exordinarily ordinary

We say goodbye again...

2007-01-30T09:23:00.000Z

Here we are again.After months of indecision,a boring friday afternoon had at last propelled me to do this. It's time again for goodbye...

http://www.sourrain.com

proudly hosted, helpdesked and bankrolled by king moo.

I am home at last.Otherwise reachable by nasilemak@sourrain.com

Baby steps

2007-01-26T09:25:00.000Z

This, is Joel, otherwise known as smellie
Don't know why his mommy call him smellie
But he sure is a cutie
(of course, takes after me :P)

Its always scary when your friends start reproducing - you're torn between feeling left behind and a tad afraid that the day might finally arrive when you reproduce. I don't even feel quite adult yet;how am I supposed bring a baby up?

And after 25 hours of labour, one of my oldest friend had produced this:

Hi there.I am a cute char xiu bao

Baby's first hi-five

Konon looks like he belongs to us…

And then he wee.And then he poo.So we left:).Actually,left to pig out at Zen & Kim Gary. Baby steps ya…let me try out being a kai ma (god mom) first…

With two parents being some IT pros, the baby,of course, has his own personal blog.But warning ahead - do not view if you giggle uncontrollaby at the sight of a breast milk pump (I don’t even know they exist!!)

The Australian adventure

2007-01-25T14:02:00.000Z

If you've missed any of my previous installments on the track to Australia, well, below is just for you! A summary of Le Barkers' Australian tour of 2006

Making it from Leeds
Sun, Surf, Lobsters & burgers
Victoria's Great Ocean Road
Philip Island's Kangaroos & Penguins
U of Melbourne's Graduation
Yarra Valley & Lygon St.
Sydney's Rocks Weekend market & Haymarket
Sydney Fish Market, Star Casino, Aquarium & Towers
Manly Beach
A do-nothing day
Bondi, Coogee & Paddy's Market

Ahhhhh...I am so proud of myself for finally cataloging this.

Oz day 12 - Washed away memories

2007-01-25T13:48:00.000Z

This is slotted to be the last in my OZ series. Not many pictures - mainly because my poor camera was literally washed away when a giant surf hit me .

Bacon had insisted that even if it was thundering or raining cats and dogs, there was no way he was going to miss out on Bondi. Thank god the sun was shining and all was well in paradise.

We agreed on,Breakfast on Bondi, Lunch at Coogee, Dinner at Darling. Today it was bus time, and we took a bus from just behind our hotel all the way to Bondi beach front. Initially we wanted to catch the bus to Bondi Junction - apparently that was the bus stop,not the beach.Thank god the driver was very nice and asked us if we were actually heading to the Beach.

After a pleasant 40 mins meandering up to Bondi, we hopped off to be greeted by a long beautiful stretch of beach with a matching row of shops and restaurants. Guess what did I have for breakfast?

Mouhahahah! It is actually a very famous Scottish delicacy,but I couldn’t find it when I was up at Edinburgh, so of course, I had to have it.Deepfried.Yumm

Can you see the melty nougat centre?OMG TO DIE FOR. It tastes just like a melted mars bar, gooey,chocy,but warm as well - sort of like deepfried ice cream but warm

Stomach satiated (if not a little nauseus) we headed on to Bondi - where a naked photoshoot was going on! Hahahah! Bacon refused to walk in front of the seedy-looking man shooting this blonde with small tits squirming against the hot australian sun. The thing was, there is nothing wrong with nudity/toplessness - sunbathing topless is a almost a requirement on Bondi (and the other beaches that we went to that day) but the fact that after that naked photoshoot she was filmed running down the beach topless made it extremely hilarious!

Sorry, thought it was rude to shoot her.Don't know why though.They might think that I would sell those softporn pixs off.

Contemplating Bondi

I wanna bag myself a surfer boy…yumm:)

Can you spot yourself a topless one?

Bondi-ed feet

I want to live in one of em…

After lying in the sun for about an hour, it was time to move on again - Bacon wanted to walk towards Coogee (I think a 3 hour coastal walk!!) but I veto-ed it immediately. We then headed to the taxi ranks and took one of them instead to Coogee, which is a located about 15min drive from Bondi and much smaller and quiter. Plus it also seems to be more local rather than touristy snap happy.

One of my fav food in oz is sushi - due to the closeness of many of the major ports,the fish is VERY FRESH.Heck, all it's seafood are very fresh and delicious..we had a AU2 for any plate sushi for lunch and popped down to the beach immediately to see what the fuss is about with Coogee. Even the cabdriver said that it was nicer than Bo

Man overboard!

Just as I snapped this picture,my poor Nikon was splashed by a giant wave,so we waved it goodbye for a while..I was quite traumatized by it…but seeing that this was our last beach trip, I just shut my eye and tried to enjoy the sun for a little longer.I still like Manly the best from all three Sydney beaches, and if you only had time for one, I would recommend Manly.Sigh…I miss the sand.

We left at 3 to head back towards the city, and seeing that it was a Thursday, bought a monorail day pass and headed towards the famed Paddy's market by chinatown(haymarket). We were expecting it to be a full fledged market like Victorias' market was in Melbourne but it falls short of expectations.However, it had a great selection of souveniers - bought some tea towels and oven mitts to bring home. I also went to the shopping centre next door which had a Mambo discount centre - suffice to say, I splurged again,like I was never going to see mambo stuff ever again. I even bought a makeup bag,like how bizzare.At 5pm the market traders were starting to shut - seeing that we were in chinatown I had to have one last bowl of Pho - this time at a hip pho restaurant just outside of Paddy's.It was decorated with all red and black chinoiserie chic, but ran by vietnamese they produced a pretty decent bowl of pho. Obviously no pictures=no recollection of the restaurant's name - now I know why I take pictures. My memories are all intact in Flickr's safekeeping:).

Sigh- wet camera=no pix

Anyway, I don’t know how I do it, but we headed home to change and immediately left for Darling Harbour again, kiasu what,don't want to waste the monorail day ticket at AU 9 each.This time, in search of another ribhaven -

Camera showing subtle signs of life…thank god.

We ordered nearly the same thing that we ordered yesterday - the ubiquitious rib platter

I want myyy---baby back baby back baby back ribs, sings the big fat blob from Austin Power.

Yummm…it was definitely better than Hard Rocks' and did not had such a problem with their service, although, our server, which I think is Japanese, could only speak really broken English.

After the huge meal, it was time for one last walk on the harbor. We took it slow, savouring our last view of the beautiful Sydney nightscape.

Christmas was fast descending..

I love fake-looking pictures that is caused by the twilight back light

Sydney is a very special city. It has so many obvious attractions that are just in-your-face; attractions that makes it uniquely Sydney and unreplicated anywhere else. It has the charms of docks and beaches whilst being a fast growing city. It is so vibrant, and filled with character that it sometimes reminded me of San Francisco, with its crooked Lombard St, Fisherman's wharf ect.

We were both quite upset to leave Australia.

Tales from hicksville 1

2007-01-25T12:45:00.000Z

I have been randomly sharing stories of strange (mostly ridicullious) encounters that I've had since moving here - because they are mostly short I don't usually blog about it,but sharing is caring so here you go!

Le Bacons are lazyasses.We don't like cleaning (vac,toilet,mopping) but it is a fact of life that everyone has to clean sometimes. So I was thinking of hiring a temp maid (well, to be very PC, they call it cleaner)of maybe 2 hours a week to clean toilets,vac and mop the floors.Being the stupidass I am, I advertised it as paying £8 per hour - which will equate £16 for two hours and if you convert that into RM my mommy will probably grill my lazyarse. Seeing that the min. wages are £5.70, I am paying quite a good rate by any standards.

Anyway.I have been getting all sorts of applicants through my email since yesterday and most of it is so bizzare - some send a whole cv which reads:

EDUCATION
Master of Tourism, with a specialisation in Tourism Economy at Higher School of Economy and Tourism in Warsaw

Bachelor of Tourism, with a specialisation in Tourism Organisation and Handling at College of Tourism and Recreation in Warsaw

WHY would someone with a Masters in Tourism want to work for me as a maid??Hell, I'm not even that educated.

Another one states that she has been an au pair/ child minder for the past 12 years (if her cv is to believed) and she has a degree in sports management and she is very 'sportif'.Again, WHY? Maybe I should pay her to be my personal trainer whilst she clean.

Best was,

hi dear..am single man 40yr old looking for apart time job becaouse buzy
some time would verey nice if contact me for more information on
0779xxxxxx ......thnk you

Now,I am not advertising for some porno/stripper shiet,why would you want to tell your 'potential' employer that you are single and call her/him dear??bacon's only response was, "His england not powderfull huh". He's sounding more and more like me every single day - so proud:)

I had a couple more applicants from the new EU countries i.e. Poland,Slovakia,Romania and a couple with african-sounding names. I initially thought it was piss hilarious (still do) but obviously I should stop laughing as they are only offering to do menial jobs because they are new immigrants - and jobs are not easy to come by,menial or not.Sides, I pay really well:).

