Bangkok...

I’ve never been to Bangkok. So when Rosie asked me if I wanted to join her and N this June to go see this city of angels, I said YES!!!!

J couldn’t make it, so not wanting to be a third wheel to Rosie’s romantic Thailand getaway, I needed a travel buddy, and I needed one quick.

So I asked Eric. (He’s the only one I know who wasn’t either planning a wedding, about to give birth, or who just blew a small fortune on a couple of lv’s and a luxury watch, or who was saving up leave and money for a holiday later in the year. AND, the fact that I absolutely LOVE traveling with the big guy helps too. HEAPS!!!)

And in 3 minutes, he said “Ok. The dates look good. The prices even better. LET’S GO!!!!!"

And then……….. the gushing started…..

Eric :
“Ooooh and we can go visit my uncle there!" *gush gush*
(interspersed with giggles [and this is on messenger mind you]
*gush*

While he was giving me some details of his uncle’s latest squeeze, I booked the tickets.

Eric :
"...He’s so cute…. (something about licking….)"

Me :
"You wanna eat on the flight?"

Eric :
*pause*
(I could almost hear those gears changing…. His mind was obviously in another land, where he need not necessarily be eating.. you know.. food)

"Up to you lah!"

"Oh! And imagine all those bars we have to hit….. and the shopping"
*continues to gush*

Me :
"I’m getting us travel insurance also ok."

Eric :
"… all that eye candy, And did I mention the abs on them?"

*blink*

"Oh… okay"

Me :
"AARRRRGGGHHH!!!!! *&^@%#$@%^& website HUNG ON ME!!!!"

Eric :
"… back to those abs…… so pretty!!!!!"

3 attempts later, we had tickets and travel insurance and extra check in luggage ;) Rosie and N booked us the accommodation and all in all, it’s costing us RM630 nett each for all that :D

I foresee a fun filled food and shopping experience! Chatuchak! Platinum mall! Lots of trinkets I’ll probably NEVER use, lot’s of Chang beer, Sam Song and Thailand’s very own Mekhong (Spirit of Thailand), technically fruit juice (so no calories!)… well, they DO start off with sugar cane….. and rice… and….. *my turn to gush*…

Holy Cow!!!

Literally.

Ming and I walked out of McDonald’s to be met by a growing crowd mulling about the Mc’D’s delivery motorcycles. Photographers and journalists in their tell-tale vests were hanging about there…. Young men in light blue vests from the state;s ruling party were waiting excitedly too….

We got out of there with no incident, spying many a bored faced uniformed FRU personnel waiting under a tree here, under the shade there…. I got up to my office on the 9th floor, and promptly ran to the window.

The group had grown to approximately 100 in number. And as if on cue, the banners appeared, and the group started shouting slogans and marching… Nothing really out of place, just YET anorther demonstration... only THIS one was led by…. a cow.

I’m not kidding.

They were a throng of about 100 men, all in their prime (18 – 45 years), sporting slogan filled t-shirts and party flavoured tops, marched, shouting their support for their beloved head of state, all orchestrated to move in one fast paced concerto, conducted by….. a cow.

The cow, which was the focus of many a photographer’s flashbulb, was undoubtedly the star of this show, she was displayed, at the back of a little lorry, which for half an hour earlier this afternoon, was her centre stage on oscar night.

They photographed her, placed banners near and around her, and made her lead the crowd, in her lorry, at the head of the procession.

They marched towards my office building. And excitedly, I wished hoped and prayed they’d lead her into the lobby. That’ll be a sight… but the lorry veered off towards the parking lot, and the crowed marched on towards the lobby downstairs.

As I type this, I can hear men’s voices shouting (into their hand held hailers) :-

“Tan Sri…. I LOVE YOU! x 3”. Loving group these men are….

“Hidup Tan Sri…..” x 3,582. Prophetic too…

I applaud them for their dedication. To be able to get a group of grown men, to meet and steak out, and herd themselves towards a common and well loved cause, nevermind who (or in this case, what) led the procession…. is nothing short of an amazing feat of bull headed determination, beefy dedication and selfless-ness.


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25 random things meme

I was tagged by Ema fren on facebook, and like many others who find the facebook forum a bit too public, I’m posting my 25 meme post here.

