amat memalukan!

so we left WS pretty early tonight, and on the way home i was mentioning to Genius that he'd yet to teach me to drive his manual car, so since it was kinda early, he brought me to the Sg. Maong market carpark to try.
so we got there and he stopped and i gleefully got out of the car and ran eagerly to the driver's seat. evryything went well....exCEPT for the whole damn business of actually getting the car to start moving. it didn't help that his damn shift was some crap short shift and was HELL to change.

yeah, i stalled the car like a million times, which was a given and i probably put the team name to shame as there were still a few people around the shophouses wondering why this silver Iswara was going round and round. hence the title of the post as moaned by Genius as i stalled yet again ;D

he didn't let me out on the big roads. but i'm sure i can make it by at least Christmas if we keep up the lessons!

by the way....R.I.P parrotfish :S

Ikan sakit kepala

that's what my kakak said!! poor thing....another one bites the dust..
i don't know why my parrotfish drop like flies..can't be cause of the water cause we change it regularly. we're thinking of getting rid of the whole thing, tank and all. any takers?

finally got Genius his long-deserved Starbucks drink, he had a Mocha Praline something-or-other (left) with chocolate chips added and i had a small green tea frappe. the whole outlet is pretty cool, had a small display at the end counter where you get your drinks, on how the coffee bean is processed, and had the real beans in a trough-like thing.

we were sitting there talking about how we should have brought a laptop to wifi and how the girl who walked past was walking like a horse (no idea, i didn't see her) when his mobile/cell/handphone rang. saw it was Chipmunk so i answered with a breathy "hahloo dahlingg" :D he said they'd ordered a kilo of prawns at the Second Place so we rushed over.

Second Place is starting to sound a bit stupid, will call it BM from now on. they were already tucking into the above when we arrived, was surprised to see just the two of them, the lion and Chipmunk. i didn't try this cos of the whole weight gain thing :P Genius said it was "ok lah" (again!), apparently not much of the butter taste in it.

this one was an absolute beaut of a dish though, the white stuff is eggwhite, which is steamed along with the prawns. there was quite a bit of cooking wine in this, most probably cause the lion ordered it and the guy who makes it knows his taste *ahem* unfortunately the taste didn't really get thru the shells, but it was still good, was munching away on the ginger and the eggwhite. tried one of the coriander leaves, which i usually love, but this one tasted wayy too chemical-y, i'm still trying not to think about it :S

a discreet click was heard tonight. wasn't sure, so i asked Genius and he said he thinks the same too. am prettyyy amused and ego-boost now :D :D :D and i was looking like crap tonight too, cause i didn't wash my hair! but still :) will go to sleep feeling pleased tonight :)

Pokka Melon Milk

been meaning to post this for ages now but forgot about it (don't i say this about evrything?!) till now, mainly cause i'm drinking it ;)
was in the supermarket for quite a few days and had been staring longingly at it before i finally gave in to temptation. at least it wasn't as bad as when i bought the bag of Kettle chips for RM10.90!!! this was only RM2.50 and i thought it was quite japanese-y :D

or is that supposed to be japonesque?
1 minute later thanks to Wiki, i found out 'japonesque' means "Works arising from the direct transfer of principles of Japanese art on Western, especially by French artists".
you learn something evryday :)

gave some to Genius the other night when he came over, it was finished in one long gulp and pronounced 'eh sai lah'. :S typical.

it's a pale milky (duh) green colour when poured out and has a light milk taste as opposed to other milk based drinks. not too sweet and not so heavy on the melon flavour either. yummy~ will buy again :)

oh and i belatedly read the top of the carton which says 'shake well before consume' (yea, you can tell it's made in Malaysia ;)) but yea, no difference.

will now proceed to finish my overdue library book and melon milk. :)

mmm.....

have been thinking of this for a longg time..



but i need oranges, orange marmalade, baking powder, canned mandarins, chocolate chips, heavy cream and cream cheese.

wah lau...so much work. see how la.

