sin is my religion

Review: The Time of My Life

2012-01-02T23:31:00.001Z

The Time of My Life by Cecelia Ahern

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I struggled through this book from the beginning. It's not your usual fun chick-lit, which I'm disappointed about. I want a chick-lit that makes me laugh, giggle, swoon, and giggle some more. With such a chick-lit-y cover in swirly gold writing, what's to say it doesn't contain excitement and fun?

But alas! I should have remembered the adage "Do not judge a book by its cover." I really shouldn't have. Despite its colourful front cover full of promises, this book makes me wonder when it will end because it's just so boring.

It's about a girl, Lucy, who is very messed up and in a deep rut in her life due to several little-turned-big lies she told starting 2 years 11 months and so-many days ago. Now, I can see how that can happen, and the whole book reads like self-help for Lucy, courtesy of her Life (yes, capital L), in the form if Cosmo (who I imagine looks like a door-to-door salesman).

Unfortunately this is a long, dreary path to plough through and nothing exciting really happens. It is an original plot, if nothing else, and Life being a solid person who can kick you in the ass (metaphorically) is an interesting spin on things. If this is your thing, you might like it. But... it's not my cup of tea. And I don't like Lucy, I really wanted to give her a huge slap through most of the book. I bet her Life wanted to give her a huge slap too.

The ending saved it a little, I did warm up a little bit to a Lucy who has finally, FINALLY decided to grow up, but too little too late. Dragging myself though boring 98% of the book just for the last semi-decent 2% doesn't do it for me.

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Review: Wintergirls

2011-12-25T11:34:00.001Z

Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This did not do it for me. The writing style is distracting, and the character portrayal of Lia does not encourage any empathy or sympathy. I simply did not care about Lia whether she lived or died. Lia knows she has a problem. Lia doesn't want to get better. Lia blames everyone else for her problem, her parents, the divorce, Cassie, etc. Lia actively lies and cheats and manipulate people for her own ends. Lia is selfish and spoilt. Lia is a cry for help because she doesn't really want to die, she just want to see if anyone notices her if she hurt herself enough. But she doesn't see that people DID notice, and people DID want to help, but she's in too deep to get herself out again. So she aggressively fights everyone else in order to STAY ill. She WANTS to be ill 98% of the book.

I feel if a book is written in a first-person POV, we shouldn't be left feeling that Lia is selfish, spoilt, manipulative and unreasonable because Lia won't see herself that way. It needs to be written in Lia's voice and Lia's reasonings, but I just don't get that feeling. I didn't get to know Lia. I didn't know how she thought. It was all very superficial. The author did not step into Lia's shoes - she simply wrote a fiction about ED as an outsider, with a pinch of judgemental lightly sprinkled through in the book, whilst pretending it's a first-person POV. It probably would've worked better if the author had written a fiction about a parent dealing with a child with an ED.

Her sister Emma, however, is very loveable, as little as we read of her.

I'm not attacking ED in general, it is a real problem, I just did not care much for the book and how it was written. Portia de Rossi's book on her battle with anorexia, Unbearable Lightness, reads much better, feels real (probably because it IS real), and I could actually sympathise with her. She made one understand the mindset of a person suffering from, and battling with an ED.

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Heart.

2011-12-10T22:47:00.002Z

Early Christmas present. :)

Review: A Discovery of Witches

2011-12-03T10:26:00.001Z

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The book started out really slow for me and didn't really draw me in until around 40% into the book. Up until then, I was wondering what the fuss was all about.

I really didn't want to compare this book to Twilight, but I can't help it when throughout the whole reading of the book, Twilight keeps flashing through my brain. It's better than Twilight, but that's not saying much since I didn't like Twilight.

I love how this book has explored more into the history and lore and I wish there is a bit more of that. But again, there's too much similarities to Twilight on the romance department that I had to make myself keep reading and not lose faith (or upchuck my dinner). It's a good thing that the main character Diana, whilst a bit stupid at times, is not as depressing to read about as Bella. And Matthew is very much more interesting than Edward. The characters in A Discovery of Witches is better drawn out than Twilight, the plot is better, however being better than a terrible book doesn't make it great.

What I cannot stand though is how Diana, despite all her "I can protect myself" or "I can do it myself" so-called feminism ended up as a damsel-in-distress anyway 80% of the book, who turns into a shivery mess when her vampire boyfriend/husband is not about. I feel as though I've been missold a strong character. The romance is predictable from the start and didn't get anymore interesting at the book went on.

I might be suffering from Twilight PTSD and in need to join a help group before I read another vampire novel, but regrettably I didn't enjoy this book as much as I thought I would. Two stars because I really did like the history and lore bits.

I may read the second book (as I understand this is part of a trilogy) if it's told from Matthew's perspective, because it would be interesting to see what he feels revisiting an era he has lived through before and what he will do differently compared to the younger Matthew.

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Too young.

2011-10-21T00:37:00.001+01:00

Girls where I'm from are raised with one idea - get married and have babies. Get married early otherwise you'll be an old maid nobody wants. Have babies as soon as possible so you have someone to care for you when you're elderly.

Unfortunately for some of those who had taken those teachings to heart, it hadn't worked out. Because... let's face it, we're rubbish at making decisions on who we want to spend the rest of our lives with at 18. But it's not uncommon for girls from the little town I call home to be married straight out of secondary school and popping out their 2nd or 3rd child before their 21st birthday. At 18, girls and boys are too rash, still governed by hormones, lust and fantasies.

I remember the days in school when girls would plan when they aim to get married by and how many children they wanted. They even devised ways to "foretell" such dates. Harmless fun, probably, and one I did not partake in because I didn't believe I would ever get married (I couldn't stand the boys we went to school with... too boisterous, too loud, too obnoxious, as is common for teenage boys, and this is on top of the fact I didn't trust men). I read too many foreign books, interacted too frequently on the Internet, and I didn't follow local conventions. I constantly rebel against what was expected of me. And as a result, I was probably an outcast in school. I didn't notice much - I was too busy with my nose in a book or computer.

I am glad of it now.

Do you really know what you want from the rest of your life at 18? You haven't even discovered your full potential. You are going to undergo huge changes in the next few years of your life as you step into adulthood and find your place in society. You will learn a lot of new things about yourself. How will you know your love interest at age 18 will still fit into your life when you're "grown-up"? You don't even know yourself.

There are friends who are unmarried, who feels like they're left behind. But why? If it's not the right time, it's not. If it's not the right person, it's even more so you shouldn't rush into it. Because some people have, and some people are currently living to regret it. I am thoroughly sad to hear two of my close friends are having marital problems, and they feel it's due to their marrying too soon, too young, at an age when all they cared about was how "sexy" their partner is. And after a bit of growing up and maturing, they find themselves different persons wanting different things, and their partners no longer the match made in heaven they thought they were. And at age 27, they're much too old for angst and much too young to be growing bitter. If the average life expectancy is 75, that's potentially 48 years of unhappiness due to one mistake.

I'm 27, and by the time I get married (if it happens as currently planned) I will be 28. This is "old maid" category not too long ago, but SATC may have changed this perception. Even at 27 going on 28, I don't know if I'm making the right choice, this may blow up in my face altogether, but I sure am at a much better place and mindset to make that decision than I was 10 years ago.

I hope everyone will educate their children that deciding on your life partner takes time and a certain level of maturity, and even if you never find a suitable partner, it's perfectly fine and normal to be happy single. Tell them not to believe in this "other half" nonsense, a partner in your life is to enrich your life, not complete it for you. You should be complete already.

Don't mind me if I'm sounding preachy - lately all I seem to hear of is marriages growing sour and breaking up from all over the globe. *sigh*

Long update of random stuff since February.

2011-09-19T01:36:00.003+01:00

It's been forever since I last posted. Gone are the days where I was actually committed enough to online blogging/journalling I would write everyday. Oh well.

Life hasn't been that interesting. I work most days and I sleep most days. And last I wrote, I wrote on the importance of service, and it just so happens that yesterday, I had another gentleman who insisted on personally giving me a box of chocolates. Which is really sweet. I also had the experience of a gentleman patient of mine who wanted to give me a tip (unfortunately, we cannot carry money on us at work, and it seems a bit strange to tip your optometrist, surely?).

Percy getting first dibs on the chocolates.

No, of course he didn't really eat any. I'm not that terrible a cat owner.

Speaking of the ginger monster, he has grown a lot since I last posted photos on him here. This is how he looked like at 11 weeks, 6 days after we got him:

And this is 13 days ago:

Percy at 13 months old.

He has somehow grown more ginger and his body stripes are less prominent now, so it just looks like he's orange all over with four white socks, a white belly and a stripey bit at the end of his tail. I've moved him from generic Whiskas to high-meat grain-free Swedish cat food. He's still a cheeky sod, attacks ankles and feet at will, bashes against the living room door every morning demanding to be let upstairs (he much prefers sleeping on our bed since we got our new bed). He has finally learnt to brake at the bottom of the stairs before crashing headlong into the front door and his 30 minutes of madness is less often now. But Boy is convinced the cat has something against him. :( Percy is the best Christmas present I ever received, and I hope I never have to give him away. He hangs around with me and keep me from feeling lonely when Boy isn't around (and Boy will be away fairly regularly due to training now). I don't know if he behaves more when I'm around or I'm just forgiving to a fault when he's got such a cute face. Both, perhaps.

I'm trying to train him, and so far he always sits when the treat bag comes out. However, being the impatient sod that he is, if you don't hurry up and give him a treat for sitting nicely, he'll hurry you up by patting your hand. I did get to the stage where he will jump onto any surface when I pat it twice and he gets a treat, but then I took a break from giving treats and made Boy the King of Treats in order to make the two of them get on better, so I don't know where that training has gone.

I know, cat, training? Percy's really a dog in a cat-suit. He plays fetch and he waits by the door when we get home from work. He specifically recognises our car pulling up. He also puts on his agressive stance when someone (us, usually) enters the house and he wasn't expecting it (because we hadn't taken the car, or we arrived home not at our usual time) and we laugh and call him a Guard Kitty.

Anyway. Enough about the cat. What's happened since February?

We had our 4th anniversary of being together in April. Boy got me the Swarovski Radiance ring from a new jewellers that recently opened on High Street. It's sterling silver and crystal, and Brother #2 thinks it's prettier than the diamond and white gold ring I got for the first Christmas Boy and I were together. Roffle.

Swarovski Radiance Ring.

Boy got a new job in June. I don't know if he likes it or not, I think some days he does and some days he's stressed out. I feel a bit guilty when he's stressed out because it's partially my fault he got a new job in the first place, mainly because I felt he was getting used at his old workplace who weren't giving him that many hours or that much pay to be worth staying on, and when he does work his arse off, they just verbally whip him harder anyway and expect him to do the job of five people. I didn't appreciate the managers swearing at the staff, and at the rate he was earning his wages, he could just about cover his expenses and not half the house bills as we agreed on when we first purchased the house. And it must be bad if he wakes up everyday thinking he doesn't want to go to work.

So here we are. New job. More hours. More pay. Less running around ragged. More praise and recognition for performing well. More chances of training and advancement. But a very, very different environment to play in, a job in which Boy didn't know much about when he first started.

I hope after he stuck it out for a year, he can consider again whether the industry is suitable for him or not, and whether he is going to risk more student debt and getting a degree in the field.

We went to Malaysia to visit my family at the end of June, and during the visit, Brother #2 asked the question of when Boy and I are getting married. Since we are now getting asked from both sides of the family (only 3 years after our engagement), I figured we may as well set a date or we'll never do it. So now it's set for 28th July 2012, and I have to get busy sorting things out. I still don't know if there is a Malaysia leg or not, and here's why.

Mum was diagnosed with breast cancer shortly after I returned to the UK. She was going to be my organiser mainly because it's difficult to organise a wedding banquet when I'm physically on the other side of the world. Since she will be undergoing various treatments and therapies, she doesn't think she'll be up to the task of organising a wedding (on top of her full-time job), which is fair enough. Health is more important.

On an even sadder note, both my and Boy's grandmothers passed away, his before our trip and mine after our trip. My aunt Lily (who was the kind lady who put me up in Singapore for 10 days when I visited so many years ago) also passed away due to complications from surgery days before my grandmother did. Dad had quite a few blows at him lately, as within one month, he lost his mother, his older sister and then he heard the news that his wife had breast cancer.

All these happenings really indicate something that people have always known but have always taken life for granted, and that is Life is Short. It really is.

Onto more superficial stuff, Boy and I both got ourselves new phones of the same ilk, the Samsung Galaxy S2, which we love. He likes the fact that he can read the news, email and Facebook on his phone, and mine is all that plus I adore the 8MP camera. Mine is courtesy of Brother #2 who kindly donated monies towards the cost of the phone and plan for my 27th birthday (I turned 27 on the 27th! Of June, obviously, since we're talking about the past).

Also for my birthday, Boy bought me a necklace/pendent/earstuds combo on the flight back to the UK.

Jadeite cat necklace.

Isn't it so cute? :D The photo turned out better than I thought since it was actually taken with the Blackberry Curve 8900 days before it got decommissioned for the swanky new Samsung. Who'da thunk that Blackberry in macro mode actually have a half-decent ability to photograph jewelry? I'm genuinely surprised.

The pendent is bigger than I thought (usually not a bad thing when it comes to jewelry), so I'm not sure if I can get away with wearing that at work. But it's definitely one of the cutest piece of jewelry I own. When I was a child, green was my favourite colour and I had to have green everything from dresses to drinking straws. Sometimes I still find myself pulled towards green. And kittehs! Who doesn't like kittehs? :P

I also finally caved on and started a collection of Pandora charms and beads. John Greed (two doors away from my workplace) had a promotion on 31st August (Malaysia's National Day!) where if you spent a certain amount, they throw in the £60 silver bracelet on for you free of charge. So guess what I did?

Yep.

I couldn't resist since I've always wanted those Pandora charms but couldn't really justify the cost of £60 for a silver bracelet. Sterling silver and gold with black onyx. I fell in love with the design when I was in there looking at the beads. Some of them look really nice, others a bit cheap, but that particular bead is so pretty!

I told Boy that I'm making his job of buying presents easier, because apparently I'm difficult to shop for. :P And magically, now he can just get Pandora beads or charms to go on my bracelet!

Anyway, it's almost 2am and I have work in 7 hours. And in less than 48 hours, I'll be in Darlington doing some Maid-of-Honour-y duties for MJ's wedding this Saturday. I've got to go to bed.

Just to end this on a bright burn-your-retinas-out note...

The importance of service.

2011-02-10T12:47:00.002Z

A couple was so thankful for what I did two weeks ago they bought me some carnations from Marks & Sparks. Pics of the flowers with my horrible Blackberry camera:

I like it when what I do matters. :)

Soap & Glory Sexy Mother Pucker and No7 High Shine Lip Gloss (and other stories)

2010-12-13T19:37:00.001Z

Visited Boy's nan and granddad yesterday for her birthday (and early Christmas dinner) and stayed over for a night. Unfortunately, we broke down on the A1(M) on the way there and it took around 45 minutes before we got going again. And we need a new front splitter or whatever it was that was broken off the bottom of the front bumper. *feels poor*

Anyway, since it was a special occasion, I tried out a couple of lip glosses that I bought ages ago. The one I ended up using is Soap & Glory's Sexy Mother^TM Pucker in Plum (RRP £8.00).

Surprisingly, it really did work in plumping up the lips. The pout is more defined in a beestung look compared to when I only wear normal, non-plumping lipgloss (No7 High Shine Lip Gloss in Happy, RRP £9.00, also new, as below). Some close-up comparisons:

Top: S&G Sexy Mother^TM Pucker in Plum; Bottom: No7 High Shine Lip Gloss in Happy

Quite a significant difference, don't you think? I'm also loving the colour S&G's SMP is giving me, and cheaper than Lancome's Juicy Tubes. The No7 HSLG I got for free, so it's a good deal for me, but admittedly it didn't really give much colour to my lips and just looked like clear shiny gloss. I like it because it keeps my lips looking nice and hydrated for work where I don't bother with makeup, but I might try a more vibrant colour next time and see if it makes enough difference to spend money on it.

Am tempted to get S&G's SMP in another colour to see if the colour's as pretty. :) It smells great too, even if the tingling sensation (plumping action) felt really strange to start off with. Loving lip glosses at the moment because they keep my lips hydrated, and I'm still not sure where I stand with lipsticks which gives a much more opaque colour.

Speaking of pretty, Boy's grandparents gave me a John Lewis fluffy spotty dressing robe for Christmas. It's tres cute and very comfortable. Even Boy is tempted, except the spottiness is too girly. :P

A bit of an update on Kitt, henceforth called Percy (after the cat on Sinfest.net). He's insanely cute but also a little bastard at times. When he's in a feisty mood, he leaves a lot of destruction and blood trails behind him. But when he's in a cuddling mood like, he's the cutest thing on Earth. Except he also likes to sit on my laptop which also makes it pretty difficult to get any typing done.

He didn't like the snow we've had but was very curious about it anyway. More pictures here. It was pretty funny because from what everyone's told me, none of their cats fancied going out in the snow either even if they're dying to do their business. :P

Oh well. We're hoping to get a puppy soon as well, so Percy will have some company, even if it might be company he doesn't approve of. I don't know if he will, actually, because Percy's acting a lot like a dog sometimes... maybe they'll hit it off? Doubtful though. Heh.

Introducing... Kitt the Ginger Cat!

2010-10-31T18:21:00.004Z

As some of you may know, we recently adopted a kitten from one of Boy's friends. He's been in our house for a week now, and he's gaining a lot of confidence around us compared to his first day when every little noise sent him running for cover (his hiding place when he's frightened is behind our couch). We can open the door to the living room now without him shooting into hiding.

He's also growing a lot bigger too!

Day 1:

Look at how tiny he is!

So... so... tired. First day is so stressful.

Day 2:

Still nervous and hanging around near his hiding spot.

He even sleeps there with a giant version of himself. :P

Day 6 (officially 11 weeks old):

Ginger flash!

And it's the Pole-dancing Kitty!

Look how big he's got in 6 days! His head doesn't look too big for him anymore. :P

Doing what cats do best - "innocently" sit on your computer when you're trying to do something.

Day 8 (today):

In his cat cave. Ignoring me because I said he couldn't have any of my supernoodles.

So yeah. You can see he does more and more things the longer he lives with us, so he's no longer scared of us. Nowadays he even waits by the door for us to open it and come spend some time with him, and every morning when I come downstairs, I'm greeted with his really loud purrs and rubbing. :)

We brought him to his first vet visit on Thursday and he behaved absolutely fantastically even when we was getting his shots. He was also pronounced to be fit and healthy, so we're both very happy. Bought him a couple of toys for his good behaviour and cut some holes into a couple of cardboard boxes for him to play with, so he's a happy cat generally. ^^

Stuff and London Day 1

2010-09-26T22:42:00.000+01:00

It's almost been forever since I last wrote. Between then and now, I've got my Macbook Pro (which I love), completed our moved into the new house that we now own (partially, on our bank's charity of 5.99% APR), bought £200 worth of food and drinks and had our housewarming BBQ in our backyard (which a lot more people turned up to than I thought they would... which is nice, considering I'm pretty much a social recluse most times), attended CG's wedding afterparty thing, went to London...

Oh yes, London. :) It was ace! Boy and I had been toying with the idea of going down to London for months now. Initially I just thought we should have a mini-holiday just the two of us and booked the first week of September off from work to enjoy the last of the British summer. And I was going to suggest a driving holiday because Boy loves driving, has just got his RX8, and apparently some of the best driving roads were up in Scotland somewhere. But he said he didn't feel like a driving holiday because of the fuel consumption of his car (though thinking back I think the amount we spent in London would've refueled his car at least 20 times!). So we decided we'd go down to London instead and do really touristy things.

Which we didn't end up doing much.

Instead, we spent most of our three-day break eating. I think I tried to cram too much into three days - I forgot the bit where we actually have to sit down and catch our breath a bit before heading for the next "scheduled" activity. And we kept changing our minds what we felt like doing...

But anyway, this is what happened.

We checked into Crowne Plaza St James and it was fantastic. I think Boy really liked the hotel. ^^ Good job me! It's in the West End, walking distance from Buckingham Palace, 2 minutes from a tube station, 10 minutes walk from Apollo Victoria theatre. Heaven. Location was perfect, and the quality of the bedrooms was what I'd expected from a hotel like theirs. The room was fairly large too, which I was really surprised about considering the location - most of the time you pay mainly for the location and the room will only just about fit a bed and a desk (for example, Corus Hotel Hyde Park, a 4* hotel). Actually, I thought with the price we paid we might be shunted into a broom cupboard!