Oz day 11- And it rains in paradise...zz

2007-01-23T13:42:00.000Z

Christmas in the sun V 5

We woke up, went shopping,ate,came home,slept,the end.

You think I'm kidding?

After such a tiring couple of days, we were supposed to take it slow today, and head down to the world famed bondi beach.However, after 3 days of perfect weather, it was bound to happen - it rained cats and dogs all day long. We hopped from one shopping centre to another,not buying anything in particular.In fact,I think the only thing I bought in our 'shopping trip' was a rip curl luggage…and that’s a shared purchase,so nothing magnificient.

Had lunch at Nandos for their 'chicken riblets', which is only available in OZ, tender chicken collarbone meat that is finger lickin good.And that's about it really! No kidding.Oh.Had a couple of KrispyKreme - found them lurking at the corner of a foodcourt *smirks*

The Swarovski christmas tree at QV shopping centre (next to town hall)

So the pretty...

Did not do much at night,but my handy guidebook speaks of a all-you-can-eat ribs at hard rock café….which is strangely enough located at Kings Cross again.Because we had not purchased any bus all day ride tickets today,I had to make that trek up again..

It is very strange where this Hard Rock is. We went up and down the street looking for it,and passed right by it because it was so inconspicious. Hard Rocks are usually in the middle of town..but anyway

Ordered a full rack of ribs to be shared between us.Due to the utterly non-existant service, I was too hungry by the time the food finally arrived 50 minutes later.When I asked to be seated by the bar area (so I can actually snap pictures with the skylight the rude waitress looked at me like as if I was dumb, "You can either sit ON the bar or at the dining area". Prick. I then asked what is the area by the bar called,wildly gesturing I WANT TO SIT THERE….she then reluctantly explained herself that the bar area are fully booked. There was about 10 customers at that time in the whole restaurant.Bitch.

This was one of the problems that I would regularly have with restaurants in Sydney.It takes them too bloody long to serve the food up, 45mins is de rigeur.If you are hungry, make sure you snack before to ruin your appetite…because the laidback attitute sometimes translate into the tidak-apa attitute, so servers don’t care what you really want…or they are not very helpful bordering on rudeness.Granted, there are exceptions to the rule, Fullhouse was manned by a very very friendly and efficient waitress and Don Don serves their food up on the double. I just realized that both are asian restaurants.Hmm..

/rant over

The only thing that I manage to snap a picture of is the American brownie, because by then I was satieted enough to not lose it any more

No light=bad picture

ps:this is post 301.I've come a long way:)

Oz day 10 - Darling-ly Manly

2007-01-22T15:20:00.000Z

After an exhausting day at the fish market, it was time for Manly beach (Moo's recommendation) -where boys turn into men.

In 1787, Captain Arthur Phillip of the Royal Navy left England with a fleet of ships to establish a colony in New South Wales. He was to be it's first Governor.
In January 1788, the fleet arrived at its destination, Botany Bay, which was found to be unsuitable for settlement. So, on 21 January, Phillip with others travelled north and examined Port Jackson, so named by Captain James Cook in 1770. They spent three days exploring Port Jackson and Phillip, impressed by the "confidence and manly behaviour" of a group of aborigines in the northern reaches of the harbour, called the place "Manly Cove".

Taken from Manly's website

Manly is reachable by the ferry which leaves Circular Quay at every 20min past the hour. You have a choice of going by the Manly jetcat (speedy boat) or the old skool way of ferries. We got up around 9, and went for some breakfast at the Museum Train station, which was diagonally located to our hotel. After some confusion/debate with the station master,we bought the day combination ticket for all rail & ferries at AU 12. We chugged our way to Circular Quay and got off at 10am, which was fairly good time and I was quite proud

Then I realized I left my rings on the bedside table.

AGAIN.So we rushed back on the train, got off at the wrong exit and I ran 3 blocks back to the hotel, by this time it was getting quite late and I was afraid that housekeeping had already been in our rooms and made off with my rings.Thank god it was there, and after catching my breath, headed back to Museum station. Drama over.

Some say that the journey to Manly is half the fun of actually being there, and I must admit that I agree. I ran straight in as the gates to the ferry opened up (kiasu what) and bagged seats on the top open air balcony of the ferry. And I had the best 20min ferry ride of my life..and some absolutely amazing pictures of the Opera House and Harbour Bridge…

It moves! Scroll quickly - sequence of pictures taken 2 minute apart

Ta-da!

Blown over. There were loads of sailing going around that day.

After a very pleasant 20min ferry ride, the Manly Pier was in sight

The terminal itself is quite happening, with loads of shops and restaurants. We did not make it to the Ocenarium due to lack of funds,but headed towards Manly beach with its strip of surferchick shops

I'm dead obsessed with Mambo - my first bikini was from mambo and I bought another one from Mambo this time around

We had a very pleasant lunch at Café Rouge, facing the main Manly beach

My Fish n Chips - looks really healthy

Bacon's grilled sardines with kibielsa sausage

We went for a stroll down the beach after lunch,trying to find a nice spot to camp. Due to me being an idiot, we did not bring books to read or towels to sleep on - my bag can only carry that much stuff!
.
Butts sunning.

So I left Bacon on the beach, and went off in hunt for a beach towel. I returned an hour later with a new pair of shoes,a wallet for me and a wallet for bacon. No beach towel in sight. Extremely shameful.Oh, and a large smoothie.

I heart smoothie

He was bribed to pose(ur) for this 'manly' shot

Later in the afternoon...

My poor shopped-out feet.Even my brand new Birkenstocks couldn't save it from being shredded to pieces.

We laze around the beach without a towel and with sand getting into every nook and cranny - it was a nice sunny day with lovely soft winds from the sea. At around 4pm, the beach started emptying, with daytrippers leaving and those staying on Manly having a drink at the nearest bar as the sun started to be a little tamer.We followed the crowds and rushed into the ferry as it was taking off - I was too tired to snap-happy so was quite content napping in the downstairs bunk. Reached Circular Quay and grabbed the bus back up on Castlereagh…to promptly crash out as soon as I reached the hotel room.

Bacon shook me awake from my reverie around 5.30pm…its time to jalan jalan cari makan (walking around looking for food) again! This time, we braved the unpredictable rain to walk the 20min. stroll to Kings' Cross, the flesh-ier side of Sydney.Where you come across shops that like to Lick

No, they don't sell human lollies.

And tonnes of strip bars sitting side by side with bars with only immaculately groomed men holding hands with each other. Wonder why.

As usual, we argued all the way along the strip, unwilling to be the one choosing the restaurant in fear of choosing something that don't taste good. And then I came across this little cute café, completely crammed inside, there was a piece of paper and a pencil at the entrance and a list of names and seats required.

Go where the locals go. Due to sheer luck, those people who had written their names out had just stepped away, and I was seated 1 min after penning my name in. It was a japanese bento place, and seeing that we weren't that hungry, orderd some gyozas and a set meal to share. I am having difficulty remembering the name of the dish (??skippy??)

Gyozas

Chirashi-something?Tempura veggies & meat topped a bed of rice, it comes with a teapot of something which looks suspiciously like green tea, and you pour it over.Yummilicious, ableit a little strange.

Christmas in Summer V.3 at Kings Cross centre.

After dinner, we walked around a some more, and decided that since we still had the day pass for buses,ferries and trains, would head towards Darling Harbour, this time by ferry.Caught a bus from Kings Cross to Circular Quay and walked through the Library (!!!) which was where I stepped on this amazing lighted floor.

It was a model of Sydney, all lighted up and under your feet!

The Opera House in minime version.

Christmas in the sun V.4, outside the Library

Like I've mentioned earlier, I love ferries, and I must say they are the best photo opp in Sydney,where so much of the attractions are seafront, affording you an interesting view of familiar sights. Due to the lateness (7.30pm) and more importantly, the rain, the upperdeck was quite deserted in this ferry, making it quite romantic actually.We passed by different suburbs of Sydney, and seeing Sydneysiders get off their 'commute' on the ferry to head home made me extremely jealous. Journey to work for me is a 25-minute bus ride through the worst areas of Leeds (I pass by the area where the majority of the 7-11 London bombers were born,bred, and lived). Life sucks, get used to it.

Blowing in the wind.

The Opera House in twilight. Sigh…..so pretty.

I like this shot.It looks like one of those cut-out that you photoshop into a background.

Bridging the twilight

Luna Park - I've not seen the entrance of an amusement park so cute before.Disneyland nonwithstanding.

