Drama Queen

I just could not believe that someone would actually SMSed those words to another person. If that 3 words were to be directed to me, I would take it as a threat and would consider taking actions against her. bitch ! I can only pity the person who received that text.
Nobody is perfect, and people do make mistake at work, or life...so does she !
Nobody, including your colleague deserve this type of treatment....come on!

My daytime life is getting more and more drama each day...Many time I wonder where I got all these patience from?

Hope to get out of these drama as soon as I can before I loose it.

Hope to blog more, soon.

My "so-so" Taiwan Trip

Ever since I started my new job in KL, it seemed to me that I have less and less of my already pitiful 'me time' at home.
Aside from the longer LRT ride, getting up earlier and slightly longer working hours, I'm doing good (fingers crossed).

So, .....

Taipei 101

I have finally decided to post a short entry on my latest trip to Taiwan.

I decided to join 2 of friends for a trip to Taiwan since I'm gonna have a month break before joining the new company.

Taiwan was never my choice of holiday destination, I don't really know why.
Taiwan to me is loads of street food, street shopping, temples, pagodas, and more temples.....not my top places to go when traveling.
Maybe...yes, maybe being a Banana person, being educated at sekolah kebangsaan and brought up by Banana parents and surrounded by Banana friends....I must say that I don't find the country appealing, at all.

So does China and Korea. I also don't know why.
I used to felt the same for Bangkok, but my view changed after I visited the country couple of years ago.

So, I thought maybe Taiwan would not be that bad la after all.

Thanks to Janet Hsieh in her "Fun Taiwan" I finally made my decision.

So I packed my bags and off I go.

Our plane tickets showed our seating....40 D E F & G.

When we boarded the plane, guess what ?!

We were given the best economic class seat......next to the emergency exit !!! and we didn't ask for it. I thought these seats were reserved for the senior citizen.
Plenty of leg room and I secretly thought how nice if we were given seats like this for trip to Europe of maybe USA !

A good start to my trip, I thought.

Watched 1 1/2 movie before the plan landed at Taipei.

Boarded the coach and our tour guide took us for our dinner at some popular night market.
From then on, to me most of my trip mostly went downhill.
The famous Taiwan crispy chicken, extremely long queue to get one turned out to be very salty with plenty of MSG and the chicken....mostly covered in flour and skin.

bad bad bad....

Our tour leader and tour guide started to talk in Mandarin. I sat and looked outside the window while waiting for them to switch to English.

Then I realised, they only talk in Mandarin and I'm going to be super duper blur the entire 1 week of my stay in Taiwan.

Oh boy am I gonna have a great trip !

Nevermind, if the tour guide could speak English when every single one (except) me in the entire group can at least understand mandarin.

I lost count of the many factories the tour brought us to...Ling Zhi factory, Jade & Marble factory, Pearl factory, another shop selling those fengshui bottomless tiger, etc etc etc.....crap crap crap.

Our 7 hours bus journey down to Kaoshiung at the edge of the cliff was breathtaking. Till now, I'm not sure why our coach was so bumpy...maybe we sat at the back or is it the road? All I know is after the 7 hours I felt like my intestine and stomach got dislocated elsewhere.

Shopping for clothes was a blast to me. Bought loads of clothes at dirt cheap price....average about Taiwan 250 (about RM25). My friend bought a 3/4 jeans at only Taiwan 250 !
Cheap aside, I thought anyone could even find any clothing items here....I could find unimaginable selection of fashion here, from the conventional, boring type to the tasteful yet sweet to the downright quirky type....and everything else in between.
But at the price, I won't complain on the material used and their quality.

I give this trip a 2 (on a scale of 1 to 10) .

Since everything from the sign board to my tour is in Mandarin I can only talk about Taiwan from the scenes and sight that I saw and the food I tasted.

Face Mask is a must buy cos it is super cheap here. Similar face mask sold at triple the price at Guardian/Watson. The rest are some of the food junks I bought, most of it I did not open up to eat until now.

