us a meal but instead, save the money to charge us lesser for their products or services.
Today, my department heads took us out on an expensive 9 course Chinese lunch at KLCC. Something about Chinese belief on closing the work for the year and starting afresh for the new year. They’re really such a brick. We had our second lo sang for the season and look forward to more.

Yay, Chinese New Year is coming! I look forward to meeting up with everyone. It’s usually noisy and loud but there’s loads of good food awaiting our stomachs at every visit. I’ve learnt to ignore those loud music and small cutesy little girls with fluff in their hair clasping their hands together while singing irritating New Year songs. This is a huge reason why I prefer Christmas to CNY. Christmas is soft, warm, comforting with cosy dinners. CNY is RED, LOUD, firecrackers, screaming kids and folks shouting over a din of relatives speaking in a language foreign to me. I love being in Malaysia for being able to celebrate such different cultures.

Maid of the Cleaners

We have two ladies who come in to clean our house from time to time and it has been 3 months since they last came, as we’ve been unavailable during weekends.

Last week we called them to come and they said they were busy with other things but they would be able to send their maid.

No wonder their charges are so expensive.

Friday, January 20, 2006

Ice Cooler

KS is still not ready yet. Hmm... what else can I tell you about?

Oh yeah, last Wednesday we went to a CG member's house blessing. He works for a FMCG and holds quite a high position there. Their house was a bungalow in a gated community. The house was large, had a jaccuzi, walk-in wardrobe, gorgeous wooden patio overlooking carefully tended grass etc.

What really fascinated us was that they had a whole ice cream cooler at the back of their house, filled with ice cream! Of course, all produced by his company. And this is Walls we're talking about. Man, many of us were permanant fixtures besides it since it was filled with the new mini ice creams which meant we could have more than one helping!

I'd like a cooler like that too, filled to the brim. Which reminds me, I keep forgetting the 3 things I want to get this year:
1. To decide on a new handphone
2. To decide on what perfume to get
3. I forgot what was the third thing I wanted to get this year. And it's only 20th of January. Talk about being forgetful.

Psst... notice my point forms and specific targets? That's from writing so much minutes the last couple of days. My CG leader asked, "So are you enjoying yourself in this new job?" and I say a definite yes. This is the busiest I've ever been and it promises to be only the beginning. I've learnt more about my strengths and weaknesses too. I love doing admin/operations and hate writing proposals.

Oops, KS called. I'm off!

Business Lunches

This week and next week is filled with business lunches since Chinese New Year is approaching. It's been great being wine and dined (sorry, no wine). Today I had my first lo sang of the season and I look forward to more next week.

It's just amazing how much these lunches can come up to. Yesterday's Japanese lunch was definitely above RM1000, can you imagine? We had this waitress who was sour faced like anything and when our host called out to her to bring him something, she muttered loud enough for us to hear, "Apa lagi?" (what next?) while rolling her eyes. I guess I should have reported her to the manager because they should either train her to watch her mouth or fire her.

Heck, I've just lost weight from all the stress (being able to fit into my older pants is evidence for me!) and now I'm going to happily put them on again. Bring on the food! This is the part I like about Chinese New Year.

Yellow Highlighter

I’ve been taking Vitamin B for the last two days and man, the first time I peed right after taking it, I swear, is the colour of my yellow highlighter. Dad assures me this is normal.

Okay, I’m bored. Waiting for KS to finish work because I refuse to do anymore work. It’s a Friday with a non-working Saturday, what do you expect?

Although I must say I’m starting to enjoy going to work on Saturdays. Gasp! WHAT HAVE I JUST SAID? But really, I get to meet up with people since I’m in town. Like last week, I met up with a bunch of ex-colleagues for lunch and although we didn’t manage to find our lo sang, we still had fun catching up.

Clean Desk Policy

I have been absolutely swamped. I broke my record yesterday, coming in to work at 8:25am and leaving at 8:45pm. And I'm still busy.

So why is it that I can now take a breather? Because my boss is out for a meeting and that everyone is in an uproar over trying to get the office to fit into ISO standards. Our instructions are very funny, I wish I could publish the email here but KS advices me not to since this is internal. Basically, we’re told to clear up our desks of EVERYTHING, and I mean everything. We’re trying to achieve cleanliness with just our PCs and in-trays on our desks. Some have even cleared their desk calendars. So we now look like no one works here and the cubicles look like they are unoccupied with not a scrap of paper or files to be seen. Of course, our files are all trying to hide under our desks, unsuccessfully.

The funniest instruction is to place all our dustbins on the right side of our desk. Now, my cubicle is such that my divider is on my left, hence I can follow this rule. However, for those with the divider on the right… One colleague placed his bin on top the cabinet on his right in order to comply to this.