So, piccies of the room we paid £356.71 for 3 nights for:

Comfy double bed was a bit too comfy for us - we had no motivation to get out to explore London at all after getting into it!

Other side of the room with the TV, minibar and walk-in wardrobe.

I don't know why I always take pictures of the toiletries...

However, I was all excited because I've booked us to eat an early dinner at the restaurant next to our hotel called Bank Westminster. This is an attempt to get to the theatre as well to watch a musical, which was one of my must-do-whilst-in-the-West-End list. I didn't really care that much about visiting museums or getting on the London Eye.

Our hotel room's balcony overlooks a fountain right outside the restaurant we were going to be eating at that first night. It was quite pretty, but Boy said that every time he heard the fountain he thought it was raining outside!

The fountain and the Bank restaurant.

Inside Bank Westminster.

It had really good atmosphere, and the waiting staff were excellent. Very attentive but not overbearing, sincere smiles and quick to top up on our drinks whenever we were running low. We were never kept waiting. Of all the restaurants we dined at during our three-day stay in London, this place offered the best service by far. The food was very good, but not the best.

King Prawn Tempura, chilli & lime jam.

Smoked haddock & leek risotto, poached egg.

8oz fillet with peppercorn sauce.

Eton mess.

Chocolate fudge brownie sundae.

Everything looks yummy but I guess my tastebuds just weren't blown away. The tempura just tastes fairly standard, no special batter nor did the sauce taste any different from the sweet chilli sauce. The risotto was okay but a bit on the bland side... the best smoked haddock risotto I've ever had was still at the Lincoln Grille and they've stopped doing it. Oh well. Fillet steak was good and tender, and I thoroughly enjoyed the Eton mess. :)

All in all, pretty good restaurant and I will probably visit again and try some other dishes to see if they are any better. I think a lot of restaurants can take their notes from Bank on customer service, because that's the main reason, if I'm honest, that I will visit again.

We then took the cab real quick to Apollo Victoria to watch... Wicked The Musical!

Ceiling prop for Wicked. The dragon moves and smoke comes out of its nostrils sometime during the show.

It was bloody fantastic! So so so funny, even Boy enjoyed it, and he doesn't like musical as a general rule and he only agreed to go to this one because he wanted to make me happy. :P And the voices... amazing. I want to go to another musical now. :P

Anyways... I'll write more about day 2 in London when I next do another entry because methinks it's bedtime now!

Ill.

2010-07-03T10:33:00.002+01:00

Boy: You clearly have a bad cough. Take some Buttercup (cough medicine).
Me: No, it tastes icky.
Boy: You know what they say, the worse it tastes the better it works.
Me: Said by people who don't have a choice but to take it.
Boy: Well, you don't have a choice.
Me: I do. My mum's not here!

So yeah, I am suffering from quite a bit of a chesty cough since Tuesday, following the sore throat I had since Saturday. Yesterday, it walloped me with a 3rd and 4th symptom - congested nose and headache. Falling ill v...e...r...y... s...l...o...w...l...y. Past two nights I've been coughing so hard and so frequently, I woke myself up multiple times at night (so I've had rubbish sleep!) and now my tummy hurts from coughing so badly. :( It doesn't help at night that it's so warm as well, so it's hard enough getting to sleep!

I don't feel too bad today though. Still have congested nose and cough but sore throat is not as bad as it was and headache is almost gone because I took some ibuprofen before sleep last night.

Hopefully I'm on the road to getting better. It's rubbish to be ill on my weeklong holiday, but it's worse to be ill enough to feel horrible but not ill enough to be off work.

My 26th birthday and how I almost killed myself (taking Boy with me).

2010-06-28T19:01:00.005+01:00

My birthday wasn't too bad this year. Brother #3 came over on Thursday for a visit and bought me an iPod Nano because I've been looking into getting an mp3 player and the 5th gen Nano has FM radio too in case I get bored of my mp3 collection. ^^

It's well purty. And I got it in bright pink because I figured no self-respecting straight male will want to mug that off me. Plus it means I'm unlikely to lose it in the house because anything pink will definitely not be Boy's.

CR and JL from work bought me a bottle of Irish Cream liquor and cards on Saturday, and JL gave me an extra AA Guide to London book because I told her about Boy and I doing a bit of touristing in London in September. Arrived home to find that I got birthday cards from MJ and Honorary Parents too. Also got £50 Bravissimo voucher in my email from Boy's parents despite my telling them they don't have to get me anything.

Sunday, had breakfast in bed and then we went out shopping for something Boy can get me for my birthday because he says I'm difficult to buy for. This is what we ended up getting:

Diamond and sapphire necklace.

It matches my diamond and sapphire gold ring, and I thought Mum would approve of the design looking like an 8. :P Oh, and our new house is number 8 too. Haha. I promise this is all just a coincidence though, I'm not being your typical Chinese person putting too much emphasis on a lucky number.

Because we ended up not really spending anything on my present after all (due to an unexpected 0% finance plan), I bullied Boy into buying himself some summer clothes because all he has are plain crewneck black Ts and jeans. I know he's bored of his usual look but his newest clothes were his merino wool jumpers from last December, which is pretty unpractical for the summer, and he kept insisting that he doesn't want to spend money since he's "not flush". I swear, the boy is getting thriftier than I am sometimes.

So I dragged him into Debenhams for a shopping trip - not for me, for once - and reassured him that it won't cost more than £50 to get him some decent summer shirts. He didn't believe me, of course.

We ended up getting three T-shirts (grey, slate blue and black with different necklines/subtle designs) and a black semi-casual button-front shirt that he can wear for nights out, all from the usual lot of high street designer labels he bought from last winter (Red Herring, Rocha John Rocha, J by Jasper Conran). And the total price? £49.80.

I was riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. ;)

Anyway, after much gloating of my right-ness (just kidding), we dumped all our stuff at the apartment and went off go-karting at ELK. We haven't been for over a year, and I know Boy loves go-karting and I am technically making him miss the F1 race, the England vs Germany football game and Top Gear all on the same day (my birthday is so awesome, everyone wants to put their events on that day!), so we may as well make it worth his while instead of his original plan to bring me to Nottingham for a bit of clothes shopping (which he will get incredibly bored with, I am sure, despite his noble intentions). Plus, Brother #3 had never been go-karting and we kept saying that we'd take him.

Boy all racer-like in his suit.

It was fun as usual, and somewhere near the end of our 30-minute session, I had a head-on collision with the crash barriers at one of the tighter corners, sending one of those white plastic separator barriers flying through the air directly towards the opposite lane, where Boy was heading towards at high speed (those 4-stroke go-karts we were driving gets to a maximum of around 49mph). Let's just say it's a bloody good thing he has better reaction speed and managed an evasive maneuver to avoid the huge flying object landing directly in his racing line, otherwise it would've landed right on top of him.

After I was saved from my stuck position and resumed the rest of the session, I continued on and by the time we finished and pitted, everyone was looking at my tyres. They were wrecked. The rubber was all cracked and bubbly from the hot sun and hot tarmac, but whilst everyone else had some tyre wear, they were nothing like my four wheels, as there were hardly anymore layers of rubber to go through. Just shows how much hard-braking/accelerating and drifting I do around the corners. I did notice as we were driving that bits of black rubber were flying all over the place, and I pity whomever who was stuck behind me because that meant they got a faceful of black rubber bits.

Boy reckons that my crash was due to my tyres being worn out to that extent since it was at the later half of the session, and even with his own tyres (that were less worn than mine) he was understeering quite a bit. I knew I turned the steering wheel at the point where I crashed but the kart just wouldn't turn much. Tried to drift it around when I realised it wasn't turning enough and the kart still wouldn't have any of it. It made up its mind it was going to crash, and I was just a passenger at that point.

I was unhurt, which is the important bit, but man, woke up today feeling pretty bruised and battered! I have bruises from where the plastic catch on my bra straps dug into my shoulder blades during the impact of the crash that sent me flat against the plastic bucket seat and my arms really ache from the non-power steering of those karts.

Back to Sunday though.

Camwhoring before going out.

Boy and I outside our apartment block. My eyes were seriously puffy due to contact lens solution reaction! :(

Brother #3 and I at the Lincoln Grille.

We went out for dinner at the Lincoln Grille (we almost didn't though, but that story is for Boy to tell and not me) and I wasn't as impressed as I was the last time I was there. They removed my favourite starter haddock and saffron risotto with soft poached egg and lemon butter sauce, and replaced it with spring vegetable risotto.

Spring vegetable risotto.

Yes, I did order that, but it was so bland and disappointing, nothing at all like what I had before. Even salt and pepper couldn't save it. For my main, I had cod.

Poached fillet of cod in creamy Vermouth sauce.

Which was also pretty disappointing because it just tasted bland, like I bought a fillet of frozen cod from the supermarket and plonked it on a steamer with no seasoning whatsoever. It was served on a bed of equally bland spinach with mussels and clams on the side, which just tasted very fishy and really put me off my food. Some lemon juice wouldn't have gone amiss. And it was supposed to have oyster mushrooms... does it look like it has mushrooms? No.

I can cook better than this, and I'm not a restaurant chef. I ended up wishing I had a large dollop of tartare sauce.

I ordered dessert anyway, raspberry crème brûlée with a shortcake biscuit and that was the best course I had (but still nothing special... you can probably get better with Tesco Finest range).

Raspberry crème brûlée.

However, I didn't get to finish it because I was feeling pretty full at this point, though I don't know if that fullness is a side-effect (stomach-shrinking) of dieting, or because my two courses prior had just ruined my appetite for the night.

Brother #3 and Boy seemed to like their food fine since there were no complaints from either of them, so maybe I just have bad luck. :)

Brother #3's starter: Chargrilled asparagus tips with parma ham.

Boy's starter: Minted new potatoes.

Brother #3's main: Cornfed chicken breast morel mushroom sauce.

Boy played it safe with our usual fillet steak with pepper sauce for his main (which I think was a good idea) and had mint choc chip ice cream for dessert, whilst Brother #3 had the crème brûlée for dessert as well.

Speaking of complaints, one of the waitress was really mardy and seemed to grunt out single-syllable words instead of talking, so I complained about her to Boy and Brother #3 whilst she was still in earshot. Surprisingly, the service became much more pleasant afterwards.

Brother #3 made me a cheesecake for my birthday, which we were unfortunately too full to eat at the end of the night. But we're so going to eat it today after dinner of chicken rendang. Look at how pretty it is!

Homemade cheesecake!

I'm so spoilt. :P

In sync.

2010-06-13T16:30:00.000+01:00

My mother always said that there will come a day when my childhood friends and I will have nothing in common. They will move to different places, meet new friends, get married, have babies, and generally be too busy with their own lives to think about those lost days. In a way, that has happened. I mean, where are we now? Most aren't even in Kemaman anymore. We're in KL, Singapore, India, Arab, Australia, the UK, the US... apparently anywhere but home.

But unlike everyone else, I think I might be the only person who is going to be settling abroad for good. Everyone else seems to have some sort of plan to move back in the future.

Whilst I am happy with my life here, sometimes I do miss the simpler days when friends were only a walk or a bicycle ride away. Even in college, friends weren't far. The entire city didn't turn into a ghost town once the clock ticks 5.30pm - it wakes up with a new face. And I miss the free and easy lifestyle of mamak-ing at night with friends - when the weather is cooling down, the food and drinks are cheap and plentiful. Even the freedom of going out and picking up a mindblowingly yummy Ramlee burger for RM2-RM3 per burger I miss. Eating out here for the both of us typically costs us around £15-£20 if we're behaving, a lot more if we're not. McDonald's is around £8 each time we go. And we can't afford that sort of thing regularly.

I feel so solitary and restricted sometimes because going out almost invariably means spending more money that I should.

I miss my friends.

I miss the food.

I miss mamak-ing.

But I don't know if I could give up all that I have here to go back to that. It is tempting, but what I have here is a sure thing. Life here is reliable. I have a stable salaried job, I have a boy who wants to marry me, I will soon own my own home (albeit with a lot of debt), I am gradually losing my Malaysian accent and my Manglish-ness and blending in with the locals, I have a pension. Hell, I even have a credit rating!

I have none of this in Malaysia. I wouldn't know where my paycheque would come from. I wouldn't have a house. Or a pension. And my boy does not speak the other language that is almost essential in securing a job in Malaysia. I don't even know how easily I would ease back into speaking Malay or Mandarin - I've not spoken either of them in such a long time.

I know my mother has a plan. She would like me to go back and get into the family business. She would also like to recruit Boy to deal with the paperwork/technical side of things, non-customer facing jobs, so language wouldn't be a barrier (though Boy is pretty skilled at picking up languages, given time and practice). But I'm pretty sure Boy's mother will be crushed if we were to move abroad - he has a much closer relationship with his mother than I have with mine. And speaking of that, I will probably row with my parents every single day if I were to live close to home.

It has happened. I don't miss the rows, the anger, the tears.

I don't miss the heat, the scorching sun baking our sweat onto our skin.

I don't miss the mosquitoes, flies, cockroaches, and other insects you see on a regular basis in Malaysia.

I don't miss the cost of owning an air-conditioner, the cost of electricity it uses and the frequent breakdowns it invariably will go through.

I don't miss the traffic jams and the subsequent overheating cars.

I don't miss family gatherings with my extended relatives.

So I guess the cons list may have trumped the pros list there. Perhaps after we get to the stage where Boy's parents are... where they can sell off their property, retire in, say, Malaysia and never have to work again for the rest of their lives. Perhaps we would be tempted then. :)

It's nice to know, though, that despite being far-flung to so many different places, we're still at the same stage in life. We're 25 years old, in long-term/serious relationships, we are out of school and employed, we are buying our first properties. It's quite incredible, isn't it?

Busy, busy weeks ahead!

2010-06-10T22:08:00.000+01:00

We're moving in 9 days! Can't you feel the excitement?

Heh. We are collecting our keys next Thursday, and we can go give the house a lookover and maybe move some bits and bobs over before the main move on the 19th (when BG will loan us her Land Rover to move some of the bigger items over, such as the TV). Not entirely sure where we'll be living until we complete the move, since we still have the lease on the apartment until 7th July. I reckon we'll be living wherever the internet is active at. ;) And maybe survive off takeaway and pizza until we finalise our move.

After we've moved most of our stuff, I'll have to remember to give the apartment a good clean out before handing back the keys, which I can do since I do have a week off end of June where I won't be doing very much at all. Am trying to organise a sort-of housewarming/birthday barbecue thing on the 26th, but not sure how well that will turn out. :) Brother #3 is coming over though and Boy has told me he has got the day off work for 27th, so at the very least, I'll have two people to celebrate my birthday with.

Speaking of excitement though, Boy is pretty excited about picking up his new car tomorrow. I won't actually be able to see it until something like 11pm on Saturday though because he's going down to see his family straight after picking up the car tomorrow and then returning home on Saturday and then going straight to work. I know, he's mad, but you know how it is with men and cars. :P

We finally did it.

2010-05-09T22:58:00.000+01:00

We handed in our notice. If the house purchase doesn't go through, we will be officially homeless in 2 months. Fun.

New dresses and contact lenses.

2010-05-02T19:20:00.000+01:00

Whilst I have time to write on a Sunday, I may as well do all these posts at once and pray that no one get annoyed at my spamming. :P I've bought a couple of things in the past few weeks, namely some dresses and grey circle contact lenses. :) So here are some photos finally of them...

Dark grey shift dress.

Light grey dress with a girly bow.

Both I bought from wearittowork.co.uk (a site specialising in workwear), but I don't know if the second dress will be all that work-friendly considering the lower neckline showing some cleavage. I did buy a third dress that was going cheap but it didn't fit right and looked downright fugly on me, so I'm going to try to return that.

And I discovered that pencil skirts are really hard to walk quickly in. :S And that in order to make your legs look long, all you need is the right cut/fit/design of dress and some high heels.

I'm still learning how to be a girl, apparently.

Now, contact lenses!

I figured it would go well with the grey dress, so I put them in. :) They do make my eyes look insanely huge and they only look okay if my eyes are made up. With no makeup they look alienish, I'm sad to report, but that's circle lenses for you!

They don't show up that well without light or flash, and even then the colour is dark grey, which I liked because light grey may make me look a) lifeless b) like I have arcus senilus. I may invest in a green/hazel one next when I have money, but what I really want is a pair of Solotica Mel or Ice.

3rd anniversary at the Lincoln Grille

2010-05-02T17:10:00.000+01:00

We had an incredible dinner at The Lincoln Grille on Friday (our 3rd anniversary), a place which we frequent whenever we want to celebrate anything. Mainly because a dinner for two will set us back almost £100 each time, so we keep it for special occasions, and Friday was no different at £91+.

We had (crap photos courtesy of my Blackberry, which is completely crap at low-contrast photos):

Wine: 2009 Foundstone Shiraz (Australian)

Starter: Haddock & Saffron Risotto
with Soft Poached Egg and Lemon Butter Sauce

Main: 8oz Fillet Steak (medium-rare)
with Chips and Au Poivre Sauce

The wine was pleasantly drinkable, smells stronger than it tastes, very sweet and smooth with none of the sharp aftertaste some younger wines have. The taste changes with the steak that we had with it later though, into something much richer and less sweet, emphasizing the peppery steak sauce.

Neither of us had the starter before, but it was so delicious and to-die-for. The flavours were rich and subtle at the same time, and each forkful just melts in your mouth leaving you wanting more. I pierced the poached egg at the start and let the liquid yolk run all over the risotto, but Boy thought it was a dollop of cream (he doesn't like cream), so he didn't end up touching the egg until the end when he asked me if "the cream" was any good and I told him it was a poached egg. :P Admittedly, it did look like a dollop of cream.

And the steak was just beautiful, soft like butter. And mine was heart-shaped! :P

For dessert, I had:

Dessert: Pear Tartin
with Brandy & Caramelised Apple Ice Cream

Again, a deceptively subtle taste but still full of fruity ripe pear flavour and a hint of brandy, warm against the cold refreshing apple ice cream on top (decorated with a long piece of crunchy vanilla biscuit). At the bottom is a thin layer of dessert puff pastry, lightly salted to offset the general sweetness of the dessert. So yummy. <3

For my next visit, I'll probably pick the same three courses again. I love them that much!

Edit to add:

Cheesy photo of the happy couple. :P

Fin.

Peanut butter cookies!

2010-04-01T20:24:00.002+01:00

So, as promised on Twitter, I baked peanut butter cookies today (as today is my day off). ^^ I followed the simplest recipe in the world for flourless peanut butter cookies:

1 cup peanut butter
1 egg
1/2 cup white sugar (or Splenda)
1/4 cup brown sugar (or replace with more white sugar/Splenda if you don't have brown)
1 tsp vanilla extract

Mix everything together in a mixing bowl. Scoop out tablespoonfuls of the dough and roll into balls. Place dough balls onto ungreased cookie sheet and lightly flatten them with a fork, making a crisscross pattern. Bake in preheated oven (175 deg C) for 10 minutes.

And this is the result:

Bite-sized chunks of peanut-buttery happiness.

Crunchy outside, soft chewy insides. <3

I also made a batch of these with chocolate chips stuffed in the middle of the dough balls, so that batch ended up with melted chocolate inside. Was so yum, but also peanut butter+chocolate is also very, very rich and makes one feel full in seconds!

I do kinda feel sorry for people with nut allergies (or any food allergies!) - peanut butter is ace! I'd hate to have to think about what I eat all the time, whether it's likely to kill me (or any less dramatic reactions) seconds after I swallowed it. :S

A cheaper way of eating out

2010-03-31T23:30:00.000+01:00

As you know, Boy and I have a fondness of eating out. We don't get to do it very often because I usually put us on a budget, especially when we're trying to buy a house and will eventually have a mortgage that will put us in debt for 25 years. But recently I discovered that the Tesco Clubcard points I've been hoarding all this time is actually worth quite a lot in "Rewards Token", that is, £5 worth of points can be converted to £20 worth of rewards token that will pay towards tickets to various attractions in the UK (such as Cadbury World, Blackpool Tower & Circus, Blair Castle, Blenheim Palace, zoos and theme parks, etc). You can also use it to pay for your food at various restaurants and pubs.

That's awesome. The downside is that Lincoln's practically the middle of nowhere, so there are only ~~two~~ three places you could use those vouchers at, namely Prezzo, Pizza Express and Varsity (limited). Out of those three, we're only familiar with Prezzo, the Italian chain restaurants. So we went there yesterday, armed with £20 worth of Rewards Token (with my distrusting nature thinking we'll probably be told we can't use it and have to shell out for the whole amount).

We both had pollo carbonara and shared a garlic bread on the side:

My pollo carbonara and garlic bread on the side to share.

The individual serving, as you can see, is massive. Coupled with the rich, cheesy sauce, neither of us could finish. I managed maybe half of my plate before giving up. It was very delicious though, so no complaints on that.