and yes, i am aware that i work in a supermarket. :S

it was great in Australia when i had my small kitchen that had evrything within easy reach and EVRYTHING could be bought at coles or woolies.

can't wait to start living on my own again..

dang it

one of the many mishaps that can happen as you are rushing for work:

five seconds after you put on your mascara, you let out a sneeze loud enough to cause an avalanche in the Himalayas and end up looking like a bleary-eyed bar waitress at three in the morning.

no accompanying photo, obviously~!!!

at the end..

i'm going to hate myself sooo much for staying up this late to blog, but it's good to look back on the day, i think it sort of helps to train my seemingly-failing memory.

Genius said he would go with me to Starbucks as i owe him a birthday drink cause i didn't get a cake for his birthday (which reminds me, have yet to post the earrings he got me). so we went off to the airport but then didn't go down cause i guess we didn't really feel like it tonight, he's promised to come with me next week though, he'd better!!

didn't think i would go but ended up at the Second Place again tonight. the lion made endless insinuating jokes, i think cause i was the only girl there, if JF had been there, the attention would have been on her instead :D i like her a lot, she is pretty and nice as well, that's kind of hard to find, but i'm not exactly sure if she really likes me or is just being polite. yeah yeah, low self-esteem showing up again, so? :P

a surprise dish came out again, the only unsurprising thing about it was that it was DAMN bloody spicy. i didn't have any, only the eyes which i couldn't resist ;) as i'd had a huge dinner (yes, of which i forgot to take photos :P) before that which had also consisted of a dish of fish head curry. both are equally good, 'ge you ge de te dian' ROFL can't type chinese cos using office laptop.

so had a few good laughs, came home and hung out with Tassie and Co. (with whom i'm going to Ten Ichi tomorrow, and may possibly get to see the lion dressed up ;)) and had more laughs.

but then. i went up to my room at the end of the night and saw a purple envelope on my laptop next to my bed. definitely a good sign that i didn't recognise it, or the handwriting in front either. when i opened it and saw the black and white photo of the yowling kitten in front of the card, i just went back to feeling resigned again.

it was a christmas card, from the first christmas together apart. i shouldn't have, but i read the contents again and felt the familiar twinge of heartache from the past half year. but it wasn't too bad this time.

i think i'm getting better :) almost there now.

L'oreal Super Liner

my first beauty product post! i didn't think i'd do this but i was so excited at getting it (mostly) right that i thought i should just post. i have loved the winged eyeliner look for ages now and bought a Red Earth liquid eyeliner, like, maybe 2 years ago, to try it, but it was disasterous every time. thanks to my clumsy and impatient nature, i was never able to get it right.

went shopping with K last week and saw this in Watson's at Sarawak Plaza. when i opened the tester, the tip looked pretty user-friendly so i decided to give it a go, for RM37.30 (which is, i admit, pretty damn expensive for a liner).

the colour i got is black and the packaging proclaims it to be an 'ultra-lasting, precision tip liner'. the end is tapered for better hold, i guess? i'd tested it on the back of my hand in the store and it seemed to be pretty steady, but when i got home and tried it on my eye, it smudged all over the place :~ guess i was pretty kanchiong about going to church as well so i didn't do it as slowly as i should have.

i read in a magazine somewhere that, if you're a liquid liner 'virgin', you should wait till you are about to take off your makeup for the day to try it out, as you'd be wiping evrything off your face anyway. so i did, today. this time i did it pretty slowly, just right above my lashes.
and it came out not-badly! the thick, somewhat stiff tip (like a felt pen) helps you to control your movement quite well. i first dragged the tip on the edge of the container so as not to have too much product on the tip and started lining about one-third of the way after the inner eye.
flicked the tip upwards to create the winged effect and voila! not-too-shabby liquid lined eyes! yayyy i'm so happy~ now i have wait for an occasion to try this out :) the 'wings' aren't as well defined or as winged as i would like, but still, it's a start :) worth 2 years and RM37.30?