By the time we got to Darling Harbour, it was too dark for any more pictures. We walked along under the rain to a brewery and had a couple. It's been another long, long day in paradise,and we headed back to the comfort of the hotel at around 9pm

One interesting tip. There are many different ways to get to Darling harbour from the CBD (Central Business District):
Walk: 20 mins
Monorail: 3 mins
Ferry: 30 mins
Bus: Untested
Light Rail: 5 mins + walking time (untested)

But I still say that the best way is the get there by ferry.If that was my commute to work, I would happily look forward to getting into work every day.

best wedding presents are free

2007-01-22T12:55:00.000Z

I was just commenting on the scarfer's blog, which brought into mind a hilarious story

You know how when you get married and all, it's quite strange to think about your ex boyfs/ ex gfs? Like how would you feel when someone tells you that your ex is getting hitched?Its like a combination of awe, shock,self degradation,confusion bla bla bla…esp if you had not kept in contact

Not many people have this sort of relationship, but many of my ex's friends had ended up being really close friends of mine...mostly closer to me than him . To get an idea how many of them, they had roughly made up half of my wedding party when I got hitched in July.

In particular was Mr KFC, the ex's closest heng tai (brudder) - I've known him ever since the ex and I first got together 9 years ago.

The day before the wedding, he rang the ex, just to tell him that he's in Penang.

Mr KFC: Eh, I'm in Penang
Ex: Heh?What you doing in Penang
Mr KFC: You donno meh?Your ex gf getting married - I'm attending her wedding
Ex: HAH? WHO?
Mr KFC: Yeahlor, she marrying some kwai lou
EX: HAH?WHO?
(can you see the story line here of the catalystically shocked?)
Mr KFC: Oklah, got to go already bye!

HILARIOUS.Best wedding present I can ever get.Thanks frankie-goes-to-hollywood.

domesticated weekends

2007-01-22T11:33:00.000Z

It snows tonight according to the Beeb!!!

Weeeeeeee!!

Wait a minute.How am I supposed to get to work tomorrow - walk through snow and slush?And not to mention awaiting the mostly-late bus in the freezing cold.

Not a good idea after all.
…..

I have a confession.Over the weekend, we added another member to our family.An infant,in fact - which at the moment we call Boris

…..

And he is very cute

….

It’s a hamster!

I had been sick all last week, and not feeling happy at all.On Sat, Bacon got me a teeny weeny hamster just before he left for football whilst I stay at home to get better .Its sort of striped with a black face and a black bottom,but a spotted white midriff.He must be about 4 weeks old - on the threshold of hammy adulthood.

Hamsters are what I call starter pets because of the ease of care needed to keep a hamster happy, but I had never had hamsters before.They self-entertain, don't need much attention and are quite the conversation piece..Bacon has been staring, completely obsessed at its coming and goings since we got him. Oh, and of course, the cat is frankly amused. Why would we want to keep something that he hunts on a regular basis in a cage?He has had a couple of swipes at hammy, which has balls of iron. Hammy climbs on the wires on his cage and literally within kissing distance with the big black cat,sniffing around. It's like taunting,"eat me,eat me!".Suffice to say, the cat has been obsessed with watching it as well, it's more like his pet.

Anyway, hammy has been hoarding its food and bedding in it's exercise wheel. And not to mention he's shitting, peeing,eating, cleaning, sleeping AND excercising all in the wheel.I think our little boy is un peu fou n'est pas?

Other happenings of the weekend - I succesfully made nasi lemak! I am so cheezed off that I can't upload pictures! I have been sincerely following my new year's resolution of a Malaysian dish a week - so far I've done Kangkung belacan (fried water spinach with shrimp paste); Sambal telur (spicy paste deep fried hard boiled egg); Hainan chicken rice and last week, Nasi Lemak complete with sambal and curry. (yes, I have photographical proof of all)

The only problem with my nasi lemak was lack of pandan leaves (screwpine leaves) which gives it the fragant smell that tells it apart from normal rice.Otherwise, it was quite passable and I would gladly make it again.Wait a min, maybe I thought it was good because I was sick..hmm.I even made lotus seed soup at the same time - making it two dishes this week.Getting better at this cooking thing - we bought a breadmaker and slow cooker as well over the weekend so more adventures to come along. Eating out is an expensive venture here in the UK, with simple meals regularly costing £10 per person - add that up to 4,5 times (at least) a week for two persons, it builds up.However, if I can make delcious food at home, I feel much better for not eating out…and I must say, if I could find restaurants that do passable malaysian dishes like what I've managed to whip up, I wouldn't actually mind paying the premium for it.So maybe it's a good thing that at the moment, I cook the best Malaysian food in the whole of Leeds!(yeah right)

In other news, dreybee turned 21 over the weekend! YaY!Happy B Birthday dreybee buzz buzz.

So, how was your weekend?

OZ Day 9 - Fishing for Money

2007-01-18T10:48:00.000Z

Waking up to sunny Sydney (without the crazed out weather of Melbourne!) was fantastic.The sun is shining, and I am hungry. Walking swiftly past McDonalds' and Burger King (I managed to ignore them!), we headed towards the nearest Monorail station and purchased the Monorail+Light rail day ticket at AU14.

Zooming by

For those of you new to getting around Sydney, the Monorail is essentially the tourist shuttle linking all the city centre attractions - the Light rail joins with some of the Monorail stops and goes a little further and actually connects towards the suburbs.The train system links even further outwards to the suburbs. Buses and ferries goes to places that no other transportation mode goes i.e. Bondi & Luna Park. If you are staying in the city centre,buy the 1 week ticket for both lightrail and monorail at AU28 - we did not, first fatal mistake which eventually cost us more than double that. Lesson over.

Guess where we are heading towards this morning?

Blue skies ,outdoor seating..

Yeppps! The famed Sydney Fish Market!

I felt like I've been let loose on a rampant eating spree…seafood is rare,unfresh and precious here in the UK.

The oyster shucker…sounds like the oyster sucker.

What shall I eat…hmmm..

My breakfast

Bacon's breakfast

See the difference??Let me narrate. I had 6 fresh bay oysters,2 oysters mornay(cooked with cheese) , half a lobster mornay,and deepfried squid.Bacon had a mango juice and fruit youghurt.

Hmm.Something is wrong somewhere.

I was quite reluctant to leave..wanting to stay for lunch,but was dissuaded by Bacon - there was frankly not much we could actually do there, so at around 10.30 we left for Star City..which is of course a,

Alas…we could not get in because we were not appropriately dressed.So headed back on towards the monorail

…across Darling Harbour

And towards our second stop of the day…

Eaten by the shark

I have been to 'underwater world/aquariums' in HK, Singapore's Sentosa Island and San Diego's Zoo and Seaworld.Honestly, I did not enjoy the aquarium as much as I thought I would, and the combined ticket of Aquarium and the Sydney tower at AU35 is downright cut throat and not worth the money paid for it. But I digress.Lets for one moment make believe that it is free ya?

I love this…jellyfishes/ man of war.So pretty

Sad penguins swimming.Compared to those in Philip Island these look so folorn.

Sharks swimming across

I fought a bunch of noisy schoolkids to stroke some baby sharks.They are strangely sand papery.

It's very strange,but I seem to have forgotten what we had for lunch - probably nothing as I was still stuffed from my delicious lunch.Immediately after leaving the Aquarium, we headed towards the Sydney Tower & OZ Trek.A complete waste of time.

We waited 15 mins to get on a inferior version of the KL Towers escalator - to be stuffed in an extremely hot and uncomfortable lift for a slow ride up.After taking in the half-arsed sceneray of a 360 deg view across Sydney, I was quite cheezed off. It was expensive,not very pleasant and frankly nothing compared to KL towers, and I had never appreciated KL Towers before. Besides, KL Towers entrance is 2.5 times cheaper than this.

The Harbor Bridge view from up above.

So after 15mins, I pulled Bacon to get the lift down. And I thought the 15 mins wait for the lift up was bad - it took us 35 mins to get on a lift down! OMFG.How inefficient is this? I had been up KL Towers numerous times but I had never experienced something so bad. What's more, some jerk and his family cut the queue by stating that they are late heading for the airport. So yeah, day 2 in Sydney - not good and not happy.

When we eventually got out of the lift, we headed towards the OZ trek, which was combined with the Syney tower ticket anyway - we paid for it, might as well go right.Nothing spectacular, it was somewhat like an advert for Sydney,plying all its routes and other placeses around Australia i.e canberra. A poor man's version of the Back to the Future rides from Universal Studios,if you ask me

Headed back to our hotel for a nap (I'm like a baby) since it was just around the corner, and got up at about 6 to head back to Star City. It's a strange little place, like a mini Genting when it was just purely a casino and not shopping+amusement park+mushroom park. Again, no pictures allowed, so nothing to see here.

But Bacon did have better luck with the roulette table this time around, betting on his legendary 18 & 26. He ended up winning about AU300, which was probaby just sufficient for us to spend for that day itself. Taking off the losing bet of Au100 in Crown Casino, we were looking at AU200 tops, but yet we wanted to have dinner at "somewhere nice"

So round and round we walked, noodle bar, a sad-looking sushi buffet, a pathetic international buffet…and headed back home as I can't find anything I like! But seeing that it was already after 8, most places were already closing in town,refusing to take more customers in (bloody irritating) .