Our total bill? £25.75. What was charged on my card? £5.75. Dinner for two for that amount, I'm not complaining! :D

Boy and I are probably going to do this more often, within reason, of course. :P I have another set of tokens ordered, should be here by next week!

Although the service at Prezzo left much to be desired - waited forever for someone to do a check back after we got and finished our main because we were thinking of getting dessert, but fifteen minutes after we finished our food, still no one turned up. I ended up going to the bar and asked for someone to come around so that I can pay the bill, because we would've been late for our movie otherwise.

Our movie? Kick-Ass. ^^ And it was hilarious. Chloe Moretz as Mindy Macready/Hit Girl stole the show, she is so cool (coming from a 25-year-old, about a 12/13-year-old)! C'mon, her alter-ego has purple hair! And her schooling consists of playing with sharp objects!

Though I can just imagine someone calling Child Protection Agency regarding her dad's "parenting skills"... I mean, shooting at a kid at less than ten feet away? Seriously?

Awesome movie though, if you ignore the fact that it's not completely in the realms of reality. :P But not as awesome as How to Train Your Dragon! If you have not experience the oozing cuteness that is Toothless (in the movie, not the book), watch it!

Oh yes, whilst we were at Prezzo waiting around for the nonexistent service, I was "admiring" the decor and caught a sight of this beside where Boy was sitting and giggled.

Giant potted plant at Prezzo.

Boy asked me what was up, and I said, "Behind you. I don't know if it's meant to be like that, but it looks like a giant radish."

Cooking Chinese food

2010-03-29T23:15:00.002+01:00

Boy was ill yesterday, and it was his "turn" to cook. We tend to take turns cooking dinner based on what shift he is working for that day (if he's doing late or long shifts, I tend to do the cooking). But considering that he was ill, I felt it would be a bit harsh to make him cook as well, so I decided to treat him to one of his favourite Chinese dish, but homemade because I'm poor. :P

I've never made sweet and sour dishes before, so this is a first. I know, how ridiculous, a Chinese girl who have never cooked sweet and sour dishes! Oh well, let's rectify that...

Sweet & Sour Chicken

I fried up so many chicken pieces yesterday, it was mad. There was this mountain of fried chicken pieces made of the measly four chicken breast halves I bought yesterday (and the chicken, diced, could all fit into my cereal bowl!) that we stuffed ourselves silly and still had enough for another meal. Two meals for two for a fiver. :P Will post up recipe if there is anyone who have no idea how to cook sweet and sour chicken.

The picture above is actually of the leftovers reheated for today's dinner. The fried chicken pieces look a bit burnt because I had to refry them. But the sauce yesterday was actually a translucent pale yellow sauce, which tasted perfectly fine, but I kinda knew Boy would think it was weird. So I bought some red and yellow food colouring today and just added a couple of drops to the sauce to make it its usual orange-red colouring. And I was right! Boy said he enjoyed it much better when the sauce is the "right" colour. Roffle. :P

Yesterday reminded me on why I rarely cook "proper" Chinese food nowadays. It uses so many plates/dishes/pots/pans to cook the meal, and I know I'll never like washing up after (and I don't have time to wash during the cooking process because everything has to be done quickly, e.g. stirfry). MJ and MW used to love it when I make Chinese food, but didn't understand how/why I can manage to create such a large pile of unwashed pots/pans/dishes in the process. Well, cooking Western food is a lot simpler, does not require as many preps, etc! And I know this because I cook both nowadays. -_-

I know it's been ages since I last updated about my life in general, but a lot of stuff is happening like buying my first house and sorting out the relevant paperwork, solicitor, mortgage, completion date, etc and work has been tiring (and dramatic, sometimes, but I won't go into that). I promise, I am going to update more but not necessarily on a linear time line, but for now, just assume that you knew I have found a house I like enough to purchase and am buying it.

Year of the Tiger

2010-02-20T19:34:00.001Z

So how was everyone's CNY?

It didn't hit me until I sat down just now and counted, but this is the 6th consecutive Chinese New Year I've spent in England, away from family and ang pows. I thought it was only the 5th, but no. I started university in the autumn on 2004, so this does make the 6th.

I was 20 the last time I celebrated CNY with my family.

It's a bit scary, how time flies. Initially, for the first few CNYs, I was glad to be away from home, to not have to force smiles and call out pleasant greetings/wishes at extended family and distant relatives that I don't know much about and don't much speak to. Yes, it was interesting for a while to hear who is dating now, who has been kicked out of college, who got who up the duff. But it was just a fleeting curiosity - I soon lose interest, because it's really about as interesting as hearing other people talk about what happened on Big Brother. I don't watch it, I don't know the contestants, therefore I don't give a hoot about who did what when and where. Even if it's juicy and scandalous and gossip-worthy, why do I care? These people mean nothing to me.

My parents would be scandalised to hear that last bit - I can almost hear them now, saying something along the lines of, "They're your blood family!"

I think my interest in CNY and family gatherings waned when I found out how two-faced some of them are. CNY is about wishing people well and prosperous for the new year, but why would I wish people well when I don't like them? For the money? No thanks. The only people I care about and will wish well are my immediate family and Boy's immediate family. Actually, Boy's cousins seem quite nice and friendly too, so they're okay by my book. My cousins? Ugh. No.

Actually, I should be honest. The only "ugh-y, no" cousins are mainly from the paternal family side, the two-faced backstabbing aunts and uncles side. The ones who boasted about themselves like they're gifts from the gods. The ones who wouldn't bat an eyelid when they turn their backs on you if you're ever in need. The only ones I've gotten anywhere near close with is my father's oldest sister and her daughter A, who housed me for ten days whilst I was in Singapore way back when. They were really nice and generous to me (but there are stories that go deeper than this). But again, they live in Singapore, a good five hours away from where I used to live (and about a gazillion miles away from where I currently live, which is worse, I guess).

The aunts, uncles and cousins from the maternal side of the family are actually really friendly. It's a shame that I don't see much of them because there is a huge age-gap between me and them usually (most of them are in their 30s now) and they live in Klang Valley area their whole lives and I've lived in the east coast of the peninsular my whole life (until college and England, that is).

At this moment though, I'm not sure if I miss celebrating CNY or I'm still glad to be away from all that hassle. Enough time has passed for me to think "It's not that bad, surely" and that time may have distorted my view of things/events, but something at the back of my mind still reminds me that there was a very good reason why I like it here and it probably is still valid.

One thing's different this year though - my mother has yet to tell Brother #3 to pass on the message of how this year is going to be for me, the Wood Rat! :P

The Strawberry Sundae that Disappointed

2010-01-31T15:07:00.001Z

Above is my strawberry sundae from Gateway Park (Brewers Fayre) that was a disappointment because it lacks the promised wafer on top, and strawberry syrup drizzle were all stuck at the bottom of the sundae (kinda stupid, right?), and the strawberries were still frozen chunks of ice!

*sigh* I miss the days of Knickerbocker Glory from Tootsies. Why oh why did they go into administration? :(

Dinner on Friday was made of...

2010-01-31T14:56:00.000Z

Rib steak and cheese petit pains, +onions on mine.

Gooey delectable chocolatey goodness in a ramekin, hot from the oven.

Mmmmmm...

You love my food posts, really. :P Considerably non-witty, non-wordy, and more diet-breaking than any of my lengthy posts.

Re: iPad

2010-01-28T23:26:00.000Z

I'm not a geek reviewer. I don't review. I typed out a review about the BB Curve, and gave up on that because I got lazy.

But I'm just so disappointed about the iPad.

Nevermind the horrible name, but the features are unexciting after all that hype. Don't get me wrong, it does look very good - Apple hasn't lost its touch on that - but seriously? No multitasking? No Flash support? It's effectively what you get if you crossbreed the Kindle and the iPhone - a touchscreen eBook reader that runs some other apps.

I already read eBooks quite happily on my tiny BB screen so I have no need for a glorified eBook reader. I'm more likely to get an iPhone than and iPad - after all, iPhone is infinitely more portable and does pretty much the same things. No, scratch that. The iPhone might actually be better for it has a camera, which the iPad sorely lacks.

I don't know about you, but I like doing more than one thing at a time with my gadgets. I don't only read the news - I have several tabs open, and sometimes even a game running in the background, plus my camera downloading into the HD. Researching for things and bookmarking and copying items into other programs for future reference? Requires multitasking too.

Even browsing the net it may fail at, as the iPad does not support Flash. A lot of websites have Flash. Will the iPad then give you the best web experience? I doubt it.

I don't think I'm an Apple fangirl - I love Apple stuff. MacBook, iPhone and iPod all look fantastic and I lust after them with every fibre in my body. I suffered internally of extreme jealousy when I saw that SN had both a new MacBook and an iPhone when I visited him. But one thing I did not like about some of the Apple gadgets are the fixed battery. All batteries have a habit of dying, not holding charge properly after x number of recharges. It's unforgivable to pay the price Apple demands on their goods and realise that it isn't going to last as long as you hoped due to wear, and you can't replace the part most likely to wear out with time.

I'd hate that.

Might be a better idea to look at Modbooks, after all - it's a tablet and it runs on Mac OS, so it does everything a MacBook does (save for having a physical keyboard). Or just a plain old MacBook if a touchscreen is not necessary. And you can actually replace the battery for a new one.

Me, I'm debating between a MacBook or a cheap-and-cheerful Asus Eee T91MT (after Always Innovating's Touch Book failed to impress).

Simple fares - bread and butter pudding & homemade vegetable soup/stew

2010-01-21T23:53:00.003Z

Sometimes I forget the simplest things are the best.

Two nights ago I bought a loaf of bread on the discount shelf at Somerfields after work and decided to make some bread and butter pudding. I made some before ages ago whilst I was still in first year of university, and it was really yummy (despite never having bread and butter pudding before... but the taste is confirmed by a recent bread and butter pudding I ordered whilst we were eating out). So the result from two nights ago:

Bread and butter pudding.

To those who aren't familiar with bread and butter pudding, it's made of layers of sliced buttered bread in a deep dish with generous sprinkle of ground cinnamon, ground nutmeg, sugar and raisins/sultanas/fruits. Then you beat egg and milk and sugar in a bowl and pour it into the dish, letting the slices of bread soak up the liquid mixture and then baking it in the oven until the top is golden brown.

So basically ingredients that you can find in most kitchens.

Couple of mistakes I made whilst doing this:

1. Putting sultanas on the top, which got a bit burnt in the process of baking it.
2. Baking it for too long; it was just slightly too dry to be proper bread and butter pudding.

It smelt great whilst it was baking in the oven! All buttery and cinnamony. Heaven! I didn't put much sugar in it because I didn't want to oversugar it since I wasn't following any recipe, but I ended up eating it with a drizzle of golden syrup and it was fantastic! <3 Leftovers in the fridge that got a bit hard can easily be softened again by drizzling some golden syrup and milk over it and then microwaving for 2-3 minutes before eating. :)

I also made a self-imposed rule yesterday that I will not buy anything more from the grocery store until Boy gets back on Sunday so that I can finish up whatever else that is in the kitchen. This includes a whole lot of the vegetables that I bought which I might as well finish because Boy isn't that much of a fan of vegetables.

I chopped up a whole load (potatoes, carrots, onion, garlic, Savoy cabbage) after work today and dumped them into my slow cooker with some chicken stock cubes and hot water and pepper and Chinese five spice and cracked two eggs over everything to make a familiar childhood soup. Because of the amount of stuff I put into the slow cooker, not only did it fill it up as if I were feeding yet another army, it also turned into more of a stew than a soup - more solids than liquid!

All the same - nice and warm in my tummy for this cold, cold night! And comfort food that is also relatively healthy!

Vegetable stew.

Yum yum. ^^

Of spending days off productively.

2010-01-15T23:00:00.000Z

I got myself some clothes and bras from Bravissimo on their post-Christmas sale and they arrived on New Year's Eve. Completely sold and ecstatic with the clothes! For the first time ever, I don't have to physically squeeze or misplace my boobs in an effort to do up the side zip, and my boobs don't look like they're flattened and pushed up to my chin! Hooray! I'm tempted to go and get more shirts and tops from them right now, but I really should curb my spending. It's not like stuff from Bravissimo is cheap. :P

I'm a bit sad about the bras I bought though. I got them in the last size I know that fitted me and found quadroboobs staring back at me in the mirror. :( I'll have to return them, which is sad because I loved the look of Cleo's Billie bra - deep mulberry red with a sheer black overlay and frill trims. Looks fantastic on by themselves and the frill trims hide the top overbulge nicely, but unfortunately with clothes over it'll just look hideous. *sigh* They have run out of the size I'll need too.

No, I do not invest in bedroom-only underwear. :P

Sad.

I brushed off my failure and went into this new lingerie shop called Braways on the High Street that's a bit like Bravissimo - they cater to larger cups (up to K... mad!). Got them to fit me rather than my just guessing my size and ordering off the internet, so now I have two new sets of bras that fits, which makes me a happy girl. :) Bad news is that it's worse than I thought - it's 34*/36* depending on brand. Yeah, how the f*.

To think I used to laugh at MJ for her ever-growing boobs.

Maybe I really need that diet that I've been putting off for so long. :(

Anyway. On top of shopping yesterday (and posting out a parcel to Boy that made him a very happy man today and made his family envious), I also went and finally got myself a haircut that I've been meaning to go for since forever! The split ends were really bad by the time I did get them cut though. Ugh. I told the stylist to take off 3 inches and layer the rest. She also suggested shortening the front to frame the face.

Before & After

I'm very happy with the haircut, my head feels so much lighter and the ends no longer tangles up. And for once a stylist did not take off too much when I said 3 inches, and I actually still have enough hair to tie up into a ponytail for work.

I believe, after these 3 inches worth of hair has been cut away, that is the last of my highlighted hair gone (not that anyone but a hairstylist could tell anymore after I attempted to dye it back to black multiple times). Hooray! Fingers crossed that it's healthy hair from now on!

Tonight's dinner:

Soy sauce and garlic salmon with red peppers and broccoli baked in a bag and a side of sausage and herb stuffing with some crisps crumbled onto the top. I know, quite a large serving. :( Need to learn cook for one person, not an army.

The problem is, I'm lazy. I like cooking but not often, so when I do cook I like to do large amounts so I can just heat things up later. Problem is, if I eat small amounts of food, it will take me far longer to eat it than the food spoiling, so I just end up eating lots. *sigh*

Iced over!

2010-01-10T23:23:00.000Z

Venturing out in the snow when it was freezing and there were ice on the ground, the silly people that we were. I think we wanted to have our old Nando's+movie night that we used to do quite regularly but stopped due to financial reasons. So we went out for Nando's again and watched Did You Hear About the Morgans? Pretty cute chick flick with some funny parts, but nothing too memorable. I still don't like Sarah Jessica Parker, unfortunately, and again Hugh Grant was casted as a British man who is rubbish at everything.

Which is a shame, because he is quite charming. Not as charming as George Clooney though, aged as he already is, I think he'll be fantastic in Up in the Air.

Anyway. Some pictures of frozen over Britain on Tuesday (it has been getting worse and worse since then).

Outside the shops and cinema on the wharfside.

The wharf has frozen over. I don't remember the wharf ever freezing over the past few winters I've been in Lincoln.

Some really confused ducks wandering around in circles on the frozen wharf!

More of the confused ducks leaving icy trails.

^^ I found them so incredibly cute. Too bad the Blackberry has such crap a camera!

Let there be music!

2010-01-10T22:52:00.000Z

I love musicals.

I grew up with a family that loves music. We had a karaoke machine when we were younger with a boxful of VHS tapes of English, Chinese and Malay songs. Family gathering warrant digging out the karaoke machine and everyone having a go at singing. And I remember a time when we had to karaoke for ang pows during one Chinese New Year. My parents also sent all of us for piano lessons when we were younger - one that I gave up at Grade 3 because I decided I wasn't at all musical. My theory was great, my oral was great, I have no problems playing scales, but getting my two hands to play together in time was the most difficult thing ever.

So that was that. But that didn't change how I grew up listening to popular music of the 70s and 80s, and some classical music thrown in on top. And our TV was made of stuff like the Sound of Music (which I remember trying to record, but the VHS tape didn't last long enough and cut off halfway, and I watched it with Brother #3) and King & I (which I watched one evening with Dad). Both of which I still have good memories till now. Oh, and of course we have the singing and dancing of Disney features.

I wonder if watching musicals is my way of escaping adulthood and going back to the childhood filled with song, laughter, happiness. All that sappy stuff, and you have to admit that musicals tend to be more memorable than your usual film. But regardless of why I do it, I finally started on my DVD collection of the musicals I want with a copy of the Sound of Music and Oliver! which I bought to watch over the 2 weeks that Boy is going to be at his parents' because I'll be bored and lonely. Also because he doesn't like musicals - too cheesy or something. I don't understand how he can not like musicals - they're generally so happy. :) Still, I wonder if I can con him into taking me to a West End musical at least once if we ever end up in London for more than a day.

Watching the Sound of Music right now - such blatantly American accents for a film that supposedly has Austrian characters. :P I would've mistaken the accents for those in Gone with the Wind!

And I just realised - I'm only on day 2 of Boy being away and I'm already out of movies to watch. :( In need of a social life, me!

Snow Day!

2010-01-05T19:23:00.002Z

Hooray! I'm getting a couple of days breather from work and stuff because no one wants their eyes testing tomorrow what's with all the snow and such, so I get a lie in tomorrow. Awesome or what? And work likes me too because that means they have an extra day they can use for me to test if they ever get busy on my day-offs.

What snow, you ask? This snow!

It started snowing again whilst I was at work sometime during lunchtime, stopped for around an hour, and then continued with a vengence. So much that schools have been shut early and people are being sent home from work early just so that everyone can get home.

Yes, a little bit of snow and the whole country shuts down. :P Britain is one of the worst-prepared 4-seasoned country for snow, really. We usually don't get much at all, and this 3-4 inches worth of snow is something out of the ordinary. And snowing for more than a week is definitely something unexpected and surprising (most city councils only have a week's worth of grit in stock!). Whereas Canadians must be laughing at our pansy-ness.

I know I haven't written for some time. No, I'm not lazy. Really. But whilst everyone is busy being snowed in, I thought I might as well put a bit of an update on.

So how was everyone's Christmas?

I spent the earlier part of Christmas week at MJ's for a couple of days because I needed to pass on some Christmas presents to the honorary family. This year is also the first year since I've been in the UK that I have not spent Christmas at MJ's (barring first year of uni, I think). In return I got a load of presents too. What touched me most was that honorary mum decided to cook a Christmas roast meal with the usual pudding whilst I was visiting even though it was a few days before Christmas. It was pork rather than turkey, but still. They decided to have two Christmasses this year, one for when I was around and one when it is actually Christmas.

Which was really sweet of them to go through the trouble. :)

So... presents. I was going to take photos and post them up, and then I forgot. And then half of my Christmas gifts were eaten/used. And now I can't be bothered anymore to track down all of my gifts to photograph them, so instead, here's a list of stuff I got.

I got from honorary family a duvet cover, a turtleneck jumper, a box of Roses, and some Avon nail buffer and makeup stuff from honorary mum and dad. Got a double frog figurine and angel earrings from MJ. I have no idea who gave me a cat calendar, so I'll assume it's from all of them (or Santa!).

Trust them to know my obsession with cats. :D

Boy decided to go down to his family's for Christmas, so we went set off on Christmas Eve after he finished work at 5pm. Horrible driving conditions though - dark evening/night sky, poorly lit most of the way, patches of ice on the road and fog so thick we couldn't see past a couple of metres in front of us. Couldn't wait to get there.

Presents from Boy's family include an Elizabeth Arden makeup set and Estee Lauder's Beyond Paradise EDP from Boy's parents, Nina Ricci's Nina EDT from Boy's brother, and box of Lindor Lindt milk chocolate truffles (not pictured) and a pretty compact mirror from Boy's grandparents.

Also got a present from my Secret Santa (from work), which is a gift box of Bailey's truffles and a shot of Bailey's Irish Cream, and a litre bottle of M&S Irish Cream. Not tried either yet, but sounds good enough!

Last bit of Christmas shopping + treat for self!

2009-12-17T23:30:00.000Z

I don't know why I'm so lazy at blogging considering that I used to be the blogging monster! Anyway, today being my day off, I went out to finish the last of the Christmas gift shopping. It was blistering cold though, and snowing. Ugh!

Saw in a fair trade shop a really gorgeous necklace that I thought MJ would love, so I bought it. :s

Only problem is, I absolutely adore it too! *sigh* The box is mine as the necklace did not come with a box but I need something presentable to put it in. So tempted to keep it for myself, but I won't. I'll be good. What the necklace did come with is a set of matching earrings. Now these I've decided to keep for myself because MJ has staunchly refused to have her ears pierced all this time so she can't wear these anyway. She only wear clip-ons.