cloud photo of the day (well not really)

so Tassie came to get me and we went off to lunch with A at Full House cafe, which is near to the airport roundabout (i'm not exactly sure what that area is called, i always just say BDC, anyone care to enlighten me?) and my food was not too bad but theirs sucked BADDD. the amount of salt in their rice-with-chicken-thing dish was enough to turn you into a sea :P and Jo, please don't take that literally~!! hence, no photos.
so we were on our way back to my office and i was halfheartedly trying to take some cloud photos. didn't turn out that great but i thought i'd post this one cause there is the top of a wicked-looking new(?) Honda coupe at the bottom of the photo. didn't catch the licence plate number or model either. i didn't bother to edit the photo as you can't even tell if the person inside is old or young, male or female. lazy to google it, so all you car fanatics out there, tell me what it is!

kedinginan maksimum!

was bored while waiting for Tassie to come get me for lunch today, so went into the supermarket to buy a drink and this caught my eye. it says 'sensasi dingin maksimum' (maximum cool sensation??) at the top, so i decided to give it a shot.
kind of reminded me of sleepy mornings in beijing where we'd get a small can of Nescafe for our morning 'fix' :D to get us thru 4 hours of mandarin class. was waiting for the 'sensasi dingin' and it...well, not so much hit as gently pushed me after about 15 seconds after my first gulp (yes, gulp, i'm not a self-confessed 'cho-lo' for nothing!). it feels like how your mouth gets after you've finished a mint, like Eclipse :)) i should do a review on that soon.

was peering intently at the side of the cant at the contents section but couldn't find any mention of peppermint or anything of the sort, just the usual ingredients for coffee. it's probably in the way they process it. pretty interesting though :)

more cloud photos >.<

supposed to be getting ready for bed but Tassie isn't back yet and i thought i'd just quickly (as in less than 1/2 hr) put up a post.

SCS didn't come todaayy...but apparently he's coming tomorrow :D :D yeah yeah, cheating myself but it is fun to have distractions ;)

Genius came to get me for lunch today, but I completely forgot to take photos, was too busy complaining about the absence of SCS :D

In the morning some guy from China was asking me something and i completely panicked and ran for R to answer him, the pretty organics girl was there too, the 3 of us were trying our hardest to figure out what he was after and when he finally said '厕所' (toilet), we all went 'ohhhhh' :DDDD

had this really great noodle dish at Grandma Bak Kut Teh, but didn't take a photo (oops). it was handmade noodles in a claypot served with shredded cucumber, carrot and minced chicken, plus an optional fried egg on top. pretty korean-looking to me, will definitely go back for more.

i like this one! got Genius to get me home from work as well and we hadn't left the office for very long when he asked if i'd like to go to The Place as F was going as well. hemmed and hawed for a while before finally giving in ;D

was greeted with what seemed like surprise, and i was amused to see a shiny green biscuit wrapper on the floor ;) the whole Place, and maybe him as well, seems to calm me down, i am less of my usual excited self there for some weird reason.

ever since Tassie came back, the Old Man has been treating me more and more like a kid again, it's like the arrival of Tassie has reinforced the 'youngest'-ness of me lol my ear has been twisted, my cheek pinched, my mistakes pointed out more forcefully than usual! e.g:

me (eating peanut soup and wearing a white shirt with brown buttons on it): this soup is really good!

Old Man: see, eat till got peanut on your shirt (points to button)

me: it's a button!

muahhaha! ching! one for mee~~ :D :D :D

ok ok, so not that funny written down, guess you had to be there :P

saw a fantassstic pair of wedges at Hush Puppies but it costs RM225~!!!! am trying to find a photo online but to no avail. (speaking of which, i saw a beauty spa shop that is named Avail, i wonder why they named it that?)

so....was wondering whether to go to the Second Place tonight, and decided, what the hell, i should just do what i want, evryone else does :P and i was rewarded with a taste of a bowl of the MOSTT spiciest and sourest tom yum soup i've ever had. apparently girls should eat spicy food. i'm not exactly sure what was meant by that ;)

and no, i didn't take a photo.

dammit.

goodnight~

oh, and i found out the reason behind the shared fear of earthworms, apparently had to do with some communist Malay movie (the movie was Malay, not the communists, i'm not sure what they were :D) well not as interesting as my reason!

cloud photos

we apologise for the (emo) interruption and will now resume our usual broadcast.

my today's cloud photos!