After walking for ages trying to find a nice restaurant that is NOT a chinese restaurant, we ended up near our hotel, right in front of the monorail station in this quaint Jap/Korean Fusion place. We had passed it countless times and I've been thinking about eating there anyway.

Tako (??skippy correct me??) Balls - fishball like with a piece of octopus inside

Bacon highly amused by the side dishes that comes with korean meals. I love the kimchi

My Beef Bulgolgi

Bacon's Sweet and Spicy something Beef

Very nice and very satisfying - I love places that open late.It was very relaxing just sitting on the balcony,having a fag and beer and waiting for our food on a warm summer's night.I miss summer.*sniff*sniff*achoo*

OZ Day 8 - Sydney ahoy

2007-01-16T11:17:00.000Z

Waking up at 7am, it was quite surreal as we got ready to leave Melbourne for the bright lights of Sydney. As it was lazy Sunday, not much traffic on the 1 hour drive to the airport…one thing I was glad to leave behind was the long journey into town! We stayed in Central Park hotel on Castlereagh St…very close to monorails and trains.

The flight there was uneventful, with me nodding off to sleep the whole hour,but the taxi ride proved to be extremely exciting with the poor taxi collapsing under our weight and having a flat tire..which was swiftly changed by mr taxi driver.Very efficient! I did not even have to get out…it was 30 deg in Syd the day we arrived. Oh, and on the taxi ride over, I saw a HUGE Krispy Kreme! Ones like they used to have in the states! Woowee! I love kk!But I guess you already know that…

Anyway…the moment we got to the little hotel (only rooms, no F&B or any other amenities…we requested that they order a taxi for us, they promptly informed us that taxis don't turn up and we're better off standing at the taxi rank - that’s the sort of hotel they are; unhelpful and unfriendly). We only booked it because Rough Guides listed them as a chic boutique hotel with friendly staff and great rooms.Bullshit. Location was great, but other than that, bleah. It wasn't only us - we had seen other guests screaming at the useless reception for messages not received.So no, this hotel is not recommended.

Since I'm on a bitching roll, the pub right next to it, the New Windsor, is run by the same sort of people,but worst. We popped in there a couple of times in the whole week that we were there. The last time we tried to pop it, it was filled to the brim, and the bouncer (which had let us through countless times!) requested for id. We showed our ID to him, politely asking him why,seeing that he had let us through the past couple of times - and we are OLD! He rudely sneered,"Well, welcome to australia to you". LIKE WTF! This sort of facist remarks by a bullying fatass 350lb white baldy basically ruined the trip to sydney for us. Is it SO WRONG to be a tourist? This was the end of my love affair with Sydney - I will take Melbourne anytime over rude sydney

/rant over

So anyway, we dropped our bags, and seeing that it was still early on a Sunday afternoon, decided to head towards the market at The Rocks. Bacon,being his usual pain in the ass, insisted on walking. And just because I am nice, I let him. And he brought me 8 blocks the wrong direction, all the time assuring me that its ok he knows what he's doing. Note to self, Bacon is not to be trusted. I walked 20 blocks to get to the Rocks, and was extremely prissy and hot by the time we got there..

Christmas in summer v.2

Bigass strawberries..yumm. I had the one with milk choc.

The Rocks Market.

Loads of wonderful stuff there, ableit mostly expensive.You know you're in a posh market when the boomerang seller is armed with instructions and explainations in mandarin,japanese,korean…

My first view of the Harbour Bridge

And of course, the first of the many snaps of the overly famous Opera house

And again

Up and down the promenade

As usual, Bacon cannot decide what to eat.rather, he wants to continue walking around and explore his choices.it was 3pm and I was rapidly losing it (he does piss me off with the exploration rather than eating) so we ended up here..fish & chips instead

Not very nice I'm afraid..extremely expensive and just so-so fish

We headed on after that to explore circular quay, the d bacon,again, ended up in the Slip Inn pub.

After me whinging nonstop, Bacon grudgingly said that we could take the bus back to the hotel. I love buses..they are an excellent way of soaking in the city and getting your bearings right. Had to soap off all the dirt accumulated from walking nearly 30 blocks, and took a short nap after that as I was dead from waking up so early in the morning. Woke up at 8pm with a whinging stomach…and it was time to cure its whinging!

The pretty town hall all dolled up for christmas

We walked towards Haymarket, Sydney's chinatown. On the way, we passed by countless restaurants that look good…but we, of course, ended up in a sucky restaurant with non-passable vietnamese food.Just typical isn't it.

Chinatown,like all chinatowns in the world, are still buzzing late into the night.

Not my best picture-snapping day I must say,drained from all the travelling and walking I was made to endure by Bacon, I was frankly displeased with him. But the Rocks Weekend Market is an experience, ableit an expensive one, should not be missed if you are heading that-a-way for a weekend.

Kylie @ Manchester Evening News Arena

2007-01-15T11:47:00.000Z

I refrained from blogging about ordinary life last week because I did not want to 'accidentaly' spill the fact that I was off to see Kylie Minogue in concert on Sat!

Was the concert great?

Yes, all 45 minutes of it.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We spent Sat afternoon arguing in Ikea, like couples do, and braved the crazed wind to drive on to Manchester. Upon parking, a kind woman passed us her parking ticket, which saved us £5..and I thought that was the beginning of a good night. I attacked Selfridges for MAC makeup and Shu Uemura replenishment - the only place to sell Shu Uemura's horny moisturiser.Got a new lippie at MAC (same price as KL) but was a little hessistant at Shu; there was only horny moisturiser left which makes me think how long has it been there and it was RM 60 more expensive than KL prices! And all the other moisturisers on offer by Shu were way more expensive…so I left empty handed.

Undeterred, I moved on to the Shisiedo counter, which my mom had used off and on and passed me all the tester units which I quite liked,but had always thought it was more expensive than Shu…WRONG! A bottle of The Skincare day moisturiser at 75ml is £30, and a pot of horny moisturiser at 30ml was £29. Go figure. Anyway, walked away £60 poorer but with enough gunk to fill my face for about a year. Happy and satisfied, it was nearly 6 and time for dinner.

I had always loved manchester as I think it has an excellent array of restaurants.But not on Saturday. We must've walked in about 10 restaurants - and every single one has a long queue inside or the bouncer outside would say that its about an hour's wait for a table. Or two, as the case with old Orleans. Even Quiznos was filled to the brim..a sandwich shop on a sat night?! And it was only 6pm! Geeze.Might be due to the fact that it was pouring cats and dogs outside but it was impossible to get the brolly up as it was blow-me-away type of wind as well.Not impressed.

At last, I gave up and told Bacon that I can happily not eat as I refuse to be late for the concert.Undeterred and still stuck on having a good meal, he trudged on looking. Every pub that I asked him to stop and ask if they served food he said that there's too many people standing inside, so they will not serve food.LIKE WTF!? I was cold, wet, hungry and angry at stubborn Bacon…and started heading towards the car under the pouring rain to leave my stuff there whilst waiting to walk to the concert venue..bacon was pissed off because I had given up on eating. So we fought on the streets of Manchester as I struggled with my blown away brolly, still refusing to look drenched. At last I gave up and walked under the pouring rain, angry at the world that no moisturiser can cure.

Upon arriving at the train station next to the arena,Bacon again insisted on going around looknig for food.Normally there are quite a number of restaurants, if only fast food, around train stations as they are quite a hub of activicty unlike in KL, and in the Leeds station you can find starbucks,pubs,wetherspoons,Subway,McDonalds and Burger king. And the lovely station in Manchester only has a hotdog stand and a coffee stand, nothing else in sight. Yet, the stubborn pig insist on walking around the block again, under the pouring rain. After 10 mins, he gave up, and I insisted that we settle for some hotdogs.

And of course, inside the arena, just after we had our hotdogs, was a cozy filled-to-the-brim McDonalds.Sigh.

Anyway, we got to our seats and played mini-golf on my phone, and waited for Kylie to desend upon us. At 8pm, a haggard looking Kylie appeared on stage, and I mentioned that she's looking a little old and sounding a little rusty. And how true - she confessed after the first song that she is very sick - but will still trudge on and see what happens.After 3 songs, she dissapeared, and reappeared 15 mins again admist a confused crowd. After 15 mins of prancing about with half naked men on stage (apparently she's a big gay icon) she dissapeared again for another 15…and when she comes back on again she had decided that she will be leaving after two more songs.

What a lovely night to be had, innit. And because it wasn't actually cancelled, we don't know if we're actually going to get any refunds or reschedulling. So there goes £59 for 45 mins of Kylie being really sick and not performing…. An utter waste of money…and energy in fighting the wind trying to get there. We rushed home, as the Melbourne leg of the concert was actually being televised on british tv at 10.30pm. Coincidentally, she was playing in Melbourne whilst we were there. Ah, blissfuly sheltered at home, we settled down to watch the concert that we were never meant to attend.