Hooray, new earrings! :)

So I am appeased by the fact that even though I don't get the coveted necklace, I still get it's smaller earring counterpart. It's really just to restrict me from running out to the shop again to get another set for myself!

Close-up shot of one of the earrings.

So cute. Love it. :)

Malaysia Trip Summer 2009 Pt. 3

2009-12-12T18:19:00.014Z

Because I'm really a very lazy person and because there are way too many photos that made up the 2 days I stayed in KL during the summer, this is all you're going to get for Malaysia Trip Summer 2009 Pt 3. Also because I don't remember much that went on now, other than more eating and drinking and walking around and meeting friends and general nice life.

LL and her boyfriend hosted us whilst we were in KL and were very gracious and patient with us, even went as far as to drive us all the way to Malacca to try out the famous satay celup. The following is a collection of photos taken whilst we were in KL.

Photos in no particular order.

Needless to say, it was a very enjoyable trip and we sampled plenty of Malaysian food or food with a Malaysian spin to it. :P

And I just notice something whilst going through all those pictures from the last tripe. My hair went through a crazy growth spurt in the past 4-5 months! Compare:

Left: Taken July 2009 . Right: Taken November 2009

Mad. o_O I need a haircut soon anyway, it's way overdue.

Human photos at Dragon-i

2009-12-12T17:05:00.003Z

I haven't really written about the rest of my Malaysian trip yet, so I shall do so as soon as possible. In the meantime, to follow up on the last entry I did on it, here are some human photos to accompany the previously published food photos for that night at Dragon-i@Sunway Pyramid.

The girls.

With my best friend from secondary school and college.

Guess who?

Oh, and I'm really fat, so I totally need to lose weight at some point in time. I've not decided when yet.

Work's Christmas do!

2009-12-06T21:40:00.004Z

I went for my work's Christmas do yesterday night. Since I had nothing better to do during the day and the previous coat of paint that I applied for my brother's wedding has since chipped off, I painted my nails. But I have a most horrific collection of nail polish available - all which I was given free during promotions and whatnots. I have shimmery pearly pink, glittery nudey brown, glossy hot pink, deep raspberry framboise, and a strange purpley colour. Didn't like any of them, and I seem to have misplaced my sheer creamy strawberry nail polish I used in Malaysia.

So I ended up painting my nails with the pearly pink, found it too boring and bland, and started to add bits of hot pink to it. Voila!

Attempt at self-painted nails.

It's not fantastic, but at least it's not boring! I'm not very good or steady with my hands when it comes to painting my own nails, unfortunately. And the only reason why I've started to paint my nails in the past two weeks is that I actually can grow my nails during my holidays. They're getting clipped short once I start back at work next Monday! :( I was told in uni that if we were people who wanted to keep our nails long, we were in the wrong course.

Ate soft boiled eggs for breakfast and then a pot of Muller Light raspberry yogurt for lunch to prepare myself for a 3-course meal for dinner. Was picked up at 7.20pm by NC, EY and DO in a taxi and we were off to ASK where we had a table of 15 booked for us.

Merlot plus free champagne for ordering from their Christmas menu. Yum!

Bruschetta - For something that is so full of raw vegetables, I loved it! It's so flavourful and light at the same time! I can live off these stuff...

Christmas Calzone - folded pizza filled with pepperoni, ham, pancetta, beef meatballs, tomato sauce, green chillies with mozzarella and caramelised onions. Nice and spicy, but the bruschetta was better in taste.

Chocolate Nemesis - the melted chocolate in the middle pudding with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top. I just wish the ice cream isn't already so melted by the time it got served!

The food took forever. We got there at 7.30pm, and we finished at around 10.30pm! Two people didn't get their starters until half an hour after everyone else did, and one person's starter was a whole hour later than everyone else's! And KN didn't even get to have her dessert since she was to be picked up at 10pm by her partner, and we weren't served dessert by then. 3 hours for a 3-course meal is mad, considering that we had 10 courses at my brother's wedding and that took 3 hours at the most.

And we didn't even get the £10 ASK voucher (to use in January) we were promised! :(

Of course, you probably want to see the people photos now and not just the food photos, however much you like food. :P Thankfully my eyebags are not as obvious as usual - proof that a good holiday is all I need to get rid of them.

NR, me and CR.

NR, me and CR again because CR wants a smiley photo.

HF and I.

Me and LM.

Me and KN, the ex-boss.

I had fake lashes on, which everyone found extremely interesting. EY was like, "Can I touch it?" CT (the other optom) asked me to look down so that she can have a look from the top to detect the line, and she couldn't (I covered it with lots of eyeliner and eyeshadow!). And then there was the discussion where everyone admits to trying to use false eyelashes at some point in their lives and found that they always gets stuck at the wrong place. Personally I still struggle with them, so I never bother with them unless I have a lot of time to get ready.

Everyone liked the dress too - they thought it made me look like a Grecian goddess. Haha!

Apparently I have been missed at work! Awwww. <3 So sweet.

During the dinner, DD kept flirting with the table next to us, which was conveniently a table full of men with one woman (who is a lesbian) who were also on their work's Christmas do. They ended up coming along with us after dinner to Lloyds Bar next door for some drinks and dancing! Poor NC had this guy who thought she was stunning and was all over her the rest of the night, hanging on to her every word! Hehe.

HB and HF, the youngins that they are, kept dragging me onto the dance floor. Was fun, but decided to call it a night before midnight since I have to cab it home and cab fares gets hiked up after at midnight! ^^

BK mini-pancakes and syrup

2009-12-03T13:25:00.002Z

Woke up craving for something sugary sweet and fattening, thanks to someone. And since I am supposed to be on a diet because my mother thinks I'm fat, I have banned myself from getting anything junk-foody from our grocery shop. That includes any Belgian buns, cinnamon swirls, ice fingers, cookies, cakes etc. Raided my kitchen and there wasn't anything there that would satisfy my sweet tooth, so I waited around for Boy to wake up.

Went out to BK and my wish came true with their new range - mini pancakes and syrup, available all day! :D

Pack of mini-pancakes. They're so tiny and cute and fluffy!

Buttery pancakes + syrup = <3!

They were goooooood. And because they're so fluffy they're almost ball-like, biting into one gives you the satisfying explosion of warm, moist, buttery goodness.

But just to make sure I don't break my "diet" (probably only until I get back to work) any more than necessary, I've bought myself some bananas and Muller Light yoghurt to stave off future sweet cravings. :P Delicious food or not, I need to behave.

Jalan-jalan makan Malaysia!

2009-11-28T04:06:00.007Z

Wednesday, we went to KL on the express bus that was late by 40 minutes. Was picked up by LL and her boyfriend AC after they finished work, and then we went off to Sunway Pyramid. Plans were Midvalley Megamall, but EL said it was too expensive and so plans were changed to banana leaf rice in SS15, but AW said she'd prefer something else since we're technically celebrating her birthday (which I can understand), so that's where we ended up and then EL said that she's not joining us for food after all.

Choosing a place and organising a meet in Malaysia is possibly the most difficult endeavour ever when everyone is so busy saying they don't know where to go and generally not wanting to make any suggestions but at the same time, they keep rejecting suggestions made. If you have a specific requirement, make a frickin' suggestion. Don't beat around the bush and hope someone will read your mind on what you want, because we just end up wasting precious time.

We arrived an hour earlier than everyone else, so we went to BreadStory first and got a "White Forest" (which we figured is like black forest, but with white chocolate) birthday cake for AW. Then we headed to Dragon-i to drop the cake off and make a reservation for 8pm. In the meantime, we spent some time wandering around the shopping complex looking for gifts for Boy's parents.

Bought some smellies as requested, and then headed off back to the restaurant to sit down and wait for the others to arrive. AW and her boyfriend MG arrived at just after 8, and we started ordering our food.

Inside Dragon-i restaurant.

Xiaolongbao is love! <3 This is even better because it's free!

Fried eel. Very crunchy.

Stir-fried long beans with minced meat.

Kung po chicken! Boy's favourite, haha. It was listed as chicken with cashew nuts in Szechuan sauce.

Prawn in... I don't know what.

Minced meat with... some biscuity thing that we fill up. Such a big pouch, so little meat. :(

All in all, a very delicious meal that ended up costing us RM199! Haha. Split the bill between us two couples as it is AW's birthday. We ended up sitting around discussing where to go next since Pyramid supposedly is shut at 10pm, and one of the waiters starting setting out empty small dessert plates on the table. AW said excitedly, "We're getting fruits!" (Apparently, the restaurant offers free fresh fruit platter for dessert for large groups of people dining?)

AC humoured her and said, "Yes, fruits."

It wasn't until the birthday song started over the speakers and the cake was brought out to our table that the realisation dawned upon her. She started crying.

Oops. None of us were expecting that.

Anyway. That was quite a surprise for her. Then JL and EL arrived with EL's boyfriend which was never introduced by name, I don't think, and they had cake along with the rest of us. We took some photos of the group and the cake, which are currently still residing in LL's memory card. Then we packed up and left for LOL Cafe, which JL recommended to us.

Where we ended up yum-cha'ing.

EL said she was going to join us for the yum cha session after dinner, but she never did turn up, so in total she spent maybe 10 minutes with us. Huh. Nevermind. Anyway, JS's boyfriend KP turned up after sorting out some work stuff, and AC's friend turned up too, so there was quite a large group still. We had a great time at the cafe just talking and sharing stories and jokes until past midnight, and headed home when it got too late for a weekday night, what with people working the next day and all. :P I noticed that MG was a lot more talkative this time around, which is a nice change.

Went back to LL's place, slept, woke up the next day at 7am! Could not sleep anymore. So we waited around until JL woke up and texted me so we could hang out or something before I headed home, since she wasn't working that day. Ordered in McDonald's breakfast and realised that they have changed the sausagemeat patty to sausage slices. Ew. Was not as good as sausage patty! Change it back! :(

JL texted me at around 11.30am, and then came around to pick us up at 12pm-ish after sorting out some stuff. We went to Damansara in SS15, old hangout from college days, and I got to have my murtabak! <3 It was so yummy... sigh. First murtabak in 3 years. I lead a sad life. :( There is no photo of it because I was too excited of actually eating it, so I only remembered about taking a photo after I was halfway through eating.

After that, JL dropped us off at Kelana Jaya LRT station so we could make our way to Bukit Bintang area. Wanting to walk around in Low Yat Plaza to see if there were any good deals on gadgets and electronics. Ended up to be pretty crap experience. Things are so bloody expensive there now! In fact, I found possibly the one thing that is more expensive in Malaysia than in the UK!

The iPhone 3GS 16GB is £440 (~RM2500) in the UK (without the contract). In Malaysia? It's RM2790(~£481). What the hell! So much for Malaysia being cheaper to shop in. And the seller was BS'ing about how Malaysia electronics get taxed (and did he think UK doesn't get tax at an extortionate rate?), how you have to sign up a contract in the UK to get an iPhone (which I told him is a blatant lie!), how it's all made in California and it takes longer to ship to Malaysia than UK... BS lah!

Anyway. Got picked up by Brother #2 and started heading home after that.

Next morning, Mum asked us if we wanted lunch. Since it was Hari Raya Haji (Eid al-Adha), not a lot of places are open, so we ended up at this cafe nearby that was styled similarly to the Old Town White Coffee group.

Chendol! Would've been lovely if not for the sweetcorn... I just want chendol only! :(

Nasi Lemak Ayam Rendang... which was okay, nothing special. I wanted the sotong version. :(

Didn't spend the day doing much the whole of yesterday. Going to Kuantan later on today maybe to see if we can't get tickets to watch 2012. Online booking system is down for GSC, which is very disappointing! Phone booking line is screwed too!

Looking back at the xiaolongbao makes me want to go out and eat dimsum!

Foreigner in a foreign land

2009-11-27T07:57:00.001Z

Every time I come home to Malaysia for a visit, my mother asks me variants of the same question: "When are you coming back for good?"

And I always answer with the same, "I don't know."

I really don't. I always tell people that the reason why I've not come back to stay is due to the insane heat in Malaysia which I have complained and barely tolerated in my 20 years growing up in Malaysia before I went to England for further education. But what really drives a girl away from all her friends and her family and all that is familiar to her to a place of unknown?

Most of you know what drove me there. What you don't know is what kept me there. Other than Boy, that is.

It is the political climate and the underlying racial tension all around us. It is things like this: www.themalaysianinsider.com/index.php/malaysia/44775-btn-taught-me-the-chinese-are-the-jews-of-asia

I, for one, do not believe racism is inherent in us. Racism is learnt. We acquire this from others, our peers and family and sometimes, the people we respect or are told to respect. I went to a Presbyterian kindergarten even though I wasn't Christian and then I went to a Malay primary school and were one of the five (and later, six) Chinese girls in our class. All through that, I did not think there were any difference between me and my Christian friends, or me and my Malay friends. Perhaps I was naive, but as far as I could remember, we were kids, we played and laughed and learnt together. Some of us were very close despite belonging to different religions, different cultural backgrounds, etc.

I first learnt about racism and the effects of it when I was eleven. I cried in my mother's lap and asked why did it have to be so. She said that is life. For a long time, I refused to believe that life has to be that way, but she was right. Life continued on, and racism became more apparent in secondary school when we were joined by students from the Chinese primary school and the chasm widened. The Chinese and the Malays hung out with "their own kind". The Chinese students who studied in the Malay primary school had to make a choice.

I distanced myself from people, not willing to participate in this game.

Do you think it is sad that I feel more accepted in a foreign country like England than I do in Malaysia, the country where I was born and bred? I am treated as a second-class citizen in my home country. I am penalised for my origins, my skin tone, my race, all which I cannot help or change.

I am treated as an equal in a foreign land regardless of what colour I am and which god I worship.

Why, then, would I - or anyone else - want to come back? Even if I were treated like a second-class citizen in a foreign land, I'd rather that than to be treated that way by my motherland. You know why? I can rationalise easier on why a foreign country may alienate me, but I can never rationalise why my own country would do so to me. It's like being abused by your own parents, who are supposed to love you most. You can understand why a stranger may hit you for something that is not your fault, but you can never understand why your own mother would do so.

But I have never ever thought of myself as anything other than Malaysian. Even now, when I am in England, people curiously ask me if I am Chinese. They wonder if I had been born or brought up in England.

I smile and I tell them that I am Malaysian.

But I don't know if I ever will come back for good.

Ocean Cantonese Restaurant, Costa and Harry Brown, all in one day!

2009-11-19T02:50:00.002Z

We went to a Chinese restaurant today. Yes, not a takeaway! Shocking. :P It's called Ocean Cantonese Restaurant, located in North Hykeham which is around 10 minutes drive from where we live. It's run by a Chinese family - not surprisingly - and had always looked quite expensive and upper-class every time we drove by it on our way to somewhere. But I stumbled upon their online menu today after work (after Boy said he was starving because his lunch tasted like detergent and he didn't finish it) and the prices were quite reasonable for a Chinese restaurant in England, so we decided to give it a go.

Stepping into the restaurant was quite a pleasant surprise. It was decorated and furnished in the style of a posh Chinese restaurant, kinda like a place where you would hold an expensive wedding reception in, for example. The waiting area was some sofas next to the bar. We were immediately greeted and led to a table for two. The restaurant itself had muted lighting, large round tables (and smaller square tables) covered in thick white tablecloths, proper napkins, wood-framed and cushioned chairs, good quality silverware and table setting. There are some tiny photos on their website, but those photos really don't do it any justice. It was beautiful.

We sat down and Boy got a Coke and I got myself a little pot of jasmine tea whilst we look through the menu. We (or rather, I, because I'm a bossy cow) decided that we should order some dishes and share them over rice, like we typically do in a Chinese restaurant. We ordered Sweet and Sour Pork to appease Boy's taste, Beef and Green Pepper in Black Bean Sauce because I know that is usually good, and Kung Po Chicken because I've always liked Kung Po Chicken but I have yet to find somewhere in Britain that makes it properly. With that is Egg Fried Rice, which I was a bit begrudging about since who the hell pay £2.70 for Egg Fried Rice? I can make it for less than 50p!

Anyway, the dishes came lightning quick! They set up the three dishes on top of a metal shelf thing with tea lights at the bottom to keep the food hot whilst we eat it, a bit like what they usually do with whole fish dishes, and they were all really yummy. It was surprising for me to taste something so authentically Chinese in Britain, because so far all the Chinese buffets and takeaways I've had, they had been good but did not have the authentic look and taste. These dishes today looked and tasted like they could've come from a restaurant from home.

I forgot to take photos because I was too busy digging into the food! Sorry. Haha. The service was fantastic too, drinks were poured for us and rice were dished out for us and I was offered chopsticks (which I declined, and the Chinese man was very surprised at this!). And the moment our glass or pot was empty, someone immediately appeared and asked if we would like more drinks or the pot topping up with more hot water. <3 I did manage to take photos of the dessert because it was too cute not to.

Boy's Mint Bombe - Mint ice cream with an outer chocolate shell and a melted chocolate centre.

My Coconut Half - Half a coconut shell filled with coconut ice cream with a chocolate slice in the centre!

There were so many other desserts that were so interesting, I wanted to try all of them. :( Most of them are admittedly filled fruits with similar ice cream or sorbets, like a whole lemon rind filled with lemon sorbet, etc.

Overall I am very satisfied with the restaurant and the food, and it's great to know that if I ever miss authentic Chinese food, there is a place nearby that serves it! I'm also really glad that Boy is very open to trying new dishes now, like Kung Po Chicken. Quite different from the Boy that I first dated who was a bit averse to non-English food and anything spicy. :) I think the first trip to Malaysia and our regular makan sessions had managed to expose him to far too many different tastes - some good, some bad - for him to feel surprised at any type of food he tries in the future. Hehe.

After the meal, we were supposed to watch Harry Brown at the cinema but we had around an hour to kill, so we went to Costa and had their Christmas special - Mint Hot Chocolate.

Love in a mug. <3

I've got Christmas in a mug! *happy* Boy thinks I'm the cheesiest person alive!

Was so stuffed after eating, dessert and then a large mug of hot chocolate that I felt a bit sick and decided against consuming any more sugary drinks. Settled for a bottle of spring water for the movie.

The movie itself was pretty good. I enjoyed it, even though some parts were pretty slow and dragged a bit, I felt overall it was necessary to establish a sense of Real Time, ie that some time has passed from one scene to another. I also like how Michael Caine as Harry Brown has somehow managed to make old men with emphysema look cool.

Do I sound ageist when I say that?

A positive note to follow the last one.

2009-11-18T23:04:00.001Z

According to National Rail, a return railway ticket for two people from Lincoln to Heathrow Airport on 22nd November 2009 and 1st December 2009 will cost set you back anything between £294 to £354 if you want an anytime return ticket. But if you know what train you want to be on and book in advance, you get them cheaper. If you're fairly flexible with your time schedule, you can get the cheapest fare. And this, according to the website, is £115. And it also meant we had to wait 2.5 hours in Heathrow Airport because the discounted price means we cannot travel during "peak periods".

However, if you have railcards, that gets it down to £75.90. However, if you're Pei and slightly insane and ridiculously meticulous, you get it for £67.50 and you somehow find a way to reduce the waiting time down to 1.5 hours. I could've just reduce that down to half an hour waiting time and travel during peak time (before 9am) for the same price, but I wanted to make sure we a) manage to get our check-in luggage; and b) in case of any delays. I don't fancy worrying about missing my train, and I also don't fancy running all around Heathrow Airport in a panic looking for the Underground station with my sense of direction. 1.5 hours ensure we're covered for most delays and collection of check-in luggage, and if we are early, we could always go and get breakfast whilst we wait for the train without getting too bored.

Go me! Well chuffed. :)

Whilst we're talking about travel, I don't have to worry about overpriced MAS flights anymore. Brother #2 and parents found out about the insane prices (from my Facebook, where else?) and have decided that one of them are going to come and collect us from the airport after all. <3 This is completely smashing Boy's dream of hiring a car and doing a roadtrip in Malaysia, but I'm playing it safe just in case we can't hire one after all due to his age and my inexperience (not that they would know I haven't driven in 4 or 5 years!)

The other upside is that we might actually have our boiler sorted tomorrow. Fingers crossed!

So you had a bad day...

2009-11-17T00:55:00.003Z

Overall today's been a fairly bad day. Came back from MPH to find that we have no hot water whatsoever, exactly like how it was in December last year. Rung letting agency during my lunchtime to let them know and get them to sort out the problem, she says she'll get the engineer to ring us back. Never happened. Rung again at 5.15pm when I got off work, someone else said she will ring around and ring me back immediately to let me know what's going on, and 30 minutes later, still nada. Rung again and again the same stuff. Never heard back and it's 12.42am now.