Now, I won’t comment much on this but the facts are enough to help you decide what we think about this. I’m just glad that I’m only almost 2 months old and was starting to stick notes on my computer. The rest of the office is still clearing up their space while I’m blogging this entry.

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Stun-ning

I am still a little bit stunned as the news hasn’t sunk in fully yet that my cousin Karen eloped – at last! Sure, we’ve all been warned as she’s been telling us that was their plan right from the start, almost 5 years ago now? And her parents, whenever they’d visit Malaysia, would get sms-es from another cousin in the USA asking if Karen had taken the opportunity of their absence and eloped.

But it’s a different matter, now that it’s really happened. You just can’t be too mentally prepared for this kind of news.

The thing I wonder most is, how on earth did she tahan not talking about it during the 2 months of preparation for it? I can’t imagine having Christmas dinners with both parents and families and not talking about your upcoming wedding in less than 3 weeks after Christmas!


All in all, congrats to you and Stefan, Karen. May your lives continue to be filled with more pee-inducing laughter and love. Thanks for giving us something to talk about to our next generation. The Caribbean Sea looks absolutely gorgeous and your photos look like they jumped off a magazine page. Simply stunning. May I put them up here?

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Friday, January 13, 2006

Taipan

I MUST, MUST blog about this. Last night I took back my old laptop from the PJ house and eagerly started playing my Apple ][e games loaded in it. Never mind that the screen had “melted” after not using it for years, I determinedly loaded up Taipan. I love the old Apple ][e games, do you remember them? Thing is, once I get my new computer for the internet and games, I don’t know how to download all the good ol’ games.

Currently, I have Tapper, Jungle Hunt, Moon Petrol, Gemstone Warrior, Montezuma’s Revenge, Aztec, Lode Runner to name a few on my old laptop. But my all-time favourite remains Taipan, the game that encourages you to trade Opium in order to become a millionaire. The trading company name I give is usually Harpers Trading. Why? Because I saw my cousin Karen use this sophisticated name when we were young and when I could only come up with corny names such as Winner and I’ve firmly believed that if I use this name, I would achieve Ma Tsu level successfully. Later I found out that Harpers Trading company brings in Ferrero Rocher chocolates into Malaysia.

There are still so many games I’ve been looking for like Gremlins and one monster game I used to play with Ron, with two players that look like ice cream cones and Willowisps as one type of monster. I can’t remember the name. Then there’s Bats in the Belfry, Mario Brothers, Alkanoid, Carmen Sandiego, Helicopter (although I never know what the objective of that game was) and another game with you as a 2-inch creature who can fly and throw knives at some jumping creatures. The screen shows 3-levels and you’re supposed to go from screen to screen in order to find your way down to the last level where there’s someone you need to rescue. The sound of the approaching jumping monster still haunts me but I can’t, for the life of me, remember what the game is called! Oh, then there’s the quiz game, you bet a certain amount before selecting what category to answer before the time runs out. It had the $ sign as the border and would blink clockwise to indicate your time. Remember that one?

We used to fight over the computer whenever we’d go to my cousins’ place in Melaka for the holidays. I remember they always had the most updated games and we’d go scouring Melaka for the 5” floppy disks with the new games.

Anyone knows where to find and download these games?

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Resolution

I know I said I wasn’t going to have any but being sick for this past week has really woken us up a little. Of course, I’m hoping this “waking up” will continue to knock some sense into us when we’re well.

Of course, you can guess what our 2006 resolution is – to get healthier by exercising. Yup, it HAS to be done otherwise we will forever be so unhealthy. Problem is, we want to join a gym but we’re not willing to pay so much for it. I want the classes while KS only wants the machines.

Other options are going jogging or swimming at a friend’s apartment. Problem with jogging is that the weather is always unpredictable and swimming takes so much effort – from lying to the guards that we’re visiting “friends” when we’re really just there to use the pool to washing off the chlorine. Yeah yeah, I’m finding excuses already.

“So, when ah?”

Doctor has informed us that our cough will last another 2 weeks. Great. Of course that doesn’t mean I’ll forfeit all the lo sang in between!

Chinese New Year is coming. This will be my first one as a wife, daughter-in-law and fresh-faced “auntie” to plonk your cute little bum in front of me and get an ang pow. Not forgetting I’ll be visiting KS’ clan in Masjid Tanah, Melaka on Day 1 where the expected question would be, “So when ah, are you expecting to start a family?”. And all this in Hakka. Swell. My sister-in-law won’t be back from Perth as she has to man the restaurant there single-handedly so my only ally is with my Mum-in-law.

What worries me is all the protocol I’m supposed to engage in. Seeing my sis go through the weirdest things like buying oranges, red plastic bags, tins of lychee or peaches as gifts when visiting relatives. Oh, and the number of oranges to be given must be of an even number except four. Not to mention the exchanging of new notes at the banks for the ang pows.