Tassie's come back and so i haven't had time to blog (meaning i have internet access but not on the desktop, which is in her room, so lazy to blog from the freaking slow laptop).the good thing is she now drives me home so i can take photos without nearly killing myself ;) Ms. Law Student a.k.a Tassie would probably call this 'reckless endangerment' :P haven't really been inspired to take good cloud photos lately cause of the lousy weather which makes the sky look all gauzy. it's beautiful to the eye, but not thru a 3.2 MP cameraphone lens :S

life has been pretty boring of late, so nothing more interesting than cloud photos to post, but boring is good sometimes :)
but....tomorrow is thursdayyy :D SCS is coming :))))))))

SS cloud photos (maybe the last for the year)

yeah ok i know, i'm cheating. but so whattt, if you couldn't do that, then the option wouldn't be there, would it? :D

it was a SUPER (:D) hot today. some guy who'd rocked up the week before with a whole head of poofy hair arrived with his newly-shaven pate glistening with sweat in the afternoon heat. but even though he was heavy, he looked damn cool anyway. some guys, even if they are heavy, carry themselves in a certain way which sorta makes the heaviness essential to the cool factor ;D
was SOO damn glad i'd forgotten my bottle at the office and just grabbed the huge jug of cold water from the fridge.

found out an interesting fact that someone fears earthworms, possibly as much as i do. wonder what's his story?

on the way back i decided to take a detour to enjoy my 五月天 live concert cd as long as possible. lucky i did, the view from the back roads was simply amazing..

photos aren't that great, granted, you really had to be there. it was one of those moments that, to sound damn clichéd, took my breath away. one photo taken from The Place, just for memories' sake :)

had to have my plate of 'mani chai' (spinach) beehoon today, as Tassie was only arriving at 8+p.m. and i'd have to starve till then. it was absolutely delicious, possibly made even more so by the large possibility that it would be my last for the year.

and maybe the company? ;)

leaving the Second Place.

yes yes, it's askew. don't ask so much ;)

bzzzz....

still feeling slightly (ok, more than slightly) stoned from the four beers i had just now. emotions have been on anh insane rollercoaster since two days ago. haven no idea what to think about people's reactions...maybe it's God's way of saying i shouldn;t expect anything but just take things as they arE? i am partially typing this with my eyes closed...

i feel like i want to float into the air like one of the lanterns they made tonight, with newspapers. will post a video later on.

can;t wait to go. leave evrything and evryone behind. i know that sounds harsh but it may be for the best. give them, and me, time to think about things and be sure of them.

the long and lonely road of spinsterhood lies stretched before me. but i'll survive. for her, i will.

Macadamias from Vietnam

Old Man came home from Singapore today. Poor thing's afternoon flight was diverted to Sibu cause of the heavy rains. Apparently the people from Sibu on the plane were overjoyed as they got to go home earlier than expected, even if they wasted the money on the ticket from Kuching to Sibu.