Penang Hill & Road Trip with BFFs

Our initial plan for a day trip to Haatyai and Langkawi were scrapped.
The other plan to hike to Muka Head (Pantai Keracut) was also scrapped due to Cheng Beng season. Don't want to have the encounter with the 3rd kind la.

Instead, we decided to hike up Penang Hill on Sunday, 4/4.

We started our hike inside Botanical Garden and used the steps trail. I has been many donkey years since my last pg hill hike.
I looked up at the endless dirt steps and took a deep breath as I was about to climbed the first step to begin my journey. I secretly thought to myself, what have I got myself into?
I aimed to gain 5 kg this month and I am nowhere close to my target and now this?
Maybe 5 kg lighter after this....

Thanks to Cheryl who brought a bunch of bananas and some muesli bars to snack at the top.

Finally, we made it to no. 84 and coffee is served !! Oh, at No. 46, we had cool Pandan water, super refreshing.
They said that the coffee here taste better and I have got no change to taste it until NOW. It must be the natural spring water from the mountain they used to make the coffee. The coffee tasted SO GOOD here and it's FREE.

We thanked the coffee uncle for his delicious coffee on our way down. Uncle replied in hokkien, please donate if it's nice. We did already dropped a couple of dollars each to the
"coffee foundation" and may the best coffee remain.

Kopi-O face.

Kopi-O cheers !

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The next day after breakfast, me and cheryl decided to head down to Langkawi.
It's gonna be a day trip. If we miss the last ferry, then we could just get a motel for the night and return the next day. Adventure....

Just do it !

This is one of my breakfast in the morning besides a plate of char koay teow.
Roti Taiwan. A thick slice of bangali roti spread with 1 inche of butter, peanut butter and coated with ground peanuts.
Sinfully rich. I like it !

So we started our journey at about 12 pm and reached Kuala Kedah Ferry Terminal at precisely
1.37 pm. As we were walking towards the terminal, I joked "imagine the ferry just left when we reached to terminal, hahaha...."

Cheryl wasn't too amused....think positive, practice 'The Secret' remember ?"

Well, THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED when we reached the ticketing counter. We MISSED the ferry by 7 minutes !! and the next one is at 3pm !

Aiya, I thought that if we drove extra 2 km p/hr faster, maybe we could reach on time lor.....

PLAN B.....actually, we don't have plan B. We asked the parking guy what is nice here and
got a blank look in return.

Stupid question.

What is interesting in Kedah or Perlis besides padi fields ? After much thought, the parking guy told us that there's a famous laksa just down the road and suggested we visit Gunung Keriang.

So here we are, at the famous laksa place cam-whoring with a plate of hard boiled eggs. It's a hot and scorching sunny day in the middle of nowhere waiting for our laksa Kedah.

Laksa finally arrived. It was good but not great la. The soup is rather mild for my standard. Maybe I'm used to our Penang Assam Laksa, very intense flavour.

Close-up look at my Laksa Kedah. Looks appetizing, eh ?
So we continue our journey to Gunung Keriang and saw the the Padi Museum signboard on the way. Actually, Gunung Keriang and the museum is just nearby.
The Padi Museum is smack in the middle of hectares and more hectares of padi fields. It's in the middle of nowhere.

Inside the museum. An anatomy of our humble rice grain. Nice !

We headed up to the spiral staircase, excited to see what is up there. Looks like we are inside Gunung Keriang.

At the top, we did not expect to see a MASSIVE 360 degree mural. It's one of the largest in the country. The spiral staircase ends in the middle of the gallery and the scene as if you are standing on top of Gunung Keriang unfolds around you.
Super Happy.
Apart from the mural at Pudu jail painted by the inmates, I have never seen mural this huge before.

Feels good to be on top of the world...looks real or not ?

This is how I would look like if I'm a padi farmer.