I have pictures,but at the moment no broadband to upload - so this will have to wait - will re-blog when I manage to steal time off someone else's pc.

Update: Concert has been reschedulled for next week - tuesday! Will probably grab McDonalds this time around...hmm..

OZ Day 7- pastas & scones leaving Melbourne

2007-01-15T09:55:00.000Z

The last day in Melbourne was quite surreal, seeing that it already feels so much like home.After a tiring day walking around yesterday, we were poised for a more relaxed day.

Bacon being the stubborn little pig insisted on going wine tasting at least once in Australia…having never been to one before.I've been to countless wine tasting events and visited the vineyard of Sonoma and Napa Valley a couple of times whilst I was still in love with San Francisco.Add that to going to school in the only university in America which offers a degree in winemaking (ableit quite sucky wine) I was sorted. I still remember my ex room mate who used to go out with this bloke working in one of the Sonoma Valley vineyard…every weekend we would get about 1/2 bottles of merlot.

Anyway…fast forward 4 years I had given up on wine drinking,preferring the fast flowing chivas combination instead.So that was the end of my wine adventures,but the rest of them were just getting into it.

Before heading towards the Yarra Valley, we headed towards the famous Miss Marple Tea Rooms situated in Sassafras at the Dandenong Ranges. It was strangely familiar, resembling the typical English tearoom that it aws supposed to be. I guess it was supposed to be a good thing when we found that they serve Yorkshire tea! The tea that I drink every day at work whilst dreaming of a hot steaming cuppa of BOH with condensed milk….served at a premium on the other side of the world.

That is Yorkshire tea! Exclaimed the yorkshire born and bred

The picturesque cottage

Christmas in the summer

We decided to sample half the menu…ordering their pseudo famous Devonshire cream & jam scones, shaped like a cake instead of a proper scone, this one was a let down (tastes like cornbread in redlobster instead!)

Pretty as a picture carrot soup

smoked salmon fingers and the welsh rarebit fingers

The delectable cottage pie

And to end, the very scrumptious sticky toffee pudding, an english classic that I am very fond of.
.

This meal was topped up with steaming bone china cups of tea…coming from Yorkshire on a hot lovely day, I prefer the tall glass of iced coffee:).

Pleasantly filled to the brim, we made our way from Miss Marples at 1pm…we arrived at 12 and it was empty,by the time we left it was filled to the brim with people making the trek up from Melbourne.They do not take any reservations, so if you are planning to visit this little piece of brittania, GO EARLY! It's around 45mins -1 hour from Melbourne to Sassafras (reminds me of Sarsi). They have driving instructions on their website and it looks fairly easy to get to.Don't think there are many public transport up to the Ranges,but I might be wrong.

Anyhoo..next stop is the first of the many vineyards that we would be visiting for the day - I had forgotten most of it,so will probably not mention their names..there are just dozens and dozens spread around that area, have a drive around, get lost, you will probably bump into one. Alternatively, my good friend Walter runs tours to the Yarra Valley as well, so if you are there for a spot of something drunkenly good and need a ride, go with him instead.

Mom going nutters at the vineyard

The dairy farm where you can taste cheeses…but it was so expensive( AU 25 for a platter of 5 cheeses) that we did not bother

….the fact that we can smell cow dung as the cows were actually passing by at that time to be milked does not help our appetite for cheese.And no one absolutely loved cheeses except Bacon.

Mom was more amused at the peach tree more than anything else.Went around discreetly plucking fruits from trees

I've always loved haystacks..I call these marshmallows as it can be seen all around the English countryside wrapped in bright sorbet green plastic

The secret garden at the de Bortoli Vineyard.As OZ was in the middle of a drought, farmers were not allowed to water anything at all.But since they had their own dam, the vineyard and its surroundings were as lush as can be

Ivy league of the crop, their wines were delicious as well….

The last of our vineyard tour was the Oakridge, where they serve food as well as free tipple.I was too enraged to take any more pictures at that time because Bacon was flirting with the barmaid :/.

Ahhh…..a nice lazy afternoon..ableit I was half asleep most of the time as you can probably tell by the lack of pictures even though we were going through beautiful countryside.

We headed back home and got a shower before heading out for dinner again, this time at Lygon St in Melbourne's little Italia

This was the bro's choice…and in a spur of coincidence, it was where Yi Jen waitress every Sunday as well! Like, how more bizzare can it get! It was so strange when she popped over during dinner to pass a gift to me and confused the staff there which were wondering why was she working on Sat!

We had some spinach/chicken pasta,Marinara pasta, seafood pizza and the ever-there meat pizza.

Lygon St meal ended with a spate of delicious gelati in the flavour of Durian..which tastes suprisingly like the real thing.Yumm...

OZ Day 6-The end of an era

2007-01-11T14:35:00.000Z

I can remember my graduation - can you remember yours?Being fairly antisocial, I did not actually enjoy it much,realizing too late that I had not branched out enough during university days.It gave way to "the mad days" of pure hedonistic fun of the next 2-3 years.But it also signified a period of depression,readjustment and a great sense of loss for me…from having my own place and a sustainable job, I went to nothing at all.

Oh, the beginning of the digicam era - I remember walking aronud with a brick that provides only pictures up to 2mg on my DC200

Anyway.Fast forward about five years later and my phone produces better pictures than my brick of my camera.Fast forward 5 years later on the other side of the globe is another graduation, this time of minime V.2, or my brother as most people would describe. As I was never quite satisfied with the pictures I took during graduation, this was the opportunity for me to camwhore and pretend that I am graduating too and hopefully get more displayable pictures out of it. Plus my parents wanted the traditional holding-the-paper graduation family potraits….so my gown was brought along as well.

Another time, another university, another graduation

The nice poseur sun-in-hair snap

Poseur shots of my brother.I feel like I'm trying to shoot a fashion layout.Poor gf had to oblige the crazy snap happy sister.

Mascots united!The guys are so compliant..

I insisted on shooting him non-stop because I never want him to lose out on Graduation Day - it all goes downwards from here.

The proud owners of a not-so-little prat.

The proud owners of the very-big prat

The *cough*super sotong girlfriend*cough*. She's damn funny..I like.

I got him a koala…was too cheap to get myself a bulldog

The beginning of it all

Classic line: "That gown cost about the price of a house, at least you got to bring yours home to keep, his is now being returned to be recycled", remarked my mom to me.

The whole afternoon was spent snapping photos, waiting for the man of the hour, listening to in one ear out the other speeches.Was an extremely pleasant blue skied day (as you can see from the photos) so it wasn't actually that bad. When we were taking the studio-like pictures that is so classic of most University's graduation, the photographer was quite puzzled at my gown…especially since only Masters students from U of Melbourne have that square-hat thing to wear.Yeah,for all that moolah spent on my own education I can't remember what's the name of that tassle-thingy so sue me. Anyway, she was quite amused seeing that my graduation gown is completely different from what everyone else was wearing and she were probably wondering if I faked my graduation;).

After all that hoohah, I went off to meet Yi Jen for dinner and drinks whilst my parents celebrated with the other parents on how they had just thrown away hundreds of grand on the bunch of little prats who were more excited in ordering the most expensive item on the menu than how to write their cv.

Was just shooting the streets of Melbourne when this carriage just so happen to pass me by

Obligatory Chinatown shoot

We had dinner at Camy's Shanghai dumplings..one of the best, if not only the cheapest place to eat in Melbourne. It is up some alley down the main Chinatown drag and it's BYO and also pour your own tea - therefore the cheap prices.I let Yijen lead us along and she rattled off our orders…she might'be been ordering ratmeat for all I know!

Camy's Shanghai Noodle and Dumpling
25 Tatterstalls lane,
(03) 9663 8555

Fish flavoured noodle and shanghainese chicken noodle (I think!!)

Excellent xiu loong pau/shanghainese dumplings with the lovely suckable sauce inside

Potstickers/wor tip with the lovely vinegar dipping sauce

Yum

After an extremely satisfying dinner we rambled along the streets of Melbourne. As it was getting late and my teeny camera's bad at nightpictures, did not take shots of the different pubs and bars that we popped by (I know, I know…I should!!) but it was all hopping with the after work Friday crowd, the graduates celebrating with giddyness and the arty farty crowd. I absolutely love Melbourne's nightlife - if only for a night. I had my first taste of Beez Neez , a beer made with honey and tastes like honeycomb…mmm..I can drink that literally sweet nectar all night long..yumm.

We did not stay out for long - by 12 I was tired from walking all day and all night long and thus we made a move to return to the far away place of clayton.Thanks babes for a good night out xx

I like this backstreet shot which looks like it belongs in KL rather than Melbourne.