Let me stress that it's not very nice to be without any hot water whatsoever when it's wintertime and whatever water that's coming out from the tap is freezing cold. And that means no shower either unless Boy and I want to catch a head cold.

I'm not impressed.

What's even more unimpressive is that I checked my credit card statement online today and found out that on November 12th, a certain pub that I shall decline naming has charged my card twice for our dinner. I know what happened too - the first time the transaction went through, the PDQ ran out of paper so the woman working behind the bar decided to put the whole transaction through the second time around after she had replaced the paper roll.

Now, this would be a forgivable error of accidentally "overlooking" if I had not specifically asked her, "Has the first transaction been voided?" and she said, "Yes." before I was willing to put the second transaction through. I work on the tills before and I know that running out of paper does not automatically mean the transaction hasn't gone through, it means you just have to reprint the last receipt, which is the whole reason why I asked. And guess what? It hasn't voided, and I have been charged twice. Does she know how to operate her own machines? No. Is she incompetent? Yes.

I hate people who makes such simple errors and doesn't bother to double check even after being questioned about it. Seriously, do you have a brain or not?

And then I found out that MAS return flights from KLIA to Kuantan will cost us RM936 in total, which is a total joke. It's only a 40-minute flight each way! I'm not rolling in cash, hiring a car is a lot cheaper but we risk getting lost since I don't have a sense of direction and Boy doesn't read Malay or know the general geography of Malaysia. Coach is also a hell lot cheaper but there is no way of booking it online. So here I am, completely stuck on choices and arriving in Malaysia next Monday and I will be completely pissed off, I bet.

Seriously not in the mood right now, and definitely not looking forward to work tomorrow because I've seen what the clinic looks like.

On a brighter note, Boy is popping out for a McD's drive-thru this late at night because he thinks it'll cheer me up if I get a Big Tasty. <3

This week in pics! Again.

2009-11-16T00:00:00.000Z

I really should write more often. I'm often lagging behind by a few entries, and I haven't even completed Malaysian Trip Pt 3 yet and that was months ago (and I'm going to Malaysia again next week)! Actually, I have an excuse for that - I wrote it and everything and it was really long and full of pics and I saved it as draft for further editing and spell-checking, and then somehow LJ deleted it! *sob* I haven't found the strength to rewrite it again.

But I will. And that is for another day. Today though, I just got back from MPH/Top Gear Live not too long ago, so I'm tired even though I haven't done much other than walking around the exhibits taking photos, sitting through the live show and then trying not to fall asleep in the car. And because I'm tired, today's entry won't be about MPH or TGL because I'm too ~~lazy~~ tired to pick through the huge collection of photos and think up something intelligent to write about cars, it will be yet another random series of pics I have taken on my phone and not gotten around posting!

If you really can't wait to see and read about the MPH/TGL stuff though, Boy is writing about it lots and will post it up soon. Go and see. Whilst we're at it, he also has a car e-zine at DrivenMagazine.co.uk because he loves and adores cars so much that I've come to call them his mistresses. Which I personally think is quite apt since cars take quite a lot of maintenance to work well (from a bloke's point-of-view), like most women. For example, money for petrol (wining and dining), money for parts and accessories (buying jewelries, bags, clothes, shoes, etc for a woman), money for general servicing and MOT once a year (anniversary special dinner and presents), and a gorgeous one will always make other guys jealous like hell and they'll all want a ride (ahem). The more expensive/branded fuel (dinner) you buy, like Shell V-Power, can potentially give you a better drive. And sometimes a car won't start for no apparent reason too (headache lah, darling, tonight cannot)!

Anyway, I think I made my point and I shall move on to my pointless pics of the week.

We went to Boy's workplace for dinner the night after he got paid because he gets these 50% off vouchers when he gets paid every month, which is a pretty good deal since it's 50% off the whole meal, food, drinks, dessert, everything. Also because the food there is pretty good, and we sometimes get quite lazy in terms of actually cooking for ourselves.

We ordered our usual, 10oz rib-eye steaks to our desired doneness. For dessert, I have so far gone for something different every time I've come here, and on that particular day, my dessert was this:

Berry Heaven

It's delectable for something that is fat-free. Fat-free frozen yoghurt with summer berries and raspberry sauce drizzled over the top and two of those which I call "love letters". Simple and yummy. Though I only got it because they ran out of cheesecake and I didn't like their chocolate fudge cake - too dry!

The next day, it was my turn to cook, so I made spaghetti bolognese and tried to be healthier by adding random bits of vegetables into the tomato-and-ground-beef sauce, like peas, sweetcorn and green pepper. DO from work suggested adding grated courgettes, but I did not have any on hand to try it.

Tadah! My spaghetti bolognese. Maybe the sauce was a bit too watery.

Yum. But I always like food, so that's not surprising coming from me.

And as you probably already know, I was deliberating on Tuesday whether to go out with Boy's workmates for their work's night out because I was feeling like shit the night before and I was sniffling and snotty-nosed throughout a long day at work, and I also had work the next morning whereas the rest of them did not. But I did go out in the end because I know how Boy doesn't like me being all anti-social and stuff.

I did also made sure I wrap up warm for the night out though, black T-shirt with puffy sleeves and glittery print at the front with a pair of blue jeans and white diamante-studded belt and my black suede boots. Oh, also had a silver glittery scarf with me just to make sure. I don't know how the other girls do it with their short skirts and dresses and their breasts practically falling out. It's so cold out there nowadays!

Getting ready to go out despite feeling under the weather. My eyes look so tired and red! :( And yes, I know I have uneven eyebrows, I don't know how to rectify this though.

That is the only picture you're going to get from that night out with Boy's colleagues because the rest are taken in dark clubs and consists a lot of his workmates getting on top of each other. Yeah.

And then.. guess what? Sometime during the same week (last Thursday), we went to Boy's workplace again for another meal to spend his last 50% off voucher. His reasoning was because they came out with a new menu, so he was curious to try it out. But we ended up going for what we knew and trusted as usual, which is the steak... again.

But they do have a new dessert, so this is what we had!

The Mother of All Sundaes!

It was indeed quite filling, and very fattening, I bet! And because it was a new item on the menu (or rather, a modified version of their previous Ultimate Sundae), no one knew how to make it so someone had to take ten minutes to guess how to put it together. And they forgot the chocolate and toffee sauces that goes over the top!

It was nice though, nevertheless, and they did put in an effort despite not knowing how to do it. :P

My headache cure is a good, long, hot shower

2009-11-05T17:27:00.001Z

For the longest time, I had been confused as to why showers cure my headaches. I could be downing paracetamols and aspirins and they won't do anything to dull the pain, but a long hot shower will do the trick almost immediately. So when I had the start of a migraine yesterday night (it tends to be occurring on right side of my head nowadays), I tried drinking a lot of water (because Boy thought it might be dehydration since my body temperature was up) and sleeping it off.

Woke up today feeling worse.

Lazed around for a bit. Ate food. Drank more water. Had caffeine (in the form of Coke Zero). Had paracetamol. All supposedly headache cures.

At around 2pm, I was in agony. Loud and sharp noises hurt so much, and the bedroom light was bad enough for me to hide under the duvet. I wanted to take a shower to cure it, but due to the problem with our water tank and the heating element, only one person can properly take a shower in 24 hours, and Boy has work at 5pm and I know he likes to have a shower a couple of hours before going to work. And he does not like the surprise cold showers that he has sometimes had the bad luck to experience. The only solution to the matter is that I wait until he has his shower and have mine after - so if there is any cold water surprise, at least that would be my problem.

But I didn't think I could stand another hour of suffering the migraine headache I had, I was feeling dizzy and nauseous at the same time and I wanted to claw my brains out to stop the pain, so I begged Boy to take his shower early so that I can jump into the shower ASAP after he already had his. He consented and made sure he took a quick shower so that I would have enough hot water to shower with as well.

Whilst waiting for him to finish showering, I was almost sick on the bed. Went to the toilet after he vacated the bathroom and made myself sick so I could get it over with. Then I had a hot shower. It wasn't as long as I would've liked it, but I didn't want to push my luck with the hot water running out and having to deal with cold freezing water when it's almost winter now.

Went to lie down for 10 minutes in bed, wet hair and all, and I felt better. No more nausea, no more headache, no more sensitivity to light. My head still pounds when I move too quickly or walk around the apartment, but overall a great improvement from trying to dig my brains out earlier.

I was curious, so I Googled it and found out that hot showers are actually a recommendation for headache and migraine sufferers, because the cause could be circulatory. Apparently the hot stream of water pounding on your head/neck area dilates the blood vessels and improves circulation. This and this came up on Google.

I should've known, really, but at least now I know it's not just me. I might try peppermint tea and see if it get rid of the remainder of my headache now.

My stomach hurts and I should never patronise another buffet...

2009-11-03T22:16:00.001Z

We went to try out a newish Chinese buffet restaurant in Lincoln today. Newish because it's a year and half old but we've not went there yet despite numerous "We should go there one day."

That one day is today. The restaurant is called Yo Yo in Beijing and they market themselves as a different kind of Chinese buffet where food is healthier. They (supposedly) use less oil and salt and do not use any MSG at all in their food. They also have gimmicky presentations like Kung Fu Tea Pouring and Flying Noodles and... I don't know what else, but you get the idea. Very Chinese-y ideas, actually, because who in the world would say no if you asked them if they want to go and witness a Kung Fu Tea Pouring? :P

There weren't any of these presentations today though - just your regular buffet. Boy and I deliberated over the drinks menu for a good five to ten minutes before finally agreeing to have a 60oz fishbowl Lily Pad XL cocktail to share because it's cheaper than having separate drinks. We've never had that cocktail before, but it sounded quite fruity and refreshing with pineapple and coconut and stuff.

Now, I don't work with Imperial calculations so I don't actually know how much 60oz is until it got here. And when it got here...

Lily Pad XL - it was definitely XL!

Couldn't resist a photo op with it even though I look a mess. And yes, that's my piled up plate next to it because I'm a glutton!

The drink itself was quite nice, but the strong coconut flavour became quite sickly after a while. Not sure I'm go for it again, to be honest, since I struggled to finish it and Boy finished the rest whilst I went and raided the dessert table. More on that later though.

I loved the pork stew they had there, so yummy and tender! Unfortunately also very fatty... shouldn't have had so much of it, because I feel so sick now. The beef in black pepper sauce can't hold a candle to the takeaway from Hay-on-Wye (so far my favourite beef in black pepper sauce!), but there are some really nice selections there, around 1/3 of their menu which I've not seen in other Chinese buffets before. Like herbal eggs and the pork stew and steamed dumplings.

The dessert section was relatively small in comparison and is pretty much like every other Chinese buffets I've been to - a chocolate fondue fountain with some candies and marshmallows and an ice cream machine. And some fruits and jelly and cream tarts on the side.

Simple pleasures.

I also had three cubes of jelly after that because I cannot resist a good, cold, refreshing jelly. *sigh* But on the bright side of things, the jelly is probably the least calorific thing I ate today, so that hasn't made my binging any worse than it had been thus far!

My N95's camera is behaving a bit odd today at the restaurant... I'm not sure if it's just the lighting in the restaurant or what, but everything just looked so hazed over and washed out. Ugh.

Baking for charity and beef stroganoff

2009-10-30T00:48:00.002Z

My day off, and what did I spent it doing? Lazing around in bed. :D

I did do something for a good cause today though, so it's technically not all wasted! CR requested that I bake some of my Bailey's double chocolate chip muffins/cupcakes for the charity fundraising drive we're doing at work this week - Action for Blind, which helps blind kids.

Doing their thing in the oven.

So now my apartment once again smells like chocolate chip muffins. XD Not a bad smell, but it makes me hungry all the time! Ran out of milk yesterday and I totally forgot about it, so I had to make do without the milk! Batter was stiffer than normal pre-baking, but post-baking tastes pretty much the same. :)

Also did Beef Stragonoff again today because a) it's cheap to do and I'm skint, and b) it didn't end in disaster the first time I made it.

The problem with Beef Stroganoff is that it is too colourless to look appetising!

It was just as tasty as last time I did it, and I did not go overboard with the ground black pepper this time around. But I did use white wine instead of red wine this time in the ingredients, and I personally prefer the red wine version. It just tastes richer somehow, and just right. White wine imparts a sweetish taste that I don't really like when associated with beef.

If you're wondering which recipe I used, it's this one with some alterations (mostly nicked from the reviews and comments). After the alterations I made, this is the final recipe that I've used:

Ingredients

A pack of stewing steak, cut into strips
Salt and pepper to taste
1 onion, chopped
1 can condensed cream of mushroom soup
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 cube beef bouillon
1/2 cup red wine
10 small closed-cup mushrooms, sliced
1 1/2 cup sour cream
Half a pack of cream cheese
1 tablespoon dried parsley (because I can't find fresh)

Directions

1. Place the beef in the bottom of a slow cooker, and season with salt and pepper to taste. Place onion on top of beef, and then add mushroom soup, and wine. Season with garlic, Worcestershire sauce, and bouillon.

2. Cover, and cook for 4 hours. Stir in the mushrooms, sour cream, cream cheese and parsley, and continue cooking for 1 hour.

3. Do a taste test and see if it needs more seasoning. This is where I usually add more ground black pepper and salt because I like my food spicier.

4. Serve on a bed of cooked noodles or rice. Sprinkle chopped or dried parsley on top.

Brewers Fayre take 2, delicious chocolate pud, and yet another dress.

2009-10-22T15:39:00.000+01:00

So, to update everyone on the food stuff we've consumed recently (as always!), here is the pictorial account! ;)

We went to Brewers Fayre the other night to treat ourselves (I don't know what we've done to deserve it other than I wanted the dessert - gorgeous, melty chocolate fudge dessert with ice cream and profiteroles on top). But here's what we actually had!

Combo sharer. Garlic bread, potato wedges, onion rings, scampi, chicken goujons and nachos with three dips (barbecue, salsa and sour cream).

Lamb shank with mash potato and vegetables.

Smothered chicken. Basically chicken breast and bacon smothered with barbecue sauce and melted cheese.

And yep, no dessert. We ended up being too full for dessert, sadly. :( Shouldn't have had the starter. If we're going to have two courses, I much prefer desserts!

But Boy owes me another trip there for the dessert now. :P Even though getting the starter was my decision. Um... yeah. Don't know how that works either.

For those who had read my Facebook status yesterday night about that chocolate pudding, here's a photo!

Mmmmm. The moment I put the spoon through, the melted chocolate just flowed out, seemingly endless. Heaven! It wasn't too sweet or too bitter either, and rich and moist enough to be just right.

Anyway, with the food talk out of the way, I got another dress. *shamefaced* This time a calf-length Almost Famous dress, nude colour, silk and rayon mix (I love how it feels to the touch!).

Boy thinks I should wear this one rather than the cerise one from Ghost to my brother's wedding. Both are equally as annoying to get on and I needed help to get the side zipper past my waist, just like I needed help with the buttons at the back. But once on, I admit that I like this nude-coloured one better, the flowy skirt doesn't emphasis on my bulges as much.

Silver accessories, do you think?

London, again.

2009-10-16T21:04:00.000+01:00

Phew, back at home and able to rest my feet. At least no delayed trains this time around!

I don't like travelling without Boy. I miss him. I sound pathetic, but I do. I'm so used to his presence now, even him being at work and me being at home sometimes still feel really weird to me. He's still at work at the moment, so I haven't seen him for 27 hours so far since I left. Not that I'm counting. :P

But one thing I do like about travelling to these random (sometimes useless) conferences is the freebies. The hotel is paid for. The travel is paid for. The food is paid for. Yummers, free food! And the hotel they tend to book us into is not the usual cheap Travelodge or Premier Inn. They do like to book us into minimum 3* hotels, because it's all about image in the corporate world, and we're "professionals". So we get the lush lobbies and hotel restaurants too.

This time around, I was booked into Corus Hotel Hyde Park. I got there at around 8ish after suffering in the London Underground (it was so hot, I don't know how people kept their coats on and not die!), went up to my room, phoned Boy to let him know I've arrived safely, and took some pictures of the room.

The tiniest corridor in the world leading to my room. And another room next to mine.

And this is the tiniest room I've slept in. Even my room in student halls were bigger. I'm convinced it is originally a big room, and they just decided to make a thin separation wall and make it two rooms. I could hear every word that was spoken in the room next door. :S

The toilet and shower with a creepy green light.

The desk/work area. This is the nicest part of the room and very well thought-out. It actually has a magnifying mirror too!

View out of the window. Not much, and not quite Hyde Park.

The room itself leaves much to be desired. But I suppose it's London, space is expensive, so they just make do with small rooms. At least everything is clean and well-looked after. Just not very impressed though - the other hotel I stayed in London had bigger rooms, but the furnishing and bathtub were in poor condition. Can't have everything, eh?

Afterwards, I went downstairs again for some more food (I ate before I got on the train to London, hah).

Usually when I'm travelling and I know other people attending the conference, I tend to eat out with them because you get so much more for your money when you eat out, and we get an allowance of something like £28 per night for dinner (including food and drink). Hotel food are expensive and most of the time not worth the money spent because the portions are tiny. But I didn't care that much about portion sizes yesterday night since I've technically eaten an early dinner, I was just there for the dining experience.

I sat down at the table and was given the menu. Flipped it open and there it was in front of me:

"Tastes of Malaysia"

Roffle. They had stuff like satay and rendang and kway teow goreng! What a revelation. On the other page was "Seasonal British". I ended up going for the British version because I was afraid that ordering Malaysian food in London may not meet my high expectations and I may be left disappointed.

Table for one. :( The wine was pretty good company though... and yes, I've gotten a taste for reds now.

Starter - Confit pork with glazed baby carrots and green beans and honey mustard sauce. Very succulent, but way too salty.

Main - Braised pork belly and roasted monk fish with sauteed kale, apple and mango salsa and apple mash potato. It was okay. Nothing to shout about. I enjoyed the starter more than the main, and for some reason my starter looked bigger than the main course!

Dessert - Trio of fruit crumbles. I enjoyed this the most. It was so yummy. The first is apple and blackberry crumble with vanilla ice cream, the second is rhubard crumble (I think, I've never had rhubarb before, but it looks like pieces of rhubarb!) with caramel ice cream, and the third is banana crumble with banana ice cream. Was very weird having banana crumble, but it wasn't bad!

Overall, not too impressed by the food anyway. Maybe I should've gone for the Malaysian dishes - it did smell really appetising. Hindsight 20/20 and all that.

Camwhoring, as I do in hotels when I'm alone and bored.

I think my colleagues may be right - I look better without makeup on, softer and less fierce, albeit looking a bit tired because my puffy eyes and dark circles are not concealed. But my skin isn't really as clear as it turns out on photos, so it must just mean I'm unskilled at applying makeup because it's supposed to make you look better, not worse! :(

Woke up in the morning, went to attend the conference (which I thought was 10.30am and realised at 9.20am whilst I was having a leisurely breakfast that it was actually a 10am start!), suffered some more in the London heat, did a lot of random interactive things that are supposed to make us better leaders, and we finished early.

Ugh. Which meant I had 2 hours to kill before my scheduled train!

So what did I do, a girl stuck in London and was conveniently situated in Oxford Street? I went shopping!

Not for much, mind. I got myself a pair of 6" heels that I'm sure I'll kill myself wearing one day, got unagi from the Japanese food store because I'm in love with unagi and you can't get Japanese food in Lincoln, and was queueing up at Jane Norman to buy a black satin with diamante clutch when I noticed that I had to go back and collect my bag before the receptionist left for the day. So I abandoned the clutch for today (which was sad, because it was pretty and elegant-looking).

Went to King's Cross and spent another hour reading the book I brought along: Season of the Witch. One of those books that I started reading last year and never managed to finish it. I think I bought it from the airport when I went to Prague!

I know, I'm terrible. I'll go finish it now before Boy comes back and we can start thinking about food. Again. ^^

Food post - Full English Breakfast and Welsh Cawl Cennin

2009-09-24T19:19:00.001+01:00

Speaking of eating, this was what Boy and I got up to today morning.

Full English Breakfast

In England, this is apparently what you have for breakfast. And Boy thinks Malaysians eat too much - that plate is twice the size of a normal plate of food in Malaysia!

It was so yummy. But not yummier than a McD's brekkie however!

And if any of you remembered my stint at cooking the Welsh cawl cennin (lamb and leek stew), this is the resulting photo of hours of chopping, boiling and simmering:

Cawl served with crusty roll.

It actually tasted quite amazing with the crusty roll. Better than just having the stew itself. Yummy! Definitely a winter food though, perfect for cold nights.