The meme was to list 25 random things about yourself, and to subsequently tag 25 people to do the same, including the person who tagged you. So here goes :-

1. I love singing and usually entertain myself to a solo concert in the car. Much to the amusement of the other road users around me.

2. I love luxuriously long hot showers.

3. I want a pug. And I want to name it Buttercup, be it a boy or girl.

4. I love eating smelly things. By that I mean, naturally pungent food. Durians, cheese.. yummmm!

5. I will stop eating my bah kut teh and/or mee hoon kueh once I run out of cili padis. For this reason, I ALWAYS have to ask for more chilly at the restaurants, and I have my own cili padi plants at home.

6. I daydream, skive and talk to myself a lot.

7. I am long winded. What can be succinctly expressed in 5 words, I will invariably choose to say in 40.

8. I read classics. For 2 reasons. I started reading them years and years ago when I was a student with very little to spare and classics were the cheapest books around PLUS they made very good value for money too…. Small print, no pictures and they were so thick! All for RM4.95 (at that time). Now I read them simply cause they sooth me. With everything happening around the world and in my life today, the pages in these classics have no gory violence, terrorism, rude language and such. It’s refreshingly amusing to read about how one is practically betrothed to another if one is promised more than 2 dances at a ball. (Now you believe item 7 above?)

9. In the past 3 years, I have learnt more about the person that I am and hope to be than in the 30 years preceeding that.

10. I prefer bread and noodles over rice.

11. I am a morning person. I like the promise of a great day the morning brings, and I love, love, LOVE drizzly mornings, with the smell of Mummy’s loh shi fun wafting up from the kitchen.

12. My unfavouritest time of the day is dusk. Just as the final half hour of sunlight ebbs from the sky. It feels like my heart’s sinking with the sun. I don’t know why I get so down, and sometimes, it’s simply unbearable.

13. I believe in giving credit where it’s due. Sometimes to the abashed blushes of the person receiving it.

14. I say a little prayer for the patient and his/her family every time I see an ambulance on the road.

15. I have a hero. He inspired me to do well in life and make something of myself, to stand out. Dr. Tony H.L. Leong, my ophthalmologist who treated me during my very very impressionable teenage years. (Dr. Leong, I hope this doesn’t scare you, if by the remotest chance you happen to be reading this). He was sincerely kind and generous and caring to me when he really had no reason to. For that, I am humbled and hope to be able to be as kind and generous to someone, as he was to me.

16. I swallowed mercury from a thermometer as a young child. To the relief of my parents and doctor, the problem resolved itself errrr ‘naturally’. Although my mum still blames the mercury for my sometimes bizarre behaviour… which leads us nicely to item 17…

17. I do things that are (what my mom, sis, anyone around me find) kinda weird (so they say). I kiss myself (on the hand) from time to time, I kiss my car from time to time, and when I was growing up, I had a list of 7 husbands (all famous movie stars and the likes). Nothing serious…am still very much unmarried.

18. I am predominantly right handed but write, draw, use chopsticks and do delicate things like carving or lip lining with my left hand, leading many to think I am left handed.

19. My brother and I are mirrors. (ok, we KINDA look alike) but we mirror each other in the sense that he’s predominantly left handed, but writes and uses chopsticks with his right hand.

20. I am a world of contradiction, and have been known to change my mind at the last minute (sometimes more than once), much to the irritation and consternation of the people around me. SORRY!!!! (Please see item 16).

21. I like cheong sams. Nevermind my lifetime quest of losing weight.

22. I like cooking and I love baking, but have been told, time and again that I can’t. But I stubbornly refuse to accept the fact that I will never, ever by ANY stretch of the imagination be Nigella. *sigh*

23. I am a procrastinator on certain things and am unforgivably impatient on others. (Please see item 20 and oh, what the heck, item 16 too!).

24. I wish I had smaller feet. Even just by 1 size. Because I have large feet, growing up, it was like finding a needle in the haystack every time I found a pair of girly footwear, hence I had very, very few. Now that there are larger sizes and more imported brands of footwear available here, I sometimes go overboard with buying shoes, kinda to make up for lost time I guess.

25. I believe in karma and in being just, patient (God knows I try), forgiving (this too!) and compassionate in my search for happiness (do I sound dalai lama-ish of what!?!). I am trying, and I am learning…


For the 5 of you who read my blog, consider yourself tagged. I wanna know something about you too. So Buck, OT, Angie, Marc and JP, I am looking forward to reading your 25 random things.