OZ Day 5- Kangaroos and Penguins

2007-01-09T08:41:00.000Z

After yesterday's long tiring day, day 5 was looking up to be the most relaxing ever - and in our opinion,the best day out. We had the luxury of waking up really late (9am??) and was greeted by the lovely hot sun - for those that had been to Melbourne, the typical 4 seasons in one day is so completely true, we touched down at 41degrees and woke up to 16degrees the day after.Go figure. They are mad I tell you, Mad!

After breakfast, we made a beeline for the Chadstone mall, one of the biggest in the suburbs around Melbourne - in the style of Midvalley.I had been obsessed with shopping in Australia; as for the same price as a Wal-Mart top, I can get a good quality Esprit top - in a much nicer design.But enough about me.

We were picked up by Walter again at around 1pm - this time around, we are heading towards Philip Island, famed for the penguins that made the island its natural home

First stop- San Remo. This is where the mainland meets the island with a bridge that is around 2 KMs in length. I fell asleep in the 1.5 hours drive from Melbourne to San Remo - and woke up to find out that it had dropped 10 degrees in the last hour. Was wearing shorts initially, but obviously had to change out od that to get into something more realistic. Ho ho..the weather had began.

Lonely alone - walking along the freezing beach.

Another 20mins drive after that took us into the heart of Philip Island.On the way we passed chocolate factories, a Kidzone thing and a koala sanctuary. I was fretting that we did not stop at any of these---I wanna go to the choc factory! But I was silenced when we eventually stopped,at the Philip Island Wildlife Sanctuary.

At the entrance (AU 11 per person, included in our tour), we were given a pack of animal feed each that we can use on any animals that we fancy.I went absolutely bonkers seeking for wild roaming kangaroos

My fav was this female red kangaroo

Echinda.Looks like a cross between a porcupine and a tortise

My first kangaroo.Can you see that bundle of joy peeping out of its pouch?

Bacon's friends.The red kangaroos are a nice shade of blue-ish white

Turning tricks with my favourite kangaroo.

You've gotta admit, she's a cutie.

We went deeper in search of kangaroos in a dried out forest…it looks like children of the corn here - can you spot the kangaroos?I thought they were going to jump us.

But they were as tame as hell…attacking bacon for food

After playing with the kangaroos for 45mins, it was sadly time to go again. I was quite reluctant to leave,so we went and have a peep at the koalas again,hoping that they would've woken up - but they were obviously nocturnal…bleah.

Highly recommended, this was the highlight of our trip. I loved how much they took care of the animals and how well maintained the place is - excuse the dried out grass, Australia is at the height of a draught so no watering is allowed.

Next animal up -

Heading towards the Philip Island Penguin Parade (no pictures allowed), we stopped at the Nobbies, where there was a nice broadwalk along the cliffside and also you can look into the burrows where the penguins sleep at night - we found a snuggly couple.it was way too windy to walk even in my winter coat, and pouring it down as well, so didn't go far before I trooped back to the van.

The angry seas..

Next stop, the famed Philip Island Penguin Sanctuary.

Stomping around with the cliché tourist picture

Nothing else to see due to the ban of all cameras - but it was a trip well-taken. It was the penguins natural habitat and they returned there on a nightly basis. It's so cute to see them waddle up the beach - to be scared off by the slightest change in the wind and all tumble back to the sea…peeping over the waves to gather enough courage to move on towards their homes at last.

What was cuter was seeing them march on dry land back to their individual boroughs..eeek! They were noisy to boot with a cross between a duck and a chicken (what a shite explaination) and seem to be chatting with each other after a long day's work at the seas eating up all the pilchards..It is such a shame that no photography was allowed at all even those without flash,but fair enoguh - we had had enough of wildlife flee public areas due to the super invasion of the irresponsible humans.Again, I love how they take care to preserve the natural environment of the animals indigenious to the country and I can say I had not seen a better run animal-friendly country.

After an hour and a half of gawking at penguins, it was time to leave again for the long drive back to Melbourne - I promptly fell asleep as usual whilst Bacon continued chatting the driver up about beer - discussions on why Fosters' is only good enough for export and no one in Australia drinks it. It is true! No one in Australia drinks Fosters - the only place I see it sold is at the airports. Go figure. It's like the Irish not drinking Guiness…public outcry.

Arriving at 11pm, my bro decided it was high time for pancakes - at the Pancake House at Doncaster

The Mexican panacke -at AU15 it was overrated and overpriced

Walnut and Pecan banana pancake - better at AU9 but still quite steep I thought.

The retarded family - it's in the genes that we all have short legs. Loved this sort of trick mirror.But they probably shouldn’t put a short and fat mirror where you are leaving after gorging on their high fat pancakes.

OZ day 4 -The Great Ocean Road

2007-01-05T11:53:00.000Z

Waking up at 6am, this was a huge shock to the system that was just getting used to the long australian days - but today we had to be in town early - we're off to a one-day tour of the Great Ocean Road! After beating the KL-like traffic away with a broomstick (at 6.30am!!!! The aussies are mad), we managed to get to the bro's downtown apt where we were going to be picked up. 30mins late.

It is a long,long way to go for just a day - stretching for more than 400kms, we did not want mr nicedriver/brother to tire out - seeing that it was actually his 21st birthday.Yes, 21 years ago I woke up to find that my parents had dissapeared - they returned 2 days later with what looks like a mini-michelin man. So anyway, we ended up with Walter of around and about tours , anyone heading up waaay down south should check him out - affable chap running his own operation for tours originating out of Melbourne.He does overnight stays as well as tours to Dandedong Ranges, Ballarat, Yarra Valley wineries ect…so do get in touch with him if you're heading that-a-way.Beats the huge inpersonal bus tours anytime.

A boomeraged van to make sure you return

Strolling into the deep blue seas..

Our first stop and I was dead excited. Oh, and Walter's wife baked some real wicked pastries - her danish are out of this world! No pix - I was too slow.

The day trip is extremely tiring, I would recommend a couple of stops along the way if you're planning on going by car.Beware though..the outbacks can be quite harsh on the unprepared - I had not seen one petrol pump in all of the 400km….it is quite deserted except for the occasional surfer towns.

The whole day was peppered with 12 stops (!!!) along the road to take in different views of the craggy coastline that is Victoria. I had seen oceans and seas and different beaches,but nothing compares to this…

I snap you,you snap me.

In Australia, DRIVE ON THE LEFT! I have no idea why but I found that absolutely hilarious.I had never seen a sign in any other country instructing you which side of the road should you drive.

One of the great thing of being in a small group is exclaiming that you want to see a koala and have the driver/tourguide stop to search for some wild koalas up on eucalyptus trees by the road side.

Peekaboo.

This one was staring right back at me. I SO need a proper SLR.

The star attraction - the 12 apostles

Secret cove

I like how the tip looks like a choc sundae with white chocolate sauce.Yumm

Bridging over

The group thingy with the token blonde.

The feeling that is unique to the biggest island in the world - the vastness of the ocean and that you are but a tiny blip.

On the road, caught sight of this crazy house on the pedestal…apparently the eccentric owner wanted undisturbed view of the ocean.And I believe it is for rental as well.

Gone swimmin'

Being a total waterchild, I was totally taken aback by the great ocean drive.A must-do for anyone that appreciates nature and not just the usual clickhappy tourist attractions.

As mentioned earlier, it was also mr nicedriver's birthday! And no birthday is complete without the parents splurging on a complete dinner even though we were all dead tired and it was 8.30pm. We headed towards Limor's http://www.limors.com.au/ , famed for its huge platters and also the venue where his 16th birthday was celebrated on the family trip to Melbourne back in 1999 -I was not invited seeing that I was in Paris..pffft! I was way too tired ,oily and hungry to snap anymore after snapping nonstop for hours..so not many here.

Hugeass platter bursting with schnitzel,kebabs,sausages,lamb,chicken wing ect ect. Mr nicedriver was off to fetch his gf to the restaurant but I was left with instructions from the night before to order the most expensive item on the menu at AU 79.

Additional seafood platter of sauteed garlic calamari rings and king prawns with a delish creamy dip

My fav part of the night - death by chocolate - this platter of dead sinful dessert is at par with Max Brenner's creations.Oh, and the smirking birthday boy.

See how it arrives with sparklers..i love sparklers ;)

Can you blow out sparklers?

Completely dead by the end of the meal, we made a beeline for the showers and then a beeline for the waiting bed - thus end day 4 down under.

A paper day

2007-01-04T13:25:00.000Z

Exactly one year ago

Happy anniversary bacon.It's been a long & painful year (just kidding:))

Oz day 3 -The sun,surf,lobster and burgers

2007-01-04T08:34:00.000Z

Waking up on day 3 was a breeze again,due the delayed jetlag/timelag/brainlag. Up at 7.30,my dad rubbed his hands in glee as he waited for me to get ready and tag along for breakfast - he's awake by 6.30 every morning waiting for someone to go breakfast with. Oh yeah,another reason I woke up so early was because he so kindly turned the heating on at 7, and the whole house just creaked like mad as the hot water started to flow through its central heating system.