But of course, there was enough left over to feed ten others because the recipe I was following (from a Welsh tourism site) did not specify how many servings, so I ended up using three large leeks, a leg of lamb, and more. :x Might want to make a little bit less next time, methinks!

Anyway, time for dinner (KFC!) and we're going to be watching Don't Tell the Bride. :P

More on dresses.

2009-09-24T17:40:00.001+01:00

I'm a terrible, terrible person with clothes. Extremely fickle, never able to make up my mind, etc. Also because I don't think clothes fit all that well on me, so I usually end up looking at a lot and never buying anything.

After the two dresses previously that I couldn't imagine spending £150 on, I prowled on eBay for better deals and this is my latest find:

BNWT, currently at £41 and reserve not met yet. I <3 how it drapes at the bottom in waterfall layers.

But regardless of that dress (which bidding ends for tomorrow at around 10ish in the morning whilst I'm at work! I will surely be </3!), I did receive a Ghost dress in the mail two days ago. I ordered it around 2-3 weeks ago before I tried on any of the other dresses because it was only £50 from a designer brand sale. It looked red in the pictures on the site, but to my horror it was more like pink.

Ew.

But it's not bubblegum pink, thankfully, more like cerise or a deep rosy pink, so it's tolerable. It's got a lot of buttons at the back, which makes putting it on by myself impossible, so I had to enlist Boy's help to get it buttoned up. Why do people put buttons at the back where you cannot reach? We're not all practicing yoga, you know.

After we managed to get all the fiddly little things buttoned up, I went to put my highest heels on (my 4" suede black boots, in this case).

I'm too short for it.

Even with my highest heel, the skirt still drag at the bottom. I'll need another inch or two, but where the hell do I find something like that? Platform shoes? Actually, if I decide not to walk around much, I could just stand on a stool and no one would notice, the dress is so long.

Ugh. I need to hit the gym more, I think. My belly fat is showing. Either that, or invest in a really good pair of control knickers and decide not the eat or breathe the whole night of my brother's wedding.

Dresses for a wedding.

2009-09-20T23:09:00.001+01:00

Been looking at a lot of dresses lately as Brother #2's wedding is in November and I wanted to wear something suitable. I have a lot of black dresses, but I'm not keen on turning up in a black dress for my brother's wedding. I found a lot that I liked, but none that I can reasonably afford to spend that much on. I mean, it's a dress. One that I probably won't ever wear again. How can I possibly spend more than £100 on it? Such a big waste of money.

But there are just a couple of dresses that are so pretty though. :( These two are examples:

Long silk maxi-dresses. I've actually tried on the first dress, and as plain as it is, it looked great and felt wonderful on (I'm in love with silk now, I think). Blue-green one is £150. Purple one is £225.

*sigh* Why am I not rich?

On the sidenote, this looks gorgeous but I could never wear it unless I drop 4 dress sizes and go to the gym everyday to attain the perfect body:

Hrm, on second thought, maybe a bit too sexy? My parents may have words if I turn up in that. Roffle.

Twilight by Stephanie Meyer

2009-09-20T22:42:00.000+01:00

So I read Twilight. It was a gift from Brother #3 last Christmas (along with the two other books), and I admit that I have been pretty lax with my reading habit because I've been so tired all the time from work and everything else. I used to read four books a week - that has dwindled to maybe two to three books in a year. In fact, I've started on around six books since last year and I haven't finished any of them. Which is quite sad, really.

Now, about Twilight. I didn't watch the movie because it seems so overhyped and everyone thought the main actor was so handsome and swoon-worthy when I thought he wasn't that much of a looker. I hate his eyes; he always look half-asleep. And so I didn't get around watching it since it's not as important to me as other movies were at that time.

And the book. I struggled to read past the first couple of chapters because I get really annoyed with the protagonist, Bella. God, she's such a whiny brat, I can really strangle her. But I suppose I'm judging her too harshly - she is, after all, a teenager and most teenagers have such problems. I probably was quite a whinger at her age (seventeen). But that doesn't make me like her any more, and not relating to the protagonist makes it difficult to read the whole book because you know you're not going to get any relief from herfor the next 400+ pages. There's no other point of view.

Once I got past the whole being-annoyed-at-the-protagonist stage, the book itself was pretty readable. I liked the plot even if it is terribly unoriginal (but most chick lit are pretty unoriginal anyway), it's decent brainless stuff to read if you like those kind of things. Just don't expect anything to surprise you or any new revelations or mystery or anything that will make you think. I still don't like Bella, and I cannot immerse myself into the book as I normally would due to my dislike for her, so reading it just feels like... reading it. I'm outside of the book, watching. I'm not feeling the book. I'm not lost it in, unable to put it down.

And I think that's disappointing.

It's a book for pre-teens and teens and it is written in that manner. Read it if you have nothing else more interesting to do, but honestly, I think there are other books out there that are more memorable, more interesting, more fun, more worthy of your time. I mean, Harry Potter series was originally written for children, and I think that's more engaging than Twilight.

Conclusion? Borrow it.

If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends.

2009-08-30T20:27:00.000+01:00

I'm convinced that I've ruined Boy.

Before he met me, he ate food sparingly. Survived on junk food a lot. Was a fairly thin bloke (underweight for his height, if I recall correctly). Very picky and not too adventurous with his food, doesn't do spicy food or vegetables and the only pizza he liked was margarita pizza (cheese, tomatoes, herbs). And after getting together with me, being the Malaysian that I am, food is practically a hobby and eating is a form of socialising. I ate a lot and made him eat with me.

So here we are, two and a half years later, tending to eat too much for our own good and we actually do have at least two meals a day. He is actually in the healthy weight range now. Boy cooks various dishes, and some of them are spicy. He likes rendang and peri-peri chicken and black pepper beef and can tolerate curry. He no longer complains when I accidentally overpepper the dishes I cook. He loves eating out and does a pretty good job finishing the large portions that comes with eating out. His favourite pizza has changed from margarita to meat feast with extra spicy beef. He survived 10 days of eating various stuff in Malaysia, most, if not all, are completely foreign to him. In fact, now he has surpassed me in the adventurous bit - he likes trying out new places to eat more often than I do.

Today, we played Texas Hold'em poker against each other to decide what/where to eat. We ended up at Brewers Fayre, a chain of restaurant pubs in England. Took quite a bit of hunting before we found the place though!

This is what we had:

Minted Lamb Loin with Mashed Potatoes and Fresh Vegetables

Smothered Chicken with Garlic Ciabatta, Chips and Coleslaw

Garlic Ciabatta, Onion Rings and Garlic Mushrooms

Ultimate Sharing Dessert: Chocolate fudge cake with crunchy chocolate and honeycomb pieces, topped with profiteroles, five scoops of chocolate and vanilla ice cream, drizzled with chocolate sauce and topped generously with whipped cream.

I loved my main, the lamb. It was cooked to a medium rare, which was so melt-in-your-mouth tender and delectable, and the gravy complemented it nicely. The dessert nearly killed us. But it was so good. When we got to the profiteroles, I thought those were good. The chocolate fudge cake was even better, so I couldn't stop.

It's 6 hours later, and I still feel full and a little bit sick. :x

Oh, and since this is a food-related post (like most of my posts are nowadays), here's a random photo of a sausage, mash and onion gravy dish I made a while ago:

Sausage and Mash

If you've never tried it before, pork and bramley apple sausages are to die for. :) I've also experimented recently with baked chicken breast stuffed with sage and onion stuffing wrapped in bacon, which was pretty tasty but I have no photo of it, so I may make it again and try to remember to take a photo of it!

Trying out tuna steaks

2009-08-13T23:20:00.000+01:00

After being inspired by Huong's foodblog with tuna steaks, I thought I might try them as I have never eaten tuna steaks before. In fact, the only tuna I've ever had is either from a can or part of a pack of nasi dagang. I suggested this to Boy as I know tuna is one of the few fishes he actually like (he doesn't like salmon) and we really need to have more than just beef and chicken on our diet.

So we went shopping today and bought some tuna steaks (half the size of the ones in Huong's entry!) and I marinated it in a combination of soy sauce, olive oil, orange juice, lemon juice, garlic and oregano for around 4 hours. Pan-seared it at the highest temperature my electric cooker will do for 1.5 minutes each side. The result is succulent, tender and juicy. Mmm!

Pan-seared tuna steak with sauteed vegetables and garlic bread.

It was so good. Because the steaks were quite thin to begin with, 1.5 minutes each side was overcooking it by a tiny bit, but it didn't turn out hard and tough like I thought it might! I would do this more often if it weren't for the price of tuna steaks - it was £4+ for two of those!

My first trip to Skegness

2009-08-10T21:22:00.000+01:00

Last Thursday was my day off. It had been raining the rest of the week, but on my day off, the sun decided to shine. Which was awfully nice of the sun, but we didn't have any plans to go out that day, which kinda wasted it.

So we decided to do an impromptu day trip to Skegness, which is a well-known beachside resort in England. I've first heard of Skegness to be anything other than an ordinary town from MJ when she drove me back from her home to Lincoln last Christmas. We went past a sign pointing towards Skegness on the way and she went, "Oh, Skegness!"

And I was like, "What about Skegness?"

"Don't you know about Skeggy? It's like a tourist destination!"

Uhhh... ok. Nope, never heard of it.

So as not to waste the rare occurence of sunshine, Boy brought me there to have a look. It was around a 40-minute drive there, very warm with no air-conditioning but with his window down (and the window on my side was broken). When we got there, we had the biggest 75p ice cream known to mankind and took a walk on the beach, heading towards the pier where they had arcades and seats and viewing points.

The pier.

The beach.

Windswept.

The place was packed with people in holiday gear and bikinis holding beach balls and totes, probably because it's summer and it was a sunny day, albeit windy and slightly chilly. When we had enough of standing in the wind getting chilled to the bone, we wandered towards the fairground (called Pleasure Beach!) and I suggested we ride on the RockinRoller, which was a rollercoaster that has individual carriages that swing around whilst rollercoastering. A bit like a mix between a fairly tame rollercoaster with a waltzer. I had to coax Boy into it because I don't think he was too keen with rides, and I wasn't going to leave without at least going on one. It was either that or The Flume, which would most probably end up soaking both of us to the skin.

It costed us a fiver for the both of us to get on it, and it was pretty fun without getting too dizzy. The turns tend to take me unexpected, so by the end of the ride (which was far too short!) my ribs were hurting a bit from where I was rammed from place to place. :P Still pretty fun though!

Drive home was a bit crap since it started raining soon after we set off which meant we couldn't have the window open and it got really warm and humid in the car without air-conditioning. :( But oh well, good day out, can't expect much more from the British weather unfortunately!

LJ's birthday night out and a lazy Sunday with no hangover.

2009-08-09T23:01:00.001+01:00

Ew. I've been lazy again. Have not posted in ages, and still haven't gotten Pt.3 of Malaysia trip post up.

Went to LJ's birthday outing yesterday. Met up at Varsity first at 8pm (turned out to be 8.30pm because everyone was running late), and then after a couple of hours and with a creepy old man staring at us we left and went to Trebles for Singles (3 shots of alcohol for the price of 1). After a drink and getting awfully warm since it was packed, we went to stand outside for a while whilst finishing our drinks and then went on to Walkabout, which was okay, but music was so-so. But because LJ had tickets to enter JJ/Ritzys/Pulse nightclub for £2/person before 11.30pm, we went into JJ and danced a lot to old, almost retro songs. JJ plays things like Wannabe, Danger Zone and Greased Lightning!

The girls: LJ, LF, B and I.

JJ was absolutely packed though and we were getting really hot and sweaty and the queue at the bar was... well, there wasn't a queue so much as a lot of people squeezed together, so we went upstairs to Ritzys, which plays dance music and was just a tiny bit less packed. Which was awesomer music IMHO, but LJ and gang prefers JJ-type music, so after sitting for a while for a breather we went downstairs again.

Boy spent most of the night talking to IC (LJ's fiance), doing their manly talk about cars, women, darts, poker, fights... etc. LJ was giggling at one point and said, "Looks like they're bonding."

We've been invited to LF's Halloween party, and Boy has been invited to IC's birthday do in a couple of months. Roffle. I also found it exceedingly amusing that Boy went from complaining that he has no friends or social life now to going out three times in two days and making six new (male, car-interested) friends.

We found out how expensive alcohol is though on a night out in Lincoln. IC told me that two small bottles of VK alcopops and a pint of beer came up to be £11 at Ritzys! It's a good thing I didn't get a drink there bar the one free drink that I had with the voucher. Despite that, I had a lot of fun, didn't get too drunk (had around 3 or 4 drinks in the five hours I was out?), and it has been ages since I went out dancing. :) I suck at dancing, but hey, when you're not paid to do it, it's about the enjoyment, isn't it?

My feet hurt like hell when I got back at 1am though. I'm so not used to wearing heels.

Speaking of enjoyment, woke up at 10ish today (a bit early for my taste on a Sunday), had a cheap breakfast/lunch of homemade fried rice and lazed around a lot on the internet and napping occasionally. My fried rice always seem to turn out a bit soggy... I think it's because I keep using freshly made rice instead of overnight rice, so it still retained a lot of moisture.

Fried rice with mixed vegetables, ham and eggs.

Boy went to meet up with some friends to talk about cars and stuff, and I just continued lazing around until he got back and we went out for dinner at the Homestead pub (where he met up with some guys yesterday for the first time, and he said the food was good). I had the 10oz rib-eye steak and eggs.

10oz rib-eye steak with eggs, onion rings, chips and beans.

Bloody hell, was it good. It was so tender it practically melted in my mouth. Rib-eye is officially my favourite cut of steak now. :P It was massive though! My stomach really hurt afterwards, but it tasted so nice! :(

Looking back at the photos, I'm hungry now. :( It was an early dinner at 5ish, and it's almost 1am now. Ugh.

The Long-Delayed Entry on Malaysia Trip Summer 2009 - Pt. 2

2009-08-01T00:22:00.000+01:00

Thursday morning, woke up to a nasi lemak breakfast - very Malaysian. :P

Nasi Lemak

After breakfast, we went to shop for some footwear for me that will allow me into the casino at Genting Highlands because all I brought with me to Malaysia was a pair of flat brown boots and a pair of beach flip-flops. Shopping for footwear for me in Malaysia is practically mission impossible because I have fairly large feet by Malaysian female standards (UK6, but size 9 in Malaysia!), but at the same time, we needed something fairly flat and comfortable to walk in because we would be walking a lot for most of the day. And Kemaman isn't famed for choices...

In that shopping trip, I also learnt that Brother #2 has shocking taste in female footwear. :s He doesn't get it why I don't like his choices. Most of what he picked were granny shoes! He said they looked comfy. But as far as I can see, they didn't only look comfy, they also look like something only someone who gave up on bothering to look good would wear!

Anyway, after going through two to three dozen shoes that either didn't look good, didn't have it in my size, etc, we finally ended up with this pair:

All very PVC, I know...

In the same store, I was perving at the bags that they have (thank god bags don't come in sizes to fit you!), and I gave in to temptation to get myself another bag, this time in "apricot" colour:

Pretty double-zipped bag.

We headed off to Genting Highlands on Thursday afternoon, getting there early evening.

Where we stayed, courtesy of Genting Points.

The plan was to check in, rest up, walk around and then maybe head off to the casino later on. We got there, lazed around in the rooms until Brother #2 whinged at us until we got off our asses and went out walking about because "we didn't go all the way there just to spend all our time in the hotel room".

We walked around the Indoor Theme Park and came across a lot of places selling random stuff. Brother #2 and his wife saw this "smoking fish" that was quite cute. It's a wooden fish, the details and scales very intricately carved, with scented smoke swirling out of its open mouth. Lifting the fish from the base it was resting on reveals an aromatherapy cone thingy smoking gently. The guy wanted RM150 for it, but after a lot of haggling Brother #2 got it down to RM90. He ended up getting two, a big one and a little one, the former being a present for Dad. Quite a pretty piece, so I think he got a good deal.

Whilst they were busy bargaining, I went to the stall next door to look at their earrings. Got myself a pretty pair of earrings for RM10, which was a bit steep but it was very pretty. :P

By this time, Boy and Brother #3 were very bored and very tired, so I hurried Brother #2 and his wife along so we could go get some food. The original plan was to go to Be A Star (where you buy the food package and you get 2 hours of karaoke thrown in for you), but they were fully booked for the night so we ended up at KFC. I know, not very imaginative. Hehe.

Boy, Brother #3 and I went up to our rooms again to rest up until the parents arrive, whilst Brother #2 and his wife continued with their shopping. Just hung around and snacked a lot in the room and used the interwebs.

The last two morsels of the best chocolate chip cookies in the world!

When the parents did get here, we readied ourselves to head to the casino. I have never betted at the casino (even though I have been in there... I found it insanely confusing to walk around in because everything looks the same and you can possibly be trapped in there forever as you'll never find your way out!), but Boy was all excited to go and play. Poker was bigger stakes than we can afford, which I think he was very disapointed with, but after some tips from Mum, he did end up winning some money on roulette. Which he lost again after another half an hour. Roffle.

I think he wants to go again next time we're there. :P

Next morning, we woke up and decided to have breakfast. Unfortunately the buffet that we usually go to was bloody expensive even with the discount coupon we had, and the BBQ place was located in the casino which we were sorely underdressed for. We ended up having breakfast at the food court. Which is actually a better choice because the buffet is pretty poor food choices for such a hefty price tag - it's usually cold ham and bread and stuff like that.

Sizzling Plate Noodles

I had Sizzling Plate Noodles, which is yummy as usual. The metal oval plate is heated up to red hot temperature, dry noodles put on top of it and then hot chicken pieces with gravy is poured all over the noodles. The idea is that the food continues cooking and kept hot on the sizzling plate whilst you eat.

Chicken Chop with Chips

Boy had chicken chop with chips on a sizzling plate (we were aghast that it wasn't served on a Hot Rock as the store's name implied). He also had a taster of peppermint boba tea (or pearl milk tea), and he really liked it. It's such an Asian phenomenon five years ago (or more?) that everyone has heard of it, but to be honest, I don't think I've ever seen it sold anywhere in England!

We wandered around the place after checking out, planning on doing a bit of souvenier hunting for Boy's family, but when we passed by the Indoor Theme Park, we were distracted by a mass of arcade machines, especially the racing ones. So what did we end up doing?

Boy doing a drift on Outrun 2 (I think).

Yep.

Brother #2, his wife and Brother #3 caught up with us (somehow) and we all went to the SkyVenture Indoor Skydiving Experience place to book ourselves a place. Boy and I got booked for the 4pm session for RM38 per person (I think), but since we had a couple of hours to kill, we went to have lunch at the place we tried having dinner yesterday - Be A Star.

Got ourselves the lunch deal fairly cheaply and had the room for the five of us for two hours, which was pretty good deal.

Inside one of the karaoke rooms at Be A Star.

I think after his first experience with karaoke-ing (of recent times, that is), Boy is slightly less scared of karaoke now because he finally got the whole point of a friendly non-competitive karaoke session is to have fun, even if we're not very good singers. Lots of warbling, laughing, growling, coughing ensued from all of us. And trying to eat whilst doing all of that was pretty difficult!

Boy and I had to leave ten minutes before the session was over to make it to our prebooked session at the SkyVenture place, so we legged it all the way there to make sure we get there on time. We had to suit up and go through a few minutes worth of briefing on what we should do, how we should position ourselves, and what sort of sign language he'll be using since inside the air tunnel we won't be able to hear anything and all instructions will be done through signalling.

Whilst in the air tunnel, all I could think about was, Please don't let me smash into the grill, please no...

Yeah. But apparently I spun around in the tunnel so fast it was like watching a pinball and the instructor was having a hard time trying to keep me still, but it didn't feel all that fast to me. Roffle. Wasn't too bad anyway just for the experience!

After all that, we got a call from Mum telling us to meet her and we were going to head down to flatlands again and meet up with Dad (who went to KL for business) at the foot of the highlands. After meeting her, we drove down (it was very misty!) and got to the foot of the mountains. Had food there (again), and Boy learnt how to use chopsticks! Hehe. Initially when the waiter came to get our order, before he left he pointed at Boy and asked in Cantonese to the rest of us if he is okay to use chopsticks or should he get him a fork. Mum said get a fork anyway just in case, but from the way he was eating with the chopsticks with only a slight struggling, the fork was left untouched. Roffle. Good effort though, took me years to learn how to use the chopsticks properly (Mum never thought it was necessary to teach her kids how to use chopsticks properly because according to her it is supposed to come naturally, so Brother #3 and I in particular grew up holding chopsticks wrong!).

Dad got there eventually and we headed off back home.