Only during CNY….

It was a serious occasion. We were visiting a friend in the hospital.

5 minutes into the visit, she whips out her deck of cards. The one she carries with her in her handbag, throughout CNY….

She looked at me, we both looked at the patient…

Well she LOOKED alright, the sedatives WERE wearing off, she DID have an appetite…and it was CNY!!!!

And the hospital bed made the perfect table.

For black jack.

Played in hushed tones….

We were decent. We didn’t yell or call enthusiastically for the “PICTURE!”, we WILLED it, eyes scrunched, a gentle “picture” whispered….

I made some money that day. The patient broke even, the others lost :D

What?!? It WAS during CNY, and the patient SEEMED okay….. PLUS, the nurse didn’t stop us…..

*Gong Xi Fa Chai everyone !!!!!*


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Bring on the Red!

It’s my absolute favourite time of the year now. CNY! And the days leading up to it

I remember in years of past, my mum would bake cookies to sell…. And bake she did!

The whole house was transformed into a cookie churning factory. We’d roll, cut, baste, bake, pack and seal THOUSANDS of pineapple tarts, peanut cookies and peanut puffs. The hall will be laden with tables and table or “work stations” and everyone had a job. Dad would be in charge of scraping the pineapples and cooking the jam, my siblings and I would be in charge or rolling and filling and cutting and basting… and Mummy, chief operating officer! Year in, year out. We’d make the cookies till the very last day we could. I still remember the oven sweating away, baking the final batches of tarts while Mum whipped up her delicious culinary CNY delights on the stove above. We were cleaning floors, washing baking pans, and changing the curtains and cushion covers all during the mad rush that was CNY eve.

After dinner, we’d all get into gear. Everyone again had a task. We had the clock to watch you see…. After midnite, all brooms, mops, brushes and other cleaning paraphernalia would be retired. “No cleaning on the first day”. Strangely, of the many many superstitious rules we sometimes questioned (like “don’t open an umbrella in the house, you’ll never grow tall”) this one, we adhered to religiously!


Dishes would be dealt with quickly and immediately the floor washing team would kick in. Hoses of water soap suds and slippery moonwalks across the kitchen to the back yard later, we’d rush to get things ready for prayers at midnight. (Now I know why my mom had 4 kids). 2 of us would be assigned to cleaning the fruits, setting up the table and candles and josssticks, the other 2 will be assigned to finishing up the cleaning of the house.

All eyes will be on the clock… and as midnite approaches, trust me, calmness and serenity in welcoming the new lunar year? NOT IN THIS HOUSE!

“QUICK! Pass me the mop!!!!”
“Watch out! I just mopped that part of the floor!”
“Have you swept under the cupboards?””Where’s the brush I used 5 minutes ago?””YOU STAINED MY FLOOR!!! STOP WALKING ABOUT!!!!!”
“Where’s one more cushion cover!!?!?! I lost a cushion cover!!!!”

30 seconds to midnite, mops, brooms brushes and such are haphazardly FLUNG into a cupboard marked “DO NOT OPEN”, we make a dash to change out of our sweaty work clothes to a brand new RED something, and make another dash out to the front porch.

There, coolly, my father will be waiting, jossticks in hand to hand us our 3 sticks to pray, in our pretty new clothes, for prosperity, health and 4D.

The standing joke all those years was that if we couldn’t clean the house in time, we’d lock the house up on the 1st day of CNY and pretend no one’s home. But we ALWAYS managed, it was ALWAYS a rush… but oh my!!! What a LOVELY rush it was!!!!!

Sure I griped, groaned and complained… but looking at it now, 2 weeks from CNY in 2009, where my parents are retired, we don’t bake any cookies anymore, not even for ourselves (my cooking experiments which my Mum still calls “a waste of flour” don’t count) where I know, it’ll be a quiet affair waiting for midnite, where the only sounds will be that of the tv, I can honestly say, HOW I MISS THE GOOD OLE DAYS!

He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother

“How’s the Wira keeping?”

“Ok lar…”

“Is it falling apart already?”

“Nope”

I say that while thinking about the frozen windows, the car light that’s fallen off, the two indicator lamp casings that have fallen off, the rear suspension that needs changing, and the front something-under-the-hood that needs replacing… Well… nothing’s literally “fallen off” yet….