This time we headed down to Clayton town centre,which is a one-street area

My pretty but yucky tasting breakfast

After managing to wake my brother up,we went for the 45mins drive into Melbourne Central. It's such shiete living in the suburbs.

Melbourne sure has a lot of strange looking buildings..

We headed towards this one..

The famed Q Victoria Market - apparently they have a Wed special pasar-malam(night market) like thing going on.You go around looking at stuff with a beer in one hand and your purse in the other.

The world is so small….note the group of people standing behind bacon (the guy in lime green?).My brother's flat mate, and the woman in blue is his mom, my mom's good friend from KL. I didn't even notice they were in the picture until 5 mins ago!

I heart tofu. However, I was actually there for a sushi roll…you know how they roll up sushi in nigiri and then sliced it up? Well, in Melbourne they don't do slicing..its sushi on the go!

My brother recommended the bratwurst complete with sauerkraut - I love sauerkraut! As you can see,all was met with smiles:)

Next up was windy St Kilda..

A sight for weary eyes - I had not seen blue skies in many moons. The sandstorm going on wasn't very nice though.

I heart palm trees

So many many + blue skies!

Due to the sandstorm going on, I did the quick Japanese tourist impression of shoot shoot snap snap and quickly left the beach to head to the row of shops..famous for its cakes and pastries.

Mom getting the hang of posing with my mascot

Arrays of sweets - do you remember seeing the frog in my supermarket blog?? Creepy!

I ended up with this nice to see not nice to eat roll thingy.bleurk.

However, my brother was smarter and brought the rest of the gang to the best burger joint in the world (surpassing my all time fav of In-n-Out!)

The Melbourne Special…at AU 11.50 this was well worth it. Layers of the freshest beef patty,sunny side up egg,veggies and pickles,bacon...

Orgasmic

Herbed fries with herby mayo (50cents each tub)

Stomachs happy, we headed on towards the next Melb attraction where many fortunes were lost- the Crown Casino.Here you can play anything you want…and place bets at any sporting event you like - similar to William Hill in the UK but at a way bigger scale

A snap of their huge 2 storey tv screen before I was politely tapped on the shoulder.

I love it here. As I was walking in, the bouncer/security asked for my ID. In my shocked state, I looked at him in confusion and went, "Excuse me??". Like so indigant like that..heehee.He replied, "Err..how old are you? We don't allow under 18s"."I am 26 sir,but if you would like I could try to find my ID"."You sure don't look 26"

Whoa! He made my day..I so heart Crown Casino! Even though *cough*bacon lost AU100 there *cough*. My dad started off for the blackjack table - if he wins we will be going for something delicious,if he lost we will end up eating what the Colonel sells...

Lucky my daddy was clever….so with an additional AU350, we headed back to the Seal Restaurant at Springville/Clayton (aiya,not sure where) to catch us some of this

Die lobster,die!

Mr. Lobster was sacrificed and ended up on a steaming plate

He looks so much better dead than alive - best lobster I had in ages

Deepfried salt and pepper chicken ribs - only in australia they serve that part of the chicken separately - seeing that there are only two ribs (more like collarbones) on each chicken!

After the pitying looks that my brother had been giving us all day (our version of mr nicedriver) we eventually agreed to go home and crash - not before my dad managed to con Bacon into buying a couple of 6packs to chill out with at home.My mom kept going ,"Poor Bacon".Teehee.

OZ day 1&2- Making it from Leeds to Melbourne

2007-01-03T16:09:00.000Z

Doing the sudoku

Sunrise forever

A fairly uneventful flight, we got to KLIA only for me to go around searching for Nasi Lemak…at RM 16 it was downright cutthroat, so we popped over to the MAS Lounge and I grabbed all the mee goreng and porridge my greedy little hands can get hold of - beggars cant be choosers k.

Arriving in Melbourne, we were held up by the disgustingly long queues holding up the customs. A mom of two had her babies' comfort pillows torn open by the zealous customs officers…and her coconut shell scoops consficated.Not a very welcomed introduction to the laidback australians, it would have been hilarious with the customs officers using gloves to deal with the pillows. If I wasn't already so tired +angry after an endless flight.

Getting out of the airport, I headed straight for the local Krispy Kreme before heading to my cousin's place to crash immediately.

I left the house on 9th Dec, 4.30am and arrived at 10th Dec,11pm.Two whole lost days.

Day 2

Waking up to a steaming bowl of Bun Bo Hue at 8am made it all worth it

After managing to wake Bacon up, we all headed towards the heart of Melbourne….not before a mad shopping spree at the DFO near the airport - was too busy shopping to snap-happy,sorry.Realized how cheap OZ is compared to UK and went spend-free...probably because my brother being the starving student should only know el cheapo places

Max Brenner's never fail to dissapoint

Christmas in the sun!

Yi Jen met me in town and we left the family + bacon in a pub getting pissed. I walked around town with Yi Jen, but being totally jetlagged was not much of a good company walking around. We just walked aimlessly reminiscing and comparing notes of overseas vs. KL - one conversation that is bound to happen in company of any malaysians having spent time overseas. It ended swiftly when the shops started to shut at 6…the sun was still shining and I would've been content to be one of the crazy gwai los just sitting in the sun to stock up on my vit. D .Waved her goodbye as my jetlag started to get to me, and went off for another round of Vietnamese galore - I love my vietnamese food and all tries to replicate that all over UK had failed miserably.This one in Clayton was great,except the miserable looking pork chop noodle that Bacon ordered…no prize for the winning guess.

Only my mascot posed for me…you can tell the family is not click-trained yet.sigh.

Sleep came swiftly after that…dealing with two lost days is not easy.

flickr

2007-01-02T16:52:00.000Z

Changes to my flickr account is now in place - from today onwards, only my contacts are able to view my nearly 3000 pictures - due to unscrupulous few who had blatantly taken pictures off my flickr set and put their own stamp on it.

UNBELIEVABLE.True,they did credit me with the recepie,but I do not appreciate their stamp at the bottom right of my pictures.

if you regularly stalk me/have a remote interest of viewing my pictures/reader of this blog, please let me know at milimail at gmail dot com and I'll add you as a contact.kthnx

Happy 2007!

2007-01-02T08:17:00.000Z

I don't do New Year's resolution,but after getting over my Bah Humbug-ness, I have a feeling that 2007 will be completely different from the others.You know those cheesy songs that starts with ,"Today is the first day of the rest of your life"? It sorta feels like this now…without the wedding

2006 have been a turbulent,money draining and eventful year..and to be just a little organised, this year I will be tracking my progress of growth.

Home
To finish decorating the house to resemble a home. To plot escape route and possibly move countries. Two totally contradicting resolutions, but it will be either one or the other.
To plant a tree and start a brand new garden. Planting my friends' favourite plants and flowers always reminds me of them,if you want to be reminded, tell me what your flower is!

Self
To lose 5+kg and return to the gym. Start Yoga lessons to correct posture and internal peace
To make an effort to go out more often and love my friends more.To appreciate the friends I keep and cease-and-desist those not worth keeping (like slash and burn). To get over the sickening feeling of homesickness.

Hobbies
To make salt dough creations. Finish my origami book with all it's examples.Take massage classes. Cook proper Malaysian dishes instead of the same old easy student-y dishes. Conquer the art of making Nasi Lemak. Take more photos and get a SLR for more hobbyist shots.

Travel
Would be happy in Ibiza (target time - April). Or if ££ permitting, Phuket with the girls and boy. Get to Glastonbury in end June. Bring parents around UK in July.A longer trip back to KL - preferably with an island break.

Career
To find a career that I really want. Do not succumb to work related stress. To develope a more zen-like approach at work.Make more friends at work, irregardless if I move or not.To have a proper saving account instead of splashing it all out on the house and touring the world. Pay off all house-related debts - other than mortgage and car

What is YOUR resolution?

a moo is born today (29th Dec)

2006-12-28T16:30:00.000Z

green-lotus-me
Originally uploaded by Mooiness.

Happy Birthday Moo! Pic stolen from his flickr because he is hardcore blogger - I did not take any pic of him.hehe.Me is an embarassing blogger.

Have loads of fun in KLand!

xx

Quick recap

2006-12-28T13:37:00.000Z

2006 is fast running out, and to toast to the year that was, here was my tops for the past 12 months. I had unwillingly grown up some, learnt much and am still over antagonizing all things trival.I started off by getting hitched, and it ended with the birth of Joel, the cute little poo-ing bundle of joy.HE IS NOT MINE OK!