My last day

31 March 2010 was my last working day at the Bank.

I recalled vividly on 14th May 2003, I packed my bags and left home for the very first time to work. Accompanied by mum and dad, we stayed with 2nd aunt in Klang.
Due to the short notice, if it's not for 2nd aunt and a good friend of mine who offered me a place to overnight during my 1st interview, I wouldn't have landed here.

And stayed on for the next 7 years (6 years and 9.5 months to be exact).

2nd aunt was generous enough to offer me the entire apartment to stay and her driver to drive me to work on my first day. I couldn't thanked her enough.
And because her apartment is just walking distance to her main house, I would go back there to have dinner with her and the rest of the family.

And they said, the rest is history.

I have grown so much with the Bank, but change is inevitable.

It is time for me to move on.

Felt a tinge of sadness, as I shut down my PC for the very last time and walked towards the exit door. I glanced back for one last look at the place I spent 10 hours a day for the past 7 years, took a deep breath and as I pulled the door lever to exit.

A little bit of chinese drama is intended over here.

Glad that a colleague of mine brought his camera and we took some photos on my last day for nostalgic reason.



Michelle was my good 'neighbour' in our 'semi-D house for about 2 years. We migrated to another sitting position 2 months ago. Used to joke that she was my next door neighbour, then become neighbourhood neighbour and finally become different 'town' when I shifted to different floor.

This is no longer our workstation, but we just sat there and pretend like the good ol' times when we were once neighbours. I know the workstation is messy cos it's not my place anymore. My actual place can be worse don most days of the month.


My good friends at the office. I will miss you all.

Happy Chinese New Year to all my friends and Family.

I refuse to stop blogging, even though I have contemplated to do so lately.
The sense of obligation to complete an entry finally creeps in to me.

This would be my first post for 2010 and the year of the Metal Tiger.

Last year, I celebrated my cny inside the plane to Rome for my honeymoon.
This year, my first CNY with family after marriage...spent 2 nights at home.

Short and sweet. Wouldn't mind this at all, since I can't go anywhere without the crazy madness holiday traffic. I found out that going to the other side of the island (Batu Ferringhi) was as crazy as going downtown.

Since Ingolf was closed for cny (didn't know german also celebrate cny), we headed for The Ship at Ferringhi only to be caught in a crawling traffic 2 minutes after heading down.
So we made a U-turn and headed to an unknown restaurant serving western food along bagan jermal (next to Subaidah) . Food was below par, if not sucks !

But then again, all my loved ones are with me for a simple dinner that night and that is
ALL THAT MATTER to me !!!!

who cares if the food sucks big time....
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The Bank's Annual Sales Convention was held at Equatorial Penang a week before CNY.


We had a marching session at Han Chiang's stadium and this sure reminds me of school days.

Waited almost 2 hours for the VIPs to arrive and this is not very fun at all when you had to arrive at the hotel at 11pm, slept at 2 am and wake up call at 5am !!

The bus driver missed a turn, got lost and could not find his way to EQ that night.
I was summoned to help the driver find his way back, naturally.

It has been almost 10 years since I last went to the Hotel and it's already dark. With my lousy sense of direction, I could not figure out where we were for the first 10 minutes.
So I lead the bus to a 1 round merry-go-round and back to square one.

Damn ! This is very embarrassing.

The bus driver gave a sigh of dissapointment.....

It's not that easy when you are giving direction inside to a Bas Persiaran driver, ok.
Under a lot of pressure as each turn you say, has to be correct.
If it is wrong, the bus can't just made a U-turn like a kancil.

So we arrived late that night...dirty, tired, sleepy and a bit hungry.

But appreciate that the organizers made a room service of friend rice to all our rooms that night.

Enough of traveling for now.....2 trips to pg in 2 weeks with a total of 20 hours traveling time.

It's till cny....so GONG XI FA CAI ya'll !!!

Change is inevitable

This year someone asked me "how long have you been working here?"

