Waiter, there's a fly...

Saturday night, I forced everyone to go eat Bambi rice (venision meat) and went to this particular shop we frequent for this dish. I was starving and, as Karen would say, hangry (hungry and angry). When the food came, I had sufficiently cast a dark cloud around the table with my charming mood.

I exaggerate. Anyways, digging into the food, I discover a cooked fly nestled within the slices of my venision. This is not the first time for this dish, this restaurant and for me. The guy whom I summoned had the nerve to ask me if it just flew in. They prepared another one for me and later charged me without so much of a "sorry". I swear I won't eat there again.

But I must say it's been a while since I've had foreign materials in my food. Not that I'm wishing but it's become a normal routine for me not to scrutinize my food before partaking every mouthful. Ah, blessed are the oblivious (although I wouldn't want to know what a fly tastes like - remembering the time when I "extracted" the juices from a black beetle from my lam mee once).

They Are Coming...

Since we shifted to Klang, we have been blessed by the absence of cockroaches. Only a couple of times were there large flying ones outside the house but last week, KS spotted one in the tv room! Guess where we didn't watch our CSIs for the next couple of days!

There have already been two little ones running around the bedroom area and when there is one, there are more than 20 more hiding somewhere. Oh gawd. They're growing somewhere and one day, they will appear and take it upon themselves to terrorise us.

Now I understand the despair and fear when Gandalf said "They are coming..." when they were in the Mines of Moria, as the faraway drums signified the approaching attack of the Orcs.

Sparks? Not.

I was recommended by Jan's friend to read The Notebook by Nicholas Spark. Amazon readers have it ranked at 4 stars with most of the reviews are mainly 5 stars.

Unfortunately, I fall within the minority of the readers as I found the book dull. Guess I'm not really into romance of this type. A Walk in the Clouds didn't really hit a chord so I guess this isn't my cup of tea.

Ah well, looks like it's back to my next Perry Mason.

Neighbourhood Puppy

About three weeks ago, KS and I went for a short walk to buy our Saturday papers and on our way back, we caught sight of this cute little stray.



I immediately responded by callling out to him and he started getting excited and wagged his tail furiously. KS stopped me as we can't afford to keep a dog with our long absences from the house. So I retraced my steps away from him and as he looked on, realised we were not going to play with him. Oh, his tail slowed down to a stop and his face had an expression of complete sorrow. Broke our hearts, he did.

A few days later, we went to look for him and found him just as excited as ever.



We haven't seen him of late but hope someone has decided to adopt him.

One More Photo

On our Genting trip, we also saw these signages all over the place, in the bus, in the cable car etc. Take a look:


Ok, the signs mean No Eating, No Smoking, No Drinking and No Throwing Rubbish. Now look closely at the middle one:


What on earth does this mean? We were thinking all sorts, No Exposing Your Shoes to the Rain, No Wearing Pants that Doesn't Reach to Your Ankles and make you look like an Ah Pek, No Stretching Your Leg.

But I think it just struck me, perhaps it means, No Kicking the Glass Window.

Connection

Ladies and gentlemen,

After more than one year of no internet connection at home, I'm proud to say that I finally have connection. And not just dial up! We've spent the good part of the day so far downloading movie teasers and trailers. Ah, the difference between this and dial up!

Anyways, hopefully there will be more time for me to blog before I sleep for the next week.

Genting Photos

I MUST share with you some photos we took up in Gentings:

Here are some spectacular lights inside the er...Mall. I don't remember what mall it's called.

Then we noticed this little ensemble located at one corner of the mall:

And we thought, "Oh how cute, a bunch of bears and all things cute & cuddly playing in a band". Until we took a closer look at the main star:



Holy Molies! It scared the heck out of us to see her half-closed eyelid, cobweb in her mouth and .. and... just looking at her gives me the heebie-jeebies! It's enough to scare any kid at any time of day!

City of Entertainment

All in all, Genting is not too bad a place to go if you want to experience cool weather and wear your winter clothes in Malaysia. There are quite a few things to see up there even if you avoid the casinos. We’ve done that twice already.

The first thing that makes you less bored of the place is their confusing signage. We bought this package for two tickets to watch a magic show called Mysteria, a night’s stay at First World Hotel (the most basic accommodations at Gentings), two meal coupons and a two-way cable car ride for two pax.