“What’s the mileage like on your car now?”

“About 220,000 km”

And I pause for a second to consider if I should tell him that the speedometer gauge thingy didn’t work for about 6 months, so it’s not the most accurate of readings on mileage… but I thought I’d spare him…

“You want my waja?”

And I hesitate… Sure, it’s a much newer car. Bigger engine too. Well taken care of. A better car (arguably…..) BUT… *I take a quick breath*…. It’s got PURPLE seat covers!!!! Urgh!!!! But still… it IS a newer car...

“Sure! You changing cars ah?”

“Yeah. Thought of trading in the Waja. But if you want it, I’ll trade in your Wira instead”

“Errr….. you DO realize, in the condition she’s in… you won’t get much if you trade in value from the Wira riiiiiiiiiiiiiiite….?”

[Sighs] “I know. It’s ok. I’ll absorb it”

“YEAYY!!!!”

Older brothers. I love muchly!!! Everyone should have one! :D:D:D

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Sleighbells ring......... are you listening?

It's Christmas!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And it IS the spirit of giving.... So for those who have complained about my last "aunty" entry (Only Eric was kind enough to call it my "martha wanna-be" entry...) here, this entry is for you lovely people who read my blog... :D

So CHRISTMAS!!!! I dont celebrate it in a religious way, but it's hard not to get caught up in the festivities and the end of the year.... everything's winding down, to gear up for a new year ahead. And what a year it will be methinks...

Anyways, whatever the economic situation, since everyone seems to be posting their wish list, I thought I would too.... So here's mine... material things only, cause the intangible thinggies like love and peace and happiness are, although a given, either stuff I need to work on internally or are really beyond my control.... so here goes, my wish list, purely tangible goods and purely frivolous (well some of them are) :-

(i) a hand held mixer

Yes, the auntie in me has surfaced lately... and I'm into baking... for better or worse for my friends and family... cause they end up being my guinea pigs/piggettes. My old mixer, which I loved muchly, given to me by my sis circa 10 birthdays ago finally sputtered coughed keeled over and died. Sigh... that mixer and I have seen so many good memories, so many baking experiments.... so now I'm mixing cake and cookie batter by hand.... and as much as I appreciate a good workout, there's only so much the hand can do, and I have ambitions of baking meringues! pavlovas! and i wanna cream them all to high heaven!!! Top on my "I'm itching to bake" list are (a) Orange poppyseed cake and (b) White chocolate cranberry muffins!!! Nevermind I dont got a muffin tray... sigh...

(ii) a pretty overnight luggage bag

In dark chocolate brown, it lured me from my main purpose that day... and proved to be quite a distraction. But time wouldn't permit me to think properly that day, or I would have bought it. I didn't. And as luck would have it, it was sold out a couple of days later, the only available one being faulty... *&^%$#@$%!!!! I guess I'll just have to keep hunting for this one....

(iii) strappy tan leather heels

It's not easy shopping for shoes when you wear a size 10. So many pretty shoes have eluded me, so much so that I actually have very very happy dreams that I'm shoe shopping, and every shoe I fancy fits!!!! But then, I wake up.... and realise.... DAMN! it's just a dream.... I've got several brown outfits, and I'm wearing my dark brown pair of strappy heels to death now.... they're starting to fade.... and peel... poor things.... So i need a pair brown pair of strappy tan leather heels PRONTO!!!

(iv) THAT dress...

You know the one that you just KNOW is perfect the moment you put it on.... Yeah... I want THAT dress.... so far, I've had a couple of near hits, both tugging with much force at my heart strings, but seeing as my purse strings weren't as easily moved, sigh.... I guess I'll just have to keep hunting!!!!

(v) a sketchbook

A decent sized one I can lug about with me... I've already packed my charcoals and my pencils and some chalk into a pretty zippy soft bag I now carry with me in my weekend bag... So now I want a ring bound sketchbook to put them charcoals, pencils and chalk to good use!!!! And oh.... any willing models??? Now THIS (sketchbook.... sketchbook) I know where to get! haha... mayhaps I'll get it tonite, as little frivolous Christmas gift to myself....

And you know what? Once I started the list, seems I have so MANY things I want!!! So I'll stop here... and end this entry with "HAVE A MERRY, MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!!!"


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