On Saturday, it was family portrait day because my brothers have said that we all haven't had a complete family portrait since forever (the last known photograph was Grandma's birthday, I think, and the last studio portrait was when I was 10? A bit younger?) so we need one in the rare occasions we actually manage to get together as a family.

The photos have been produced, but the soft copy apparently is somewhere in Brother #3's hard drive but he cannot send it to me because his laptop is broken, so there you go. No piccies, but this time it is not my fault.

The Long-Delayed Entry on Malaysia Trip Summer 2009 - Pt. 1

2009-07-31T17:50:00.000+01:00

So Boy and I have gone to Malaysia and came back. And there was a lot of working, which makes days blend into each other somehow. Eh. So the Malaysia adventure wasn't too bad, all in all, since it is only a short stint and I didn't get into any massive arguments with the family in the meantime (probably because I didn't spend that much time with the family).

We ate so much in Malaysia! I came back, weighed myself and I'm 3kg heavier just from spending 10 days in Malaysia. :s Talk about non-stop eating... I had so much fun though, and I love the food! Despite looking forward to it for so long, I never did get my murtabak. *sniffles* Ah, well, there's always November. And it also means I have to hit the gym more often now that I'm back in Lincoln because Mum says she wants me to lose some weight for my brother's wedding. *sigh*

We went to Heathrow the night before the flight departs because we had to be there at 9am for check-in and there was no way we could've gotten a train down to London by 9am on a Sunday. Got a room booked with St Giles Hotel for approximately £75 (for all three of us!) and it was pretty nice. It sort of have two rooms, one with a couch-bed-converted thingy and another single bed next to it, and another room off to the side with a double bed. Both "rooms" have its own TV. All very clean and nice, and comes with toiletries that are usually absent from Travelodge and Premier Inn. Not bad for 3 people staying! They have a really nice bar downstairs too, and that was where we went for a drink and sandwiches to refresh from the long journey (a lot longer than we expected due to works being done on the Underground that meant we had to run for the replacement bus). And nice night sleeping too, so no complaint on comfort either... nothing too luxurious, but definitely value for money.

Headed off to Heathrow Airport in the morning by taxi, checked in, got breakfast and did lots of duty-free shopping for the family. I got my two older brothers a wallet each (bloody expensive wallets they are too!) and my parents and godparents Johnny Walkers, red wine and chocolates.

We endured a long 11+ hours flight to KLIA and got there at 7am and got some breakfast. Brother #2 came to pick us up at around 10am and carted us off to Midvalley Megamall for a bit of jalan-jalan. At first, he was a bit perplexed by my "British" accent, but it had no chance of surviving in Malaysia. Within 15 minutes, it was Manglish all the way.

We went home later on the same day in time for dinner, and then had a good long sleep.

Tuesday, we basically just hung around at home busy being jetlagged. And ate a lot, of course.

Wednesday, Brother #2 brought us to Kuantan for a bit of shopping because Brother #3 needed some new clothes "for work". Before actually going shopping, we went to get ourselves some air batu kacang (iced beans/nuts, literal translation), which was a bunch of mixed stuff like jelly and red beans and sweet corn and whatever with shaved ice all over the top and then drenched with condensed milk and gula melaka (coconut palm sugar) syrup. Yum.

Boy picking through his shaved his dessert.

And mine's already mixed up.

I don't think Boy was too keen on that because of the red beans because he's not used to having beans in desserts. But then I kinda understand that - I used to be very picky with what goes into my ABC too, and it's only lately that I learnt to cope with it. Preferably I would still rather not have red beans and sweetcorn in my ABC though because I think the texture is all wrong, so I can understand his tastebuds from that sense.

Afterwards, we ended up at Kamdar, and all the boys were attracted to this rack of suit jackets outside Kamdar that was selling for RM25.90, which is pretty darn cheap for a jacket! They then proceeded to spend more time indoors shopping for clothes and jackets and trousers...

We spent almost 2 hours in there!

And men said that women spend too much time shopping!

Boy came out with a fairly decent collection of a suit jacket (posher than the RM25.90 because this one costs RM180, I think!), three batik shirts for himself, his stepdad and his brother, and a shawl for his mum. Final bill was around RM280.

After the boys were done buying clothes, we went to East Coast Mall to meet up with PC for a drink and banter, and then wandered around doing some food shopping for tomorrow's trip to Genting Highlands.

Was getting a little late, but since both my parents have their own agenda for the evening's meal, Brother #2 said that it's up to us what we do for dinner. The decision was to have satay at Satay Zul, but since we weren't very hungry yet, we went to the beach for a walk instead.

Teluk Cempedak at night.

Not a lot of pictures of the beach, unfortunately, since we got there when it was so dark! And I know for a fact that Teluk Cempedak is a very pretty beach in daylight. It was nice and cool though at night, and there were a lot of small crabs about!

Thunder and lightning soon followed, so we scuttled off to Satay Zul before we were trapped in the torrential downpour. Not soon enough though! We had to run into the restaurant and find a seating for all of us, and Brother #1 was joining us as well as he works in Kuantan and would've finished work by then.

Boy had chicken satay before whilst in university sampling the Malaysian food fair (that I had to miss due to classes!), but we introduced him to beef satay this time around, which I personally prefer over chicken satay.

Beef satay with nasi himpit.

It was gorgeous! As expected, of course. Hehe.

New stuff.

2009-07-25T20:28:00.000+01:00

Yep, so I have been super lazy with updates. It's almost a month! Where did the time go?

I've got a raise! It's starting on the 1st of August. I damned well should've gotten it ages ago, but life happened not to want to work my way sometimes. Annoying. Anyway, seeing that half the country doesn't even have a job, I suppose I should be glad that I not only retained my job, I even managed to secure a £4k/annum raise (works out to be around +£2/hour). And I am likely to get another raise in Q4 (that's January-March).

I've grown yet again so my clothes don't fit now. My red shirt that I wear for work tend to unbutton itself to reveal my bra, so that needs replacing. And I have a lot of winter jumpers which is not at all suitable for this temperature. And that leaves me with one black shirt to wear to work. Ugh. I dropped by Next and their sale was not that great. Tesco seems to have swapped all of their workwear to beachwear. So I gave up and decided to do online shopping instead. And for once I wanted to get something from Bravissimo and they seem to have not come up with any new smartwear since everything that is work-friendly that is on there seems to have at least half the sizes sold out.

So this is my stash of new clothes (if I don't decide to return them):

Think I spent around £80 altogether. But they're the cheapest smart(ish)wear I can find that is not ugly or only come in disgusting moldy green colour or comes in size 8 only. :| On another note, damn M&S models (first three) look so pale and skinny I'm almost scared for them.

Designer bracelet... huh.

2009-07-01T00:18:00.003+01:00

Someone please tell me why would anyone wear this?

6 real life bugs inside
Colour: multi
Fabric: perspex

Surely that's not something anyone would want on their arm? Some designer things are just so fucked up...

Speaking of designer things, I've just watched Supersize vs Superskinny which is a fantastic way to make me feel absolutely normal. :P But in the same show, a woman goes to LA to investigate into the culture of size-zeros and apparently you can get designer abs surgically sculpted for you if you're willing to pay for it and suffer 8 weeks of pain! *winces*

Birthday treats

2009-06-27T23:49:00.009+01:00

H advised me to treat myself to a pair of sexy heels. Unfortunately, I don't have many places to wear heels to. So I spent the money on buying lingerie. :P

In 25 years, I've never had matching undergarments before. :P Or pretty ones, even... I've always bought sensible, plain T-shirt bras for everyday use. Mainly due to cost as well, because pretty bras tend to cost more, and matching shorts or thongs are usually around £9-£15 a pair. And I always have to either go to specialty stores or online because department stores, La Senza, Ann Summers, Agent Provocateur all don't do my size. :( Neither does Victoria Secrets, but that's pointless anyway since there doesn't seem to be any VS stores here. Hehe.

So I treated myself this time with some of the pretty bras on "up to 50%" sale at Figleaves. Ordered it less than 48 hours ago and they arrived today morning, w00t!

The pink one is from Vanity Fair range, black one is from Midnight Grace range, and the chocolate one is from Pour Moi? range. The nicest one, I think, is the Vanity Fair set. It's so cute and girlie and very comfortable on as well. All in all, good buys, methinks. All of them fit really well too, so no complaints (was a bit nervous about the VF set because VF is an American company, cup sizing can differ with UK sizing quite dramatically). If I have the money, I'd get another VF set. Hehe.

If you're wondering why I did not order it from my usual favourite online store Bravissimo, their estimated delivery at the moment (peak summer season) is 10-14 days for a lot of their catalogue! I won't be here in 10-14 days, I'll be in Malaysia! It's a pity though, because I had my eye on a couple of those pretty dresses they have...

So how did the rest of the day went? I opened my birthday cards yesterday and it was awesome. Got £40 from Boy's parents, which was very nice of them since I wasn't expecting anything. Boy got me a card and a teddy. Say hello to the latest addition to the menagerie:

Went to the post office to collect the overdue post (eBay seller got on my nerves, took 6 weeks to dispatch an item to me!), then to the bank to cash in a cheque from Cex (where I sold my old phones and some DVDs), and then to Co-op to buy ingredients to make myself a birthday cake.

I know, why am I making my own birthday cake? Shouldn't someone else do it for me? Well, I like baking, and I haven't had the chance or the excuse to do so for a long time. So I'm seizing this opportunity to brush up on my skills and use Brother #3 and Boy as guinea pigs. Plus, homemade means you can add stuff like alcohol and extra chocolate chips that bakery tend not to do!

Had a lot of fun mixing the batter, knowing that it will turn out to be some chocolatey goodness after spending some time in the oven. Here's the result of my "fun":

Double Chocolate Brownie Cake

I didn't get chocolate fudge to ice the cake because I thought we a) don't need all those extra calories and b) it will be too sickly, especially since I added extra cocoa and chocolate chunks in the cake (as well as almond slices and 1/2 cup Mint Bailey's). I dusted the whole cake with crushed hazelnut and icing sugar to hide the massive cracks in the cake. XD This is the first cake I've baked in years! It didn't turn out too badly, very rich and moist even without fudge icing. It's just the cracks, really, that is the problem that ruined the presentation. I know what I did wrong - I was lazy to cook it in two batches so I decided to use all the cake batter in one 9" pan and overfilled it. Tasted great though! The whipped cream was a bit weird as well - I really should've chilled the can and the cake before I started decorating it, but oh well. Lesson learnt!

Brother #3 and Boy seemed to like the cake, which is good, because Boy is usually not a cake person and I don't think he ate any of his own birthday cake (was there one?). I know he wasn't keen on his brother's birthday cake either when we went and bought the cake from M&S last time. We still have 5/8 of the cake in the fridge though, and Boy said, "I feel fatter just opening the fridge and looking at it."

Roffle.

Birthday photo with Boy!

Went to Ask for food tonight again like last time, am a bit disappointed with it, but oh well. Service was good as usual, but my calzone was burnt at the bottom! :( But pics of food that we had tonight:

Half-eaten starter to share...

Boy's food, at my recommendation. Pollo de la Casa or something like that.

Brother #3's food, spaghetti with tomato and black pepper and basil or something like that.

And my calzone, as before, but worse this time around. :(

Ah well, nevermind. Life eh? The waitress was kind enough to tell us that they do have 2-for-1 vouchers online, but I don't actually remember the name of the site she mentioned. Oops.

Anyway, last bit of camwhoring as I tend to do:

Why am I not rich? :(

2009-06-15T20:33:00.000+01:00

Jonathan Kelsey Decoy Peep Toe Shoe

So pretty. I want. :( Unfortunately, it's £195 (down from original RRP of £429).

Spaghetti Carbonara

2009-06-10T00:39:00.003+01:00

I love spaghetti carbonara. ^^ It's bacon and egg spaghetti, what's not to like? It's certainly not fat-free though, or particularly low in calories. But since we usually already have most of the ingredients, it tends to be quite convenient to make.

Here's one version that I quite like making, that adds chicken into the mix.

NB: I did not make this today - it was Boy's turn to cook. He made barbecue chicken melt, which was gorgeous. This is just something I made a few days ago and just didn't get around posting about it.

INGREDIENTS
150g spaghetti
2 eggs
1 square inch block of parmesan cheese, grated or chopped
1/2 a small onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, peeled and minced
4 slices of back bacon
1 chicken breast fillet
white wine
olive oil
ground black pepper

METHOD

Chop the onions finely and slice the bacon into "chunks". Dice the chicken breast into small chunks too if wanted (tastes nicer, but I didn't have it on me at the time of taking the photos).

Cook spaghetti according to instructions until al-dente.

Whilst the spaghetti is cooking, beat the eggs in bowl and mix in grated parmesan cheese. Put egg and cheese mixture aside.

Drain spaghetti, then drizzle with olive oil and toss to coat. Put aside.

Put some olive oil into a pot on medium heat. Add chopped onion (and minced garlic, unfortunately not pictured) and stirfry until onion is translucent.

Add chopped bacon and stirfry until bacon is cooked and simmering in bacon fat (if using, also add diced chicken breast and stirfry until cooked). Add a dash of white wine and cook for another minute.

Season generously with ground black pepper.

Add cooked spaghetti into the pot and toss to mix and heat through, adding olive oil if it seems too dry or sticky.

Once it is heat through and steaming hot, remove from heat completely and add egg-cheese mixture into the pot, tossing to coat thoroughly. The heat from the spaghetti will cook the egg mixture and melt the cheese into a smooth, creamy sauce.

Serve immediately.

A Malaysian's attempt at Lancashire Hot Pot

2009-06-07T00:54:00.000+01:00

For those who had been reading my Facebook messages, you probably know that I was talking about trying to make Lancashire hot pot, despite never been to Lancashire and never having it before. Well, here's the result:

Lancashire hot pot... not in a pot!

Served with steamed buttered veggies.

It was pretty good, but still doesn't beat the deliciousness that is the honey and mustard slow-cooked leg of lamb!

But speaking of Facebook, you can also now finally view the photos from the Tunisia trip on my Facebook page. I know it's ages late, but give this girl a break! :P We did have a whole lot of fun on quad bikes whilst we were there, and Boy did get a free lapdance from a belly dancer on his 21st birthday. Hehe.

Blissful Rosemary Chicken with Penne

2009-05-28T22:47:00.000+01:00

Everyone knows I'm mad about food anyway, so here's another food post. I wasn't too sure what to cook tonight and since I'm bored of the usual, I went to consult my recipe bible allrecipes.com for quick food recipes (because I was also feeling lazy).

Somehow I ended up with this. Showed it to Boy, he was okay with how it sounded, so we went off to the shop for ingredients.

I made a few amendments to the recipe - I added garlic and rosemary inside the chicken, used mozzarella instead of smoked fontina (because I can't find it), browned the chicken before putting it into the oven, etc.

Flatten the chicken breast and scatter some chopped garlic and fresh rosemary on it.

Layer a slice of prosciutto and sliced mozzarella cheese on top. Preheat oven.

Roll up the chicken breast and secure with toothpicks. Brown chicken on a grill pan, around 2 minutes on high heat each side. Season well with ground black pepper and salt whilst browning.

In the meantime, empty a can of chicken broth into a small ceramic baking tray thingamajig and mix in a measure of white wine, ground black pepper and a dash of olive oil.

Place the browned chicken into the broth mixture.

Place the whole thing into the oven for 25 minutes. Whilst the chicken is in the oven, cook the penne according to package instructions.

The chicken is cooked and the cheese is melted! Obviously, get it out of the oven.

Pour all of the broth into the grill pan used for browning the chicken earlier and boil it on high heat until reduced to a gravy-like thickness.

Drain the pasta, pour in the "gravy" and mix thoroughly.

And dish it out on plates!

The result looked like this:

ASK + Angels & Demons

2009-05-21T23:55:00.000+01:00

Boy and I went to see Angels & Demons yesterday at the cinema. But first, we had dinner at Ask. Here are pics of our nom nom noms!

Calzone di Pollo e Pancetta

That's what I had. The menu said it is "A folded pizza of sliced chicken breast, pancetta, sauteed leeks, mushrooms, mozzarella and our classic pomodoro sauce, brushed with garlic butter and sprinkled with grana padano cheese and served with a salad garnish." Sounds about right, and it was gorgeous. I even loved the soft, light, buttery crust... extremely yummy dipped in balsamic vinegar and olive oil.

Stuffed Chicken Breast

That's what Boy had. A special for that night, no description of what it's stuffed with, but it looks like pancetta and cheese and mushroom to me. I had a bit of his as well (because I'm a greedy cow!) and the chicken was so tender it melted in my mouth! Served with French beans, buttery herby mash and mushroom in sauteed leek cream sauce? Dunno. Haha.

The movie was pretty true to the storyline other than some stuff being taken out to make it into a movie that isn't 3 hours long. But I can't say this with 100% certainty given that I read the book years ago, before I started university. Of course, knowing the storyline spoilt it a bit for me, but it was good nonetheless. I did find that the clue-finding part of things were too rushed, since that was what I enjoyed most from the book, the whole explanation of how-they-got-there. But I suppose that would've made it too draggy for people who are only there for the blood and gore. I think Boy enjoyed it though, even though halfway through the film we argued about who is the instigator of the whole plot against the Vatican.

I did admit later on that I cheated because I read the book years ago so I knew about the ending anyway. :P

All in all a good night.

Anniversary gifts and more

2009-05-14T17:41:00.001+01:00

Some stuff that I haven't posted yet even though I really should've some time ago... mainly because I'm so lazy nowadays. :P Mostly photos though of things I got or things I bought because I don't exactly have many things interesting that is going on in my life, just Boy's life is always more dramatic than mine! But that's his story to tell.

What Boy got me for our anniversary almost 2 weeks ago (as stated before):

A teddy bear (and a card, not pictured).

Camwhoring with the Elizabeth Miller white nappa leather jacket.

I was lusting after the jacket for weeks and Boy decides to buy it for me. He was also the one who suggested getting a white one instead of a black one. The black jacket looks too much like Russian military, apparently. :P Haven't had much use so far since it's been rather summery most day and the jacket is definitely made for colder weather.

Other than that, I bought myself a new pair of work shoes, which were on sale in my size. My old Earth boots that I wore for work was wearing out on the linings and rubbing the back of my feet raw. :(

Black Asgi low-heeled mary janes.

Not much else to say so far, so I'll end the entry with one of my new high-calorie addictions, thanks to work keeping us fed with these things when we do exceptionally well:

Cream-filled Belgian bun.

Damn, they're good. And yes, I know they don't help with the whole weight-loss thing either, but I have no willpower. :( And yes, that means that I haven't actually lost any weight since I joined the gym... :P

A long update! (sorry)

2009-05-07T23:06:00.002+01:00

Phew. Got back from London and I'm knackered. Not just London though - I woke up at 6am today to catch the 6:51am train to head to London with the plan to arrive there by 8:50am so that I can then make my way to Oxford Street by 9:30. Early mornings aren't for me. So much so that I had breakfast and then got a cup of coffee to go, without sugar, just to wake up a bit. I also made the mistake of wearing my 3" stiletto-heeled shoeboot to tramp around in London. I forgot how many flights of stairs there are in the Underground system... argh! Oh, and I had to run to the meeting too because I thought I was going to be so late because the train was running very late!

I turned up at 9:35am for a 9:30am meeting, only to find out that it doesn't start until 10am. Fuck. My feet... they would cry it they could.

The meeting was okay to start off with, but grew increasingly more and more boring as the day wore on. A lot of what they covered in the afternoon was just repetitive, because they already covered that during summer placement, and during pre-reg. So I'm a bit pissed off about that. A lot of stuff are business trade secrets, so I'm not going to even start to bore you with it, but sad to say the highlight of my day is lunch.

Lunch! :D

We were given 45 minutes and the whole of Oxford Street/Bond Street to choose from, so I went off on my own to do a bit of exploring to find a nice place to eat that isn't McDonald's or Subway or Burger King. To be honest, I've come all this way, might as well get something different from what I can get in Lincoln, right? After walking for around two to three minutes, I found a not-very-obvious sushi place and decided that since I've been craving for Japanese food and Boy doesn't seem very keen on trying, I'll treat myself to some Japanese food whilst I'm in London. ^^

Went in and had a bit of a mini-shopping trip!

The shop I went into.

Two boxes of Japanese curry cubes, two dorayakis (for Boy and I) and a box of authentically Japanese Hello Panda!

Lunch! It was awesome! I love unagi!

I'm not sure if I like unagi (grilled eel) better or the Japanese beef rice bowl, which is equally awesome. *sigh* Why does Boy not like Japanese food? He doesn't even want the dorayaki I bought for him. :'( I did tell him there is no raw fish in the ingredients.