Mysteria starts at 9pm and by the time we got there right after work, it was 8:15pm. Of course we were rushing to find the hotel to check in and eat before the show. We quickly grabbed some McD’s and headed towards the First World Hotel with the directions given on various boards above.

This always makes things exciting up in Gentings as we never know where we’re going and the place is darn confusing, you’d never really realise the entire layout of the whole place with it’s many hotels, theme parks and what not. Turn a few corners, some escalators up and down and whaddya know! You’re facing McD’s again!

In the end, we asked the people working there on how to get to our hotel. The girl pointed an entirely different direction from what those darn boards said. And she was right.

The hotel is another funny one. We had to queue to get a number in order to queue to be checked in. Now, this was nearly 15 mins before the show started so there was a stroke of panic as we finally checked in and dumped out bags, almost rushing to the show.

And the show is… well, I suppose I had David Copperfield in mind but heck, I nearly fell asleep in that 1.5 hours, it was that bad.

Hotel stay, I will just say we will never stay at First World Hotel again because the walls are so thin, we could hear people turning on taps across the corridors or some late people who bang past the corridor to catch their 6:30am ride. Oh, and we couldn’t open the windows because we think our window is just above a smoking section/room.
The saving grace was we had a great buffet lunch and the wonderful cool weather. I loved the cold there as it’s been sweltering. Hmm… must do my rain dance soon.

Uninspired Random Grouses

I know I haven’t been updating my blog for what seems ages but it’s been a totally uninspiring time. There have been a few stolen attempts at starting an entry but it is left uncompleted even before it reaches the second paragraph, and then it is scrapped.

Firstly, the petrol prices have gone up again by almost 20% and for us who travel 60km one way everyday to work, this figure isn’t something we can easily swallow. Of course this has also led to hawkers increasing their prices and we’ll soon see a spiraling inflation. Quite a few of my friends have had a measly increment of less than 3%. So in effect, we are actually now earning less than last year.

Then, it’s just been a trying time at work with bosses putting on the stress and frantically trying to grasp the basics (or so I perceive) of the operations of the industry. I think it’s a phase though because almost everyone I meet these days seem to tell me that they are looking for a new job or that they are most unhappy of where they are right now. The Rat Depression seems to be cast upon our community. We are all getting tired of running in the rat race.

Thirdly, I have been unsuccessfully trying to overcome my increasing dislike for Leech and it’s not easy avoiding someone who’s circumstances have put this person so closely within our orbit.

Today there’s news about a lorry carrying fresh squid which overturned due to an accident along the highway. Other drivers took the opportunity to loot the squid by stopping their cars along the highway and rushing to grab as much as they can. This caused a jam of 5km long. Did they realize that the driver died in that accident? Would they have cared?

Last Sunday, there was a surprising flash flood in Shah Alam. We happened to drive past the area and was really shocked to see the traces of how high the waters had reached even to the highway. Again, I have this morbid fascination with water and it was really quite a sight to behold. The victims of the flood had a really tough time after that as the flood had damaged all their vehicles and homes. They didn’t have time to react as the waters started rising at 3am.

The bright spot about the whole fortnight is that the new computer is simply great. I love my flat panel and it’s much larger than what I’m normally used to. Of course, there was heavy usage of it for the Sims 2 (but I’m winding down pretty quickly on that already) and now am glad I can blog just before I sleep.

Good night. Tomorrow I go up to Genting with KS to celebrate our belated 1st anniversary.

Proof Reading

When I was a kid, I told my mum I wanted to be “someone who picks out printed mistakes” and proceeded to show her the missing punctuations in an Enid Blyton book I was reading. I then asked her if there was such a job in the world and she said “No”.

Thereafter, I forced myself to ignore the missing alphabets or strange spacings with each book I read, never realizing how this skill would have helped me later on in life, which is now.

And now, oh how I dislike proofreading all my marketing materials and often skip it, causing some expensive re-prints (I had to reprint 600 pieces of a brochure once because I missed out the word “see picture bellow” and received a reprimand from the company director).
I’m going through some legal terms and conditions at the moment and my eyes have crossed in protest.