I paused a little bit before answering.

And then it hit me.
6 years is a long time and had broken my previous record of 4 years from my previous company.

Talking about my previous company...how I missed the camaraderie of the working life there.

There wasn't any office politics, no backstabbings, no gossips and no fake and 2-faced people.

Like most employees, we would ocassionally complain about our bosses and share harmless jokes about them when they are not around.

We would occasionally throw lunch potluck without including our 2 bosses and they would come in and peek at our feast and smile at us. I would make my potato salad and "kimlorong" would boil her trademark sausages and "pundek" would bring her tomyam bee hoon and "ah neh" would bring roti canai. And flushed down with our chilled "tau foo fah" with "tau chui" dessert bought from the wet market next door.
Ah...such simple things in life.

Sometimes they would request me to tapau our favourite breakfast, bee hoon mee from Mt. Erskine market with extra gravy, which I happily oblige cause it's also my fav.

Our bowl of tomyam along a street at Haatyai with freshly chopped groundnuts was unforgettable and the awkwardness we felt during our first traditional thai body massage as we were asked to select our masseurs from a huge glass window. Looking inside, the masseurs, old, young, pretty, thin, plum all seated and waiting to be selected by us and we felt like a dirty old man seeking paid sex.
But we were glad that we chose the older lady with a strong hand.

Most of us suffered Monday blues, but I would wake up on Monday morning and can't wait to go to work. I know it sounded crazy but this is how it was.

Now, 6 years later, though we were no longer colleagues they are still one of my best friends.

6 years is not a long time, neither it is a short one.

Perhaps change is really ineviable.

I longed for those days......

Photo taken during our recent get-together at Harvard's Inn (behind Northam hotel).
4 people are missing in this photo and we hope to have a complete photo the next time we meet again.

The Ultimate Carrot Cake

I finally got all the remaining stuff needed to make my carrot cake from scratch.

Mum called few days ago and I told her that I've got the recipe for carrot cake and it's not just a simple carrot cake with walnut.
Knowing that she like to bake as well, I tried to tempt her a little bit more (or rather "api-api her a little bit)

So I added, that it has pineapple and raisins and nutmeg powder !

"WOW....sure ho chiak wan !!!"

So, I can't wait to start and see the outcome looks as delicious as in the photo.


Main ingredients :
Freshly granted carrot, chopped pineapple, plum raisins and toasted walnuts

Ingredients for the Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting :
cream cheese, butter, lemon zest and castor sugar.


Into the over and bake bake bake.



My cake is made out of sweat and blood.
Please don't grate your finger and nail while you grate your carrot.


This is it..................THE ULTIMATE CARROT CAKE !!!


I thought, I would put the the ultimate carrot cake for the ultimate test.

So, I brought some for my colleagues to test.

Fingers crossed.

That day, my department bought the "well-loved" fruit cake from PJ Old Town to celebrate 3 colleagues birthday.
So, my carrot cake was placed next to the delicious and well-loved fruit cake.

Haha..did not hope much at this point as my carrot was competing against the fruit cake (or so I thought).
But I was pleasantly suprise that my cake stole the attention and even happier to have rave reviews on it !

It's so funny that one of them holding my tupperware and asked if she could finish the rest and the other one asked for the recipe.

So, my ultimate carrot cake passed the ultimate test ! :)

My shoe got stolen again !

I can't believe it happened again !

And this is already the 3rd time !!!

This happened 3 years ago and have learned my lesson not to leave my shoe outside eventhough the grilled door it locked.

Now, almost 3 years later the shoe thief stikes again. This time, they stole the shoes INSIDE my shoe cabinet and my grilled door was of course locked and padlocked.

wtf !

I was dumbfounded, that we got hit yet again despite our shoes inside the cabinet ALL the time.
Cursed the thief like crazy and hope that he fell into a drain filled with shit on his way to trade his stolen shoes.