He'd promised macadamias from Vietnam as his colleague was going to go there and said he'd get some back for the Old Man. The packaging was as basic as you could get, it'd just been vacuum-packed and looked like chocolates, which is exactly what my adorable grandma thought when she popped the whole thing into her mouth, shell and all :D couldn't stop laughing for quite a bit .

they were absolutely delicious! and great fun to open as well, there was a key that came along with the pack (it's in the top right hand corner of the photo) and you wedge the small pointed end into the nut that's been pre(?)-cracked. turn the key and hey presto! you've got yourself a smooth, slightly oiled and salted, crunchy, heavenly nut. the Family was soo 'loh tong'-ing it, they were grabbing handfuls and enthusiastically turning away :D

loh tong is a Teochew expression for getting excited about or praising something. literally translating, it means shaking, like you're so excited about something you're practically shaking :D

some of them were not cracked properly so you couldn't use the key to open it. i grabbed the little bronze mortar pestle that Old Man got from India ages ago, and proceeded to bash the nuts :D it was funn although some were admittedly a bit more bashed than I wanted it to be.

lack of photos means i had way too much fun opening and eating the macadamias to bother taking photos :)

oh, well..

evrything feels anticlimatic now. but i am still one step closer to getting out of here. guess if you want to be optimistic about the whole thing, this whole feeling like evrything has come to an end is helping me to get started with my new life, exactly as i wanted.

life is a funny thing. no matter how much you prepare yourself for some things, you're never fully ready when it happens. and sometimes, although you know that some things are 'better that way', 'that way' may still not be a very nice way.

move along :)

YAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

goooooooooddddddd newwss~~~~!! :) :) :) :) :) :)

but i will wait till the one whom i thought of first knows about it till i share it with the world.

i didn't think i would have thought of that person first but i did.

hmmmmm...

bad bitchy day

bleh bleh blehh.

think it was cause of the damn bloody heavy rain first thing in the morning, and my AV. even one of the frozen kids (he calls me Germ so i call him Hairy) asked why i looked 'susah hati'. i admit i did indulge in a bit of wallowing today but i think it's ok, everyone has their down days and today was mine.

completely could not resist going down to the usual place again tonight. i'm getting a little worried.

but only a little. because i was still singing 夜夜夜夜 today. :P

making magic

:)

he held my hand tonight :)

but i didn't feel anything. hence the whole very-intriguing-but-not-overwhelmingly-attractive thing that's going on. besides, it was just to tell my fortune :D

still, it was cool. :)

helped a lot with the whole thinking-about-things-that-shouldn't-be-thought-about thing tho. and i had fun at the staff party too :)

too many smileys agaain. :P

first SS cloud photos

guess it shouldn't really be called that cos there's only one actual cloud photo from SS. oh well, can't be bothered to think of a better name ;)

looks like an old photo cause of the brown tones, hey? Genius said this one was better compared to the blue toned one. please ignore the guy on the right, i'm too lazy to crop him out ;)

not much text for this one, except it wasn't sooo hot today. and yeah, okay, it's cause i am cheating again :P

I'm not sure why I like going to The Place either. most people who don't understand go 'what the helll do you do there?!' well...i go there and i sit down, and i soak up the environment. being in The Place is like..going to a kampung, completely no offence meant. it's definitely in a good way, it makes me feel relaxed and calm. everything is just so much more.. greener and earthier and cleaner, in a way (well, not the immediate vicinity ;D but the surroundings).


here's the first of the three that i liked.
i love driving home after sunday's activities on this road. it's not only the view, it's the time i think back on the day, and the week before it.

it's days like these i really love living here :)

of work and play

the madness that is my office :D they are good, rajin kids though :)

i. hate. filing. REALLY.

but i love my drives home though. been really into taking cloud photos lately, although it doesn't come out as nice as i'd like it to.

warning: please do not try to attempt to take photos while driving. it is very dangerous to your health ;)
hung out at the usual place after work. have been REALLY curious as to what the hell this thing is for the last few weeks. it's a very high, thin post that has what looks like a typical square-shaped lantern hanging from it. definitely doesn't look like public property. anyone like to enlighten me?

something shitty happened later in the day..i just don't understand how some people think..oh well bygones. was cheered up by a not-too-shabby buffet dinner at Hilton :D was actually invited to eat crabs with the guys, but couldn't very well leave the Old Man alone for dinner, but had still been craaaavinngg crabs for days now. we went here only cause it was raining like hell and was easy parking and not crowded.