I’m going to miss all the good food I get at my Grandma’s in KL, or gloat over the fact that everyone has to travel somewhere for the Chinese New Year while I will slowly make my way to the heart of the city for the reunion dinner. The busiest roads will be quiet and everyone will be away from the city for a couple of days. Now I will join the throng of folks getting stuck at the Seremban highway on the eve.

My mum has warned me that now that some relatives know where I stay, they would certainly pay me a visit during this festive season and now I have to buy food/tidbits to store in the house. EEEEEEEE!!! I’m starting to do “grown-up” stuff!

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

Flat Tyre

On the way to meet my parents, we had a flat tyre. So now I've got a full set of Barum wheels. Isn't it great to have a blog to remind you when you need to change stuff on your car?

Anyways, my parents have been going through a marathon of looking for the "perfect" lounge set for the PJ house. Of course they haven't found one yet although their efforts have been commendable. They've succeeded in making Jan burst into tears and tear at her hair with the mere mention of "going to look at more furniture". *grin* They've dragged her to every shop imaginable for the last one week. I'm glad I was far away in Klang...

Skies are still gloomy, our health is still not so good but improving. KS's sis gave us a concoction of sorts with whisky and honey lime that she swears "cuts" through the phlegm and cures coughs. We got our whisky supply from H since we don't know the difference between the alcohols anyway and speeded home to try this concoction. Whisky is awful and we swallowed each sip with more difficulty than drinking cockroach soup. I find it hard to believe that there are people out there love this stuff.

Monday, January 09, 2006

Vortex

For the past 6 days, KS and I have been so ill, we’ve had 4 days of sick leave between us. We have the flu, brought upon us by a severe sore throat which escalated to a fever for a couple of days each. Now after a battalion of medication, our brains and actions have been reduced to mush. The weather hasn’t been cooperating either, with gloomy skies without a trace of sunshine for the entire time, making our waking hours seem surreal. If this is what London is like, I think it would be mighty difficult to stay cheerful.

The worst thing is that once one of us gets better, the other one starts getting worse. We’ve tried sleeping in different rooms but it’s still not working. It’s a vicious cycle whereby the germs are hopping from one to the next. They need a new “host” before we can completely get rid of them I guess.

So yeah, I feel like I’m being sucked into a vortex of unending illness.

Hence my blog silence over the past week.

Sunday, January 01, 2006

Hatikatikuli

It’s funny how my brain can capture the most ridiculous and useless things. Yes, this is purely gibberish only Ron would know what it is. Not only do I remember this "spell", I also remember Kerolamistikootalimochawnokeeto and Homminitingkabooroilabejuteraybong although I can’t remember the exact spelling.

And what are these? Spells found in various stories of Enid Blyton. I remember Hatikatikuli was uttered when the magic train that would only stop when the Princess who owned it said this spell. The rest, I can’t remember, perhaps found in the Three Brownies (Hop, Skip and Jump). It’s been a long time since I’ve read them and yet I can remember these 13 syllable words. It’s more fun that saying a mere "Abracadabra" though.

Ask me to recall what my boss asked me to do last week and I can’t.

New Year

It doesn't feel like a new year. No new year resolutions, no planning for the next year. In fact, I refuse to do any planning. This year has been eventful enough:

- started my blog
- got married
- shifted to Klang
- changed jobs

I think that's enough excitement for one year, thank you. Next year, I'll have to take it easy. Yeah right. Well, I certainly can't do the first three again but who knows about changing jobs. I was ah, adviced the other day for listening to my headphones. Back in my old company, I could listen to my CDs via my computer since I was located at a corner. Of course I made sure it didn't disturb anyone but now I'm seated right in the middle of the office so I got myself a set of headphones. Then, this guy whom I've hardly said hello to since I joined, came up to me and told me to keep it before someone complains, being bank ruling and all that you aren't allowed to listen to music during office hours.

Sigh, I wish I had access to all the bank rulings so that I won't embarrass myself again. Like, can I wear non-collared shirt on Saturdays, or can I wear open-toed sandals or can I not wear make up... Yes, I still hate wearing make-up and go to work in just lipstick with an occasional pat of bedak sejuk. Hey, if it worked for my grandma, it can work for me too. Besides, I find it absorbs my face oil more effectively than loose powder. Of course I don't bring it to work. Now you know why I look so fair...

But back to the bank rulings and all, I have decided it is too dangerous for me to post up my blogs from work. So I'm going to resort to how it was before I got my internet at work, via KS. Besides, my thumb drive is a bit lonely these days. Now it's going to go back and forth KS's office and mine. Hence, my postings will be one day late again.

Have a great new year everyone.