Apart from my nike 4.0 kena stolen, Siong's scholl loafer suffered the same fate !
We were lucky that his Nike was not inside the cabinet on that day.

Once bitten, twice shy....I say 3rd time you got bitten, you fixed not 1 BUT 2 latches and padlock the damn thing.

I cannot afford to take chances any more.

Thanks to dad ! He brought his drill over the weekend and helped me fixed these latches.



With my shoe cabinet looking like this, I hope the thief don't think that I keep some diomand encrusted and gold plated heels inside.

So, "old shoe never go, new one how to come?"
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My Merdeka fishing trip

So we decided to head back to Pg last week for the Medeka long weekend.
The gals are having a gathering and ah shing is going to be there too !
boy, I have not seen that 'chabor' for ages.

We had our lunch at Coffee Island along Gurney Drive and moved on to Dome Cafe @ Gurney Plaza for some snack and loads of juicy updates along the way. TCS did very well for being a chimui himself for the day.

Later that night, we went out for dinner and mum, dad and meng at BlueReef. A nice cozy little restaurant newly opened by my good neighbour.
Mom likes the food while dad just go with flow.....
I thought I give it a try since it's my neighbour's restaurant and meng helped to design their logo and mom said it's nice and it's just down the hill from our house.

Here's how it look like.....

I was a little suprised when meng said we need a booking cos it's usually full during the weekend. Lucky we did. After we sat down, customers kept coming in and poor neighbour, he had to turned down at least 2 groups of them.
You may want to try them out, it's located at Casa Permai 2. Mom especially likes their
fish & chips. And yes, their portions are big too. And no, I don't get a free meal for promoting them. :P

Anyway, lets move on to my other "fish" stories.

Dad asked us out for a fishing trip with his 2 friends from Holland. I remembered attending their Christmas dinner at their apartment when I was very little.

That morning, it rained and the sea was rough with big waves. I wasn't really bothered cos I loved the ocean so much and this offered me a great escape from the city life.
We caught loads of fishes that day !


I caught 1 and seconds later TCS caught another one ! It's a "Helicopter" fish

Cos this fish can stand like this and it looks like a helicopter. Got pouty lips......nice !

Posing with my 2 helicoper fishes.

TCS happy holding the puffer fish. Look at it's teeth.
Fugu anyone ?????


Arrived at the beach for barbeque.

As you can see, these are the "siputs" I digged out from the sand just seconds ago and straight to the bbq grill. It doesn't get any fresher than this.


Less than 1 minute later, my "siput" has opened up almost ready to be served.



Lunch is finally served. Fresh barbequed "siput" with a dash of soy sauce.....
simply delicious !

Happenings of the past 3 months.....

My friends and colleagues always said that I have very short term memory, I agree with them sometimes.
But I like to believe that I have selective memory loss......

Let me try to recall what had happened the past 3 months .......

Oh.....before I go on I found this picture.....
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of me and Michelle 'flying' down the skytrack, at Dusun Eco.
Apart from the stinking smell of the helmet, the ride down was one of the best ride I've had.


So here are some of the 'happenings' still in my memory....before it get lost.


Suffered from (in my opinion, crazily severe) insomnia a month ago. Till now, I do not know what had triggered it. I used to thought that it was due to work, but I realised it wasn't.
In fact, it was right after my Pangkor trip and a couple of days later...the shitty insomnia happened. Out of nowhere !
Like when you're driving happily along a straight road on your way to a nice dinner and then out of nowhere someone hit you at the back...no kidding, this is real life incident.....I'll get to it next.
Imagine getting 2 - 4 hours of sleep each night for 4 weeks ! The doc's sedative worked but this is only as good as it gets.
I was lucky that I didn't look like a zombie at work, and no one actually notice.
Then hubby saw this article on the newspaper and thought I should really give it a try.
I was really sceptical at first as I have tried many types of supplements already and none of it help.
My last alternative, I thought and gave it a shot.
The result ? I couldn't believe it. I still thought this was a miracle.....I slept soundly and even had a sweet dream that night !
No, this is not a sleeping pill at all. It's a food supplement called Rilax containing a breakthrough, internationally patented and award-winning ingredient from France, Lactium.
What's best is, I have stop taking this supplement and still sleeps like a baby !
Anyone interested to know more....go to http://www.livelife.com.my/product_rilax.html