greek salad! which i have also been craving for daaayss...but the little tempuraed-outside-and-raw-inside tuna was so damn disappointing, tasted (in the words of Johnny Boy's ex-gf) 'like chicken'. cherry tomatoes were DAMN excellent tho.
craabss!! ok i only had like 2 pieces but stillll...and accompanied with wasabi mayo, they were really quite good, fresh tasting, although not as sweet as i would have liked. but what do you expect, it 's a hotel buffet. the grilled zuchinni was quite ok as well, the oil used to cook it i think had been infused with some herbs, but it was a bit cold for my liking.

ok so i didn't take photos of all the food i ate, in case you become too disgusted by my gluttony. but the secret to eating at a buffet is taking a little, and i mean a LITTTLEE of evrything. and what girl can resist this chocolate fountain? unless of course, the only things provided for it are honeydew, papaya, dragonfruit and some other weird fruit that i forget.

so i tried the marshmallows and dragonfruit, just for kicks. it was goooodd, chocolate is chocolate, no matter if its a dark choc truffle with something weird like lavender in it. yum yum yummmm :D

had an interesting convo with F later that night. sometimes he really surprises me :)

listening to marvelous 3 as i post and feel like i'm back in the 90's :) which is definitely a good feeling

treats from 'huat kuok'

(i love blogger. i can cheat and put this post on the date it was supposed to be out :D will do that in a couple of days)

..which is Hokkien for France, i didn't know that! prosperous country? :D

so yeah, this was a few days after it was raining in paris :D he didn't buy anything for mee :( well not specifically. just cos he was afraid he'd get hungry before going to the airport, so he bought this at some Parisian supermarket (doesn't the word supermarket sound so glorified now just cause 'Parisian' was put before it? lol) and for 3 boxes of 'pastries' and a can of Coke, it was RM40 :S

er...9 fruit tartlets? :D was really good, the pastry was not dry, and the filling wasn't too sweet, surprisingly. i think it was mango, or peach or lemon or something of the sort, too long for me to remember now :S
the top is just plain choc biscuit, the bottom has hazelnuts in it. gosh the photos are terrible, cause he was telling me about Paris and i was listening to him more than making sure the photos came out right. as with all other things belonging to me, my camphone screen now has a long scratch adorning the screen. :S

i individually packed 4 of the hazelnut ones to bring to the office, and had one that evening, it was really good as well, there weren't HUGE chunks of 'noisettes' in the chocolate as depicted on the box, but it was good that way, small crumbles of hazelnut in not-too-sweet milk chocolate on biscuit pastry. haven't tried the other box yet cause (shock and horror) it hasn't been opened to this day.

now we come to the really interesting bit. for those of you who are not too sure, according to Wiki, "Mead (IPA: /ˈmiːd/) is a fermented alcoholic beverage made of honey, water, and yeast." One of Old Man's distributors gave it to him. Does he look like a drinker? NO! :D :D :D

get ready for this, the varying bottles range in alcohol content from 14% to 76%~!!! i asked Ball and the baijiu we had in beijing was already 56% :S according to the text on the side of the box, "All mead drinks are made of natural bee honey and berry juice.Their unique flavour comes from refined infusion of carnation blossom, poplar buds, acorn, juniper berries laced with many other valuable herbs". sounds complex :D i don't think i'd be able to taste all these things if i tried. Tassie is coming back next Sunday, so if she doesn't collapse after the first sip, i will try it with her.


the next day we went for Ah Mei laksa, which i have yet to post about and Old Man whipped out a pack of French Marlboros. I asked him right just now, and he says they are a little bit stronger than Malaysian ones.

ok so what i think that says before translating is that the black fumes from the cig smoke will harm the people around you *ahem* something i've firmly believed since age 4 sitting behind my dad in the car with the windows down and his damn cig smoke blowing into my face.

translation from babelfish
"to smoke night seriously has your health and has that of your entourage"

uh -HUHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!