Anyway, there isn't really much else to talk about today since I didn't spend time at Oxford Street spending the remainder of my bank account since I can't afford to, so I just went straight back to the train station, where I was given terrible service by an incompetent woman behind the Information counter.

4:25pm
I approach the Information counter where the woman is sat, arms crossed and looking very bored.
Me: Hi, can you tell me how I can get to Lincoln please?
Her: Have you got a ticket?
Me: Yes.
Her: Show it to me.
Me: Oh, okay... (why do I need a ticket to ask for information, I don't know) Here.
Her: Hmm. Well... *checks computer* You just missed the best connecting transfer at 4:10.
Me: That's no use to me anyway since I didn't get out until 4:15. When's the next one?
Her: There isn't going to be another train from Newark North Gate until 7:15.
Me: Well, can you check if there another way then? (I know damn sure there is, via Retford, but I didn't know what time)
Her: *checks her computer again* You can take the 5:35pm train to Retford and change there to Lincoln.
Me: Okay, thank you very much.

I later found out that it was the 4:35pm train to Retford, not the 5:35pm. So I missed it, and had to wait another fucking hour and some for the 5:50pm train to NNG anyway. So I was not happy at all. First of all, why the fuck do I need to know I "just missed the best connecting transfer" 15 minutes ago? It does not help. I just want to know when the next train is so that I can actually be on it, not try to time-travel to catch the "best train". And second of all, how did 4:35 become 5:35?! And what was with the fucking attitude??

So yeah. Anyway. Enough about today, I'm annoyed and tired enough already and I still have foot blisters to put up with (but that I agree 100% is my fault, so I won't whinge anymore).

Since I haven't been blogging a lot, here are some of the pics that you missed out on!

At the drunken Saturday work party (25th May) at the Coliseum...

I know, damn cheesy, right? Boy bought me the rose from some random woman who was selling those roses in the pub for £3.

Yes, you may have realised the barbecue idea didn't work out. But £105 worth of drinks is still quite a lot, we found.

And then just when I swore off alcohol forever, there was our 2nd anniversary (since we got together) on the 30th, which we celebrated at iMMO (our usual haunt for celebrations due to the good, but pricey, food).

The happy couple. :P

Boy's chocolate mocha cheesecake and my sticky toffee pudding! Yum yum yum.

No other food photos because I was so hungry I dug in before I remembered to take photo of them. :P Sorry! It was good though! We shared one of their heavenly light and fluffy garlic bread, and for main I had a chicken and cheese ravioli dish and Boy had something called pollo milanese or something like that.

Okay, this is getting too long, so I'll sign off now and let you get on with life. :P

Saw this on my way back from work...

2009-04-20T23:12:00.000+01:00

Guess what's the name of the only store in Lincoln that sells Jimmy Choo shoes? :D

Give up?

Click for the pictorial answer!

...

2009-04-20T08:27:00.000+01:00

I just had the worst night of sleep ever, barring when I'm ill. *sigh* I don't know why I kept tossing and turning and waking up every hour. I still feel knackered and I don't know how I'm going to survive work, but there you go. That's life.

Just got back from watching Monsters vs Aliens

2009-04-05T22:39:00.000+01:00

It was a really cute movie, quite funny. But there is one humongous glitch that made me confused near the end of the movie...

[It's a spoiler, so highlight below if you want to read]

You know the part where Susan managed to get to the other side of the locked door whilst the other three "monsters" got locked in the spaceship that's going to self-destruct in T-5 minutes? She looked around and saw these two hovercrafts and got the idea she previously used on cars (aka Susan rollerskates). So she slipped on the two hovercrafts on her feet like shoes and had a lot of fun flying around dodging robots and missiles.

Now, the problem is that when she did her cars-rollerskates stint, she was in her ginormous state, so it works. When she did her hovercraft-skates stint, she was back to normal human size.

There's only two reasons why this could be, and both of them don't make any sense. Why:

a) are the hovercrafts small enough to be on her feet? If anything, the alien clones who used the hovercrafts as normal hovercrafts are slightly bigger than her in her normal state. Or, why;

b) is she ginormous again, and then proceeds to shrink again as she confronted that alien boss?

Is it just a hugeass plothole in the script that Dreamworks can't be bothered to patch up? Like, they can't think of any other way for her to save her friends?

I don't usually pick on random plotholes in movies that I see, but this is really unmissable and I'm surprised they let it fly.

Dress and a non-earth-shattering girlie dilemma

2009-04-05T12:42:00.002+01:00

I got my new bras this week, so I'm happy. ^^ I also bought a dress as well.

Dress also comes in black, but I decided I have too much black in my wardrobe.
Yeah, I look bad enough when I roll out of bed in the mornings that I have to crop out my head in one of the pictures in case anyone is eating. Dress did not come with the belt, am debating about that whether to wear it with a belt or not... Boss is having a house barbecue at her place (and it's all my fault), so am wondering if this will be suffice as it is a knitted dress so it will be somewhat warm for an evening barbecue in English springtime weather, but won't look like I'm still dressed for winter. :P

Either that, or roll up in my usual jeans and T-shirt. But I figured I might want to start wearing dresses a bit more because jeans and tee are very restrictive (and I think will be very very hot and sticky in mid-July Malaysia), except for the fact that I hate my calves, they're so bulky, and wearing dresses or skirts that aren't maxi will somehow or other expose them to public view. :( Dilemma!

Meh...

2009-03-29T13:24:00.000+01:00

I didn't know the underwire in bras can actually snap. :(

The sunnies

2009-03-23T22:10:00.000Z

Lulu Guinness, black and dark purple. Looks quite retro compared to the run-of-the-mill Ray-bans or Guess. Price tag is £119. Yay or nay?

I also went upstairs to the normal (non-prescription) sunnies section to try some out because I wasn't sure the price is worth it, and I found there is a vast difference in build quality. I know, what am I on about? It's just a pair of sunglasses, right? No. The cheaper sunnies upstairs, even if they're Calvin Klein or Jigsaw or whatever expensive brand, feels completely different to the same branded sunnies we sell in the optics department. I mean, we carry Calvin Kleins and CKs too, but ours seem to be sturdier, the plastic feels denser and less "cheap". Like you know they haven't recycled plastic water bottles to make those sunglasses. It's not something you can see, but you can feel it the moment you pick it up.

A bit like having an expensive heavy "thud" sound when you close a prestige car door, cheaper cars tend to have the plasticky rattly noise instead. (Oh god, I'm using car analogies. I've been talking to Boy too much.)

To think that I always thought we're just overpriced because we specialise in the field... guess not.

I've done it!

2009-03-22T20:27:00.000Z

London Heathrow Apt (LHR) → Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KUL)
Airline: MALAYSIA AIRLINES (MH)
Class: Economy
Departing: 12:00 Sun 5 Jul 2009
Arriving: 07:25 Mon 6 Jul 2009

Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KUL) → London Heathrow Apt (LHR)
Airline: MALAYSIA AIRLINES (MH)
Class: Economy
Departing: 10:05 Fri 17 Jul 2009
Arriving: 16:15 Fri 17 Jul 2009

3 x Adult (£458.70)
£1,376.10

Payment Summary
Solo £1,376.10

So broke now... T_T

Uh-oh, my dad's on Facebook!

2009-03-22T10:08:00.001Z

He has added me as a friend. From the looks of things, he hasn't found any of my brothers yet. Should I parent-proof my Facebook profile before adding him? :x

Lesson #98237: Traditional eyelash curling is not for everyone.

2009-03-21T23:40:00.000Z

I'm terrible with makeup because I don't know how to apply it properly or take it off properly (a friend who works in a beauty salon told me that your face isn't supposed to hurt after taking off makeup!). And I could never figure out how to use these eyelash-curler-contraptions-that-looks-more-like-torture-devices.

Normal eyelash curler

I don't know if it's just me, but I could never curl with those. I've got two of these, so they can't both be broken since I bought both brand new. All I would always end up with are weird lashes with horrible angular kinks right in the middle, plus it doesn't appear to catch all of my lashes, so some stray lashes at either end of my eyes always stick out straight in contrast with the kinked lashes. Awful. And I could never get the curler close enough to the root of my lashes to get a proper lift.

And I have read all sorts of hints and tips online, including applying mascara before/after curling, curling in three steps along the lash to get extra curl, etc. I just end up with a sticky curler and extra kinks in my lashes. *sigh* I fail in life (as a female).

But fear not. I bought one of these yesterday, a bit dubiously but was tempted by the price (it is on sale for 1/2 price), and it proved to be one of the most useful cosmetic item I've ever bought for a fiver. :D

No7 Heated Eyelash Curler

Not only now I get to throw away the awkward metal thing from my cosmetics bag (it never fit properly anyway!), I can just use the nicely-shaped heated lash curler and it actually does give a nice natural-looking curl and it doesn't require too much effort. I like!

The other cosmetic thing I bought that I think will come in good use is this:

No7 Perfect Light Loose Powder

I only got it because I got sick of my pressed powder being crushed to dust when I take it travelling, and loose powder in its normal casing makes too much mess and is difficult to carry around in a small handbag. So when this pen-shaped loose powder with in-built brush comes along, I'm not gonna say no. Also, I had a £5 No7 discount voucher (I have several No7 discount vouchers, actually, and all of them expires on the 29th), so I really got that for just over a fiver too. Hehe. :)

I hope it's refillable! :P I usually use MaxFactor stuff because the MaxFactor lady was very helpful with selecting a product for me with my dry skin and spent time teaching me how to apply makeup last time, whereas the No7 lady just shrugged me off, assumed that just because I am a Far East Asian that my skin will naturally be very oily, sold me a foundation that was too dry for my skin (she didn't even try it on me!), so when it started flaking as soon as I put it on, I wasn't very impressed with the brand or the people they have as their reps. Unfortunately I couldn't find the above two products from any other range, so I've caved for the moment. :P

Another update: the non-pub crawl, lazy Sunday, and general laziness.

2009-03-15T22:45:00.002Z

So yesterday's night out didn't turn out the way I expected it to, but nevermind. The best time I had the whole night was sitting outside the pub in the cold with Boy, talking to T and J. We could actually hear ourselves talk without having to shout or talk in someone's ear, so you can have a normal chat over drinks instead of having to repeat it 3 or 4 times. Plus, there were several drag queens running about the streets providing ample cringe-worthy entertainment...

Anyway, yesterday aside, today started out as a lazy day. Eyes hurt and puffy as expected, but thankfully no panda eyes as I actually removed all of my makeup the night before. When we got hungry at around 1pm, went to Tesco to get fuel and food for tonight and then got a 10-piece bargain bucket from KFC. We curled up in front of the TV watching School of Rock on DVD (didn't finish it because it was too embarrassing to watch after a while... definitely one to watch whilst drunk because that's the only way to get through it!), and the chicken smelt lovely and tasted fantastic! <3 Boy made quite an attempt in eating his share of the bargain bucket before giving up on the 4th (I think) piece. I was quite impressed; he usually has such a small appetite that he would be stuffed with just 2 pieces of chicken. :P

LA Fitness called to say that I'm due for my 6-weekly checkup and for me to book an appointment, but I cringed when I heard the voicemail because I know I have been very naughty and skipping gym a lot and eating too much. *sigh* I don't think I lost any weight in the past 6 weeks! So much for motivation, eh? I need to stop being such a lazy arse. I slept for 4 hours in the evening today and woke up at 8.45pm! And speaking of LA Fitness, we went on Thursday to do some swimming and I forgot how to stay afloat again. :'( Relearnt it by the end of the session, but I bet I've forgotten about it again by now. And they say you can't forget how to swim! LIARS.

We also watched Marley & Me last week on Wednesday. The whole cinema was in tears by the end of it... talk about heartwrenching. The movie did not spare anyone, not even the blokes. It was a good film though, even if it was difficult to watch.

You know how I said I can't swim?

2009-03-08T22:08:00.000Z

Wooo. We went swimming today because Boy decided that he's going to teach me swimming. He was planning to even when we went to Tunisia, but we were so busy there that we didn't even get the chance to hit the pool or beach, so ever since coming back, he said, "We'll go to the swimming pool on your next day off and I can teach Pei how to swim then."

Which just so happens to be today because I've been working another six-day week. T_T

Before we went there, I said that if Boy manages the impossible task of getting me to swim, we could look at going for a vacation to one of the islands off the coast of Terengganu, like Redang or Perhentian, since I've never been to either island despite living so close to it for so many years because I just can't swim and the whole purpose of going to those islands is either suntanning on the lovely beaches (which I don't do because it's too hot!) or something to do with water (swimming, snorkling, diving, etc) because it has awesome coral reef and marine parks (apparently). Unfortunately, all this will mean is that I have to first save up for enough money for the tickets to Malaysia and then enough money for a mini-stint in one of the islands as well. The problem is that I know the islands are pretty popular places to go to during the summer months, so booking a place is going to be near on impossible if I don't do it soon... :(

Boy was like, "Ok, sounds like a challenge!"

Anyway, the fitness centre that we go to for gymming is the only one in the city centre with a swimming pool in it, so we went there today. I had my black swimsuit from 3-4 years ago when M was trying to teach me how to swim in 6 weeks (that wasn't too successful, by the way). It was a 36E (from Bravissimo, on sale, I think it was a Freya swimsuit but I could be wrong) and it definitely doesn't fit all that well nowadays because the wires in the centre (of my boobs) are jutting out by an inch or so. :( I was going to get another one, but I cannot justify getting another swimsuit when a) I don't go to the beach that often and, b) I can't swim.

I would get a bikini (there are so many nice ones!) if I were skinnier and have less jiggly bits... um, nevermind! :P I shall spare everyone's eyes.

The pool is 1.36m deep. Getting into the pool was not a problem - I have no fear in getting into water, and the water came up to my chin. There were actually a lot of people there, families with their kids on a Sunday, I suppose we shouldn't be surprised since it was Sunday afternoon.

Lesson #1: Dead Man's Float

First thing Boy tried to get me to do was the Dead Man's Float. Even that is difficult because I kept tensing up and sinking, so he tried to get me to tread water. That didn't work either because I kept sinking and my feet kept hitting the floor.

So I clung on to the side of the pool and let the rest of my body float up to the surface. Then Boy stood next to me and supported me from underwater whilst I let go of the side and told me to relax repeatedly. Once he was certain I was fully relaxed in a sleeping position, he let go... and then I was floating.

I WAS FLOATING!!

I opened my eyes in shock, panicked and immediately went underwater with lots of spluttering after.

That was smart. :P Anyway, we tried that again, and each time I held the position (if you can call it holding a position when it requires no effort other than not to panic) longer and longer. After that, he said I was to get into the Dead Man's Float position by myself, with no assistance from him. Again, that took some doing. Actually, I managed it the first time, but then panicked after around 5 seconds and went under again. So that took some time to build up confidence to the point of just floating and not tensing up at all.

Lesson #2: Moving in one direction (Cheater's backstroke)

So the next thing to do was to try to get me moving in one direction rather than just floating around getting in everyone's way.

First he tried to get me to kick my legs, but only my feet without tensing the other leg muscles and going underwater, which was near impossible. Then he said I could use my calves as well, but when I tried it, he said I was moving my whole legs and there was too much movement and muscle tension to keep afloat that way. So we tried it with assistance again, and it was okay... until he let go and I was sinking again...

So he said that I should try it with arm movement as well. After experimenting with various types of arm movement and him telling me how much movement I should do, in which direction, etc, I finally managed to stay afloat and move in a specific direction!

YAY!!!

Oh, and after some practicing, I could do it by myself now, even though occasionally I still cock up by tensing far too much and getting a noseful of water in the process, but it's not too bad now. ^^ We spent some time in the jacuzzi as well, and that was weird. My back was really red and itchy after it.

After that, it was back to some more practicing, and I managed to swim almost a complete length of the pool just doing the cheater's backstroke. So now I'm not completely hopeless on this swimming thing, and back of my throat tastes like chlorine. Roffle.

Boy is a pretty good teacher. Very patient, and he didn't mind staying with me at all times to make sure I don't drown instead of going off on a swim himself whilst I drown in a corner of the pool.

My relationship with food

2009-03-08T12:32:00.000Z

Just cooked up a quick sausage, bacon and egg bap for both Boy and I, so I'm feeling full and happy now. ^^

I think I eat too much. My work colleagues are now all on Facebook (and it's the work topic for the past week or so), even the most computer illiterate of them, and the one thing they all said was, "Pei's status message is always about food or what she's having for dinner."

Everyone thought this is hilarious (and the "mmm, young animals are so very yummy" quote has now been immortalised as "Pei's quote") and that sooner or later I'll end up with a recipe book on Facebook. Er, not likely. But it still brings me to the topic that I probably eat too much and need to cut down on all this munching. Sigh. But I like food. :( But perhaps I should only have 3 square meals a day and not snack in between. I lose control with snacking. It's only 12:55pm now and I've eaten 2/3 of a small loaf of cinnamon and raisin bread and a sausage, bacon and egg bap whilst watching Azumanga Daioh on my laptop. I've only been up for 3+ hours. Disgusting, right? And I don't even feel sick from eating that much. If anything, I just feel full, that's all.

I think this means that my stomach is way too used to consuming a lot of food, and it shouldn't be. :( I work at a sedentary 9-5 job with not a lot of exercise, I sleep a good 8 hours a day (or more if I can get it), and yet I stuff myself with so much food everyday you'd think I'm a construction/mine worker who does 12 hours of hard manual labour a day. RARRARAARRRRR.

Hmm... speaking of food, a thought just occured to me. Maybe instead of figuring what to cook each night when it's my turn to cook, maybe I should use a randomiser script to tell me? :D

*Googles*

Gran Torino

2009-03-07T23:29:00.001Z

Just got back from watching Gran Torino. It was great! A bit cheesy and predictable in some places, but it was still a pretty good film and it did made me tear up a bit.

Despite the name of the film, it really doesn't have much to do with the car, though the existence of the car in the movie is probably what that kicks the plot off. I'm not going to go into the plot of it, but it has a lot of tones of family, honour and the (lack of) power of justice in one person's hand. Whilst I've said that it's predictable, it doesn't have the shameless happy endings that Hollywood likes to market for most of its films, which is good because it wouldn't have worked with this film. The film does make you think of why things happen the way it does, and sometimes life is ~~shit~~ the way it is through no fault of your own, and you'll just have to deal with it the best way you know how. As hard as a man tries to be an island in his own world, in the end he is still going to be affected by the actions and behaviour of those surrounding him, and he makes a choice to make a sacrifice not for his own benefit, but for the people he cares about who cares about him.

I thought the movie was engineered quite brilliantly, though some may beg to differ. I particularly liked the parts where Clint Eastwood's character Walt Kowalski have his banter with the barber guy. XD It was hilarious!

Random bruises

2009-03-06T23:00:00.000Z

I woke up today and found a hugeass bruise on my chin! >_< How did it get there? I don't recall hitting myself on the chin on anything. I look like I've been domestic-abused. Tried to cover it up with foundation (I have no concealer), and was kinda successful in hiding it for most of the morning, but by afternoon my foundation wore off and the bruise in all its purple glory was there for all to see. :(

A joked that Boy has been hitting me. >_<

Surely I'm not the only one who wakes up with random bruises? I get a lot of them, but I think this is the first one that has been on my face.

Earspirals

2009-03-04T22:10:00.000Z

I found something really cute that I want. I got to know about it when one of my work colleagues came in wearing one of them and got a lot of curiosity as to how on Earth she puts them on.

Earspirals! :D Have you heard about it? Apparently it originated from San Francisco... it's an earring you can't lose (whilst wearing it)!

Is that cute or what? That's one of the "Californian convertibles", ie you can change parts of it. There are some static ones as well. But I just think they're the greatest! They're not cheap though... -_-

Does anyone feel like buying me a present? :P

Still working on pictures of Tunisia... will be up as soon as I find time to sort it all out. :P I'm sure you're all dying to see them... not! Heh.

I'm still in love with my slow-cooker (thanks Joe!)

2009-03-02T22:52:00.000Z

*grin* If you've read my Facebook status message yesterday, you will have seen the young animals comment and known that I was mixing up a honey+mustard marinade for half a lamb leg. I marinaded it overnight in the fridge and put it into the slow cooker today, and it was absolutely melt-in-your-mouth heavenly. *swoon*

Slow-cooked honey+mustard leg of lamb served with pork, onion
and sage stuffing and roast potatoes, carrots and parsnips.

I know, I know, I don't get points for presentation. Anyway, if you're interested, I followed the marinade recipe from here and then just made it a slow-cooker pot roast instead of a traditional roast. For the gravy, I added a dash of red wine and enough Bisto gravy granules to thicken up the gravy after cooking. Will be making again for sure!

PS: Yes, Boy got us new plates because I broke all but one of the old ones. :(