Last week, met a freaky accident. And it wasn't our fault at all.
We were driving out to Jaya 33 for a food tasting dinner organised by bro-in-law. Taxi in front of us break so we slowed down to break.
Suddenly a bang at our bumper and hubby got out and saw the man fell down from his bike. That fella caused a deep dent to the car bumper, but he managed to get up. He then pointed at the clinic nearby and ask us to meet him there.
What happened next, we couldn't believe it. That stupid guy (perhaps drunk or dreaming) dissapeared. wtf ! can you believe it ? hit people then dissapear before our very eyes.
Anyway, looking at the 'pattern'...maybe a foreigner and I thought he wouldn't be able to pay for the damages also...


Happier side......
Bro-in-law registered for marriage on 080809 at Tien Hou Kong......

Bro-in-law looked dashing and wife lookin' gorgeous and pretty ! smile....

The big THREE OHhh !!!

They say that.......


30 is the new 20 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Got up this morning and the wind is blewing and then followed by some rain.

Wind and Rain....always my favourite weather.

And I thought the heaven is celebrating with me.


Happy 30th Birthday to ME

Dusun Eco - branch teambuilding (read: National Service)

okm (our organizer) said that the rooms are gonna be very basic with no hot water, no aircon, no power point to charge your handphone, you can bring your sleeping bags cos there's no mattress sheet.....and oh.....please bring your own toilet paper and masquito repellent and salt to put inside your socks.

wtf !!!

Then, I thought to myself, it's just for 1 night and after that I got a week leave to 'recover'.


This is our very extremely basic chalets. The floor creeks and the walls seemed to shake when you open the door. All the beds and pillows does not come with covers, but they provide those at their office. Only thing is you have to get it yourself. Luckily, I brought my own sheets. After each meals, you have to wash your own plates and cups and utensils.
wtf, like National Service camp.

Our first obstacle. climbing over these wall.

Next obstacle. Quite scary when you're at the top and everybody trying to be helpful by shouting where you should put your legs.

You have to walk pass all this ropes without holding on to anything.

This is one of the toughest obstacle. You have to balance yourself on 2 ropes at this position and drag yourself to the other side.


fun fun fun. After those hard ones, this one is so easy, can dance and pose halfway to take photos.

I have made it ! on to the next......

2 monkeys perched at the top.

Not the toughest, but the scaries obstacles. Not sure how high it is, but it's one damn scary bridge. I was drenched in sweat by the time I reach the other end cos I was concentrating so hard and making sure that I don't loose grip and fall.


Only 8 people at a time.

Last obstacles of the day : build your own raft and race across the river.
We took 30 minues to built this raft and halfway along the way, I realized I was in the wrong team ! wtf. don't tell anyone, and continue to tie the bamboos together.
The water was sooooooo coool !!! happy !

The "Fan" club president.

Next day, we went jungle trekking. I knew there was gonna be leeches, just that I didn't expect to see one, maybe 2, 3......but i bought 1 packet of salt and a can sheltox with me.
I hate those &%@$% blood sucking leeches. I saw 1 along the way and freaked out...and started to sprinkle my path with salt.
We spent the entire 2 hours inside the jungle, very intense and physically demanding workout, ever !!! I never sweat this much in my entire life !

Everyone survived the jungle to take this picture......

Later we went to this place....Kow Po shop. Famous for its ice-cream at Bentong town.
I had pandan ice-cream ABC. Best pandan ice-cream I ever had....can't find this flavour of ice-cream elsewhere.


Delicious !!!!!