Jan
Got married

Feb
Maggy & Benny got married

Mar
Started working again

Apr
Visited Edinburgh & Da Vinci Code's Rosslyn Chapel
Easter-egged out

May
Krispy Kreme-ed and witnessed the Cheeserolling competition
My first big purchase - the A Series
Lost my wedding & engagement Tiffany's

June
Grew a veggie plot
Stressing out for the upcomming nuptials

July
Got married-again
Spent some time with the sea and the surf

August
Contemplating on purchasing a new house
Visited Pammy @ London
My first festival - V Festival at Westeron Park with Groove Armada,Fatboy slim,the Hed Kandi gang and the sugababes
Made my first jam

September
Watched Robbie Williams live in action

October
Car got broken in
Started jobhunting again

Nov
Moved to a house that is owned by me and myself!Oh and partly Bacon of course

Dec
Did the Australian tour
Held my first godson Joel.
Met up with moo,my not-so-secret blogging friend and YC the hotchick of blogworld

Ta-Da!

So how did you do?

2006-12-27T12:10:00.000Z

Sourain and Moo. Or anyone else she was supposed to see this week. Was Santa-san good to you?

He was Ok to me.........but not the most exciting Christmas holiday I've had. But nice nonetheless.

A long time ago, before Sourrain was born-I celebrated Christmas quite differently...........

So how was Boxing day? What is Boxing Day anyway?

bonjour

2006-12-27T09:55:00.000Z

...and we're back.

Am dealing with post-holiday traumatic stress at the moment, so no promises on regular transmission for the mean time..depends on how blue I get.Came back yesterday to an endlessly meowing cat,I don't know whats wrong with him,but he's lost weight and been throwing up on the carpet.

Didn't get to spend mushc time with peeps in KL..seeing that it's only 3 days and over the space of all 3 days is the mad dash with traffic into town and shopping centres.I don't think my experience in dealing with the non-traffic in Leeds is wise to be stuck in a 2 hour traffic jam in the car park trying to grab the last space from a 70 year old woman.

Anyhoo, had my first (sorta) blog meet with fp moo and hotchick yc. Killing many birds with one stone, dreybee my very efficient program planner had invited the various people that I wanted to spend time with..which all can be seen on moo's site *cough*fp*cough*. It's nice to see that the people that you seem to know so well via blogging are the same in real, if not even more riotious. Me too - with an addition of a superoilyfied face and a chilling affliction to the chivas-greentea combo.Don't blame me, I love chivas-greentea and it is not a 'usual' combination to be had anywhere else but in KL.I remember I once asked for it and the poor bartender literally boiled water with tea leaves for me to add Chivas.

Came back to a suprise gift of a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and a personalised calender waiting for me at work.Guess what am I having for New Years' eve:)

I will blog more coherantly soon,this is just a post to say that all's well in freezing UK...and am missing all in hot and humid KL. And a big thank you to Skippy who had filled in for me! It was quite amusing to hear from people I met up with in KL about his 'interesting' love story on my blog.

xx

Seasons greetings!

2006-12-25T02:59:00.000Z

Merry Christmas, Sourrain and Bacon! Merry Christmas to her and all her friends and readers of her blog!

Back to reality-Sourrain cannot put it off any longer.

2006-12-23T11:30:00.000Z

Figuring out an excuse to come to Tokyo that it is.

I just found out they opened a Krispy Kreme in Shinjuku 8 days ago! Despite several other outlets serving similarly sweet foodstuffs – and a few further factors facing the new franchise – the Japanese mantra of ‘if it’s new, we will come – en masse’ has once again been put into effect, with the first Krispy Kreme shop in Japan receiving the customary fad-based fanfare over the weekend.

And whilst an elderly security guard fortunately found the crowd sedate as well as sweet-toothed, the huge amount of people was reminiscent of the recent PlayStation 3 pandemonium – click here to see the massive number of sugar lovers willing to wait their turn.

Which in 6 months time could well have dwindled to a couple of foreigners and the odd donut devotee. (Me!)

Oh, and for what its worth, the S.O. and I had a good time on our "retreat" this weekend!

Taking Stock

2006-12-20T12:16:00.000Z

Wonder if Sourrain ever has thoughts like this! I thought I would share here since it concerns love and life-two things Sourrain is living at this particular moment in time. What say each of you about this creation called love?

It is 5 days till Christmas! Accordingly I hereby declare a ban on politics and the war for at least till after that. Beer and babes, however, will always be available. After all what goes better with Christmas than that?

Also, I'll be out of touch for about 3 days. The S.O. and I are going away for a couple of days and celebrating an anniversary of sorts. Hotel, nice dinner, walking in the city, wine, and.......especially and............ (at least I hope so-if not I'm going to demand an 84,000 yen refund from Saikaya!). I'm not taking my laptop, so it will be the equivalent of going cold Turkey for a computer addict like me.

The S.O. and I have been together for over 4 years. Like all relationships we have had our ups and downs-to tell the truth I never expected to be here now, with her, when all this started. I still wonder each day whether next year will still find us together or not. Not for mean reasons, but more because of ambivalence on both our parts. Allow me to explain a little bit............

When I met the S.O. I had been in Japan for just over a year. A year later we were living in the same place-with all of the attendant fal de rol. The year before we met had been a watershed for me in my life. Coming from the US and the hell that is a sexless marriage, it was astonishing to see that all turn around in just a few short weeks. That year I probably got laid more than I did the entire time I was married to the shrew. I had come to Tokyo and immediately knew that Asia was the place for me! Spike noted this some time ago and I blogged about it saying that I fully understood the sensation:

"As much of an outsider as I was, there was something there, I felt like I belonged there. I was an alien and at home at the same time. "

It was awesome. I felt like I had gone to heaven. I'd been to Bangkok for a couple of manhood "reaffirmation" tours where I had literally gone nuts in Patpong and at the Eden Club. I'd traveled around Japan and the region to Singapore, Hong Kong, Taipei. I had a Chinese girl on the string in Kyushu ( a doctor no less!), a couple up here in Tokyo and a Thai girl who worked as a make-up artist at the Navy exchange. ( She is the subject of a whole other post.....lets just say that memories of sex with her will be in my "old man " memories!). The hard part was keeping them from finding out about each other. I was gearing up for a trip to Jakarta to see what they had to offer me down there.

So why, I've asked myself over and over again, would I go and complicate my life with a serious relationship with obligations (financial and otherwise) when things were just hunky-dory without one. I've yet to give myself a good answer. I had been down this path before and I knew it led no where good. Unlike many people, I have no problem with living by myself.

When I met the S.O. I had no other aspirations except to make her another notch on my bed post. She was beautiful to look at ( she still is!) and interesting to talk to. Then again, all women are when you first meet them. Its new, they smell nice, you are captivated by the way her skirt drapes over her thighs-or fascinated with the way her blouse comes to a point that shows her cleavage. It's as you get to know them that the challenge of staying engaged kicks in.

Yet, there was something about her, something that was just more than a little different from the Shibuya Girls I had met and bed. For one thing she was my age (more or less...), she'd worked for all of her adult life, she had a good job and she had her own car, apartment and goals. She knew how to talk about many things, because she was just a very smart and witty lady. Unlike her American sisters though, she was not pushy about that fact. So suffice it to say I was curious. When she gave me her e-mail and phone number, I did what you should never do, and immediately e-mailed her when I got home and called her the very next day asking for a date.

And so it began. I was still traveling, but at the same time calling her and asking her out-a lot. She was in the process of moving to a new apartment. I rented a van and helped her move. The whole time I was thinking in terms of a clock ticking within my head. Soon I would have to move on-or she would-especially when she learned that if she wanted to take this to its ultimate extreme, there was no way I was ever going to have any children again. For sure that would tear it. If not that, then fact that I was chained down with economic slavery from my divorce would do the trick.

Except it didn't. And to this day I am not sure why. I think deep down inside of her she wants a child. If so, she needs to seek a new man-I'm not equipped physically or emotionally to do that. I've been very up front about that-its in my walk out the door criteria-but to date she seems to deal with it ok.

I'm always afraid that means that she is just settling for me- out of fear of growing old alone. I talked to her about that more than a couple of times. I am who I am -and with my life experience I'm not going to change. I'm a party boy and proud of it. I'll be one as long as I live.

She said she was a party girl. She may have been, but she is most definitely not one now. I always tease her that she is guilty of false advertising. We are so very different in so many ways. We are alike in one way though-we are both selfish.

Which is perhaps why we seem to be comfortable together. I know I am comfortable -to date. We'll see what the out years hold; I'm not going to plan that far ahead. After having jumped off the cliff once, walking away holds none of the terrifying fear it used to.

But not yet. Truth be told, I just could not bring myself to do that. To her-or to myself. I must be an idiot or a useless romantic. Does not mean that may be out there in the future one day-but for today its not. I still believe that I am the only one responsible for my happiness. The idea that out there somewhere, is one special woman who will do that for you is sheer nonsense. Living with her has not changed my thinking on that subject. I might think differently if I did not like women and sex so much. ( as in I like it a LOT!).

If she senses my qualified regard for her, it is counterbalanced by what I know is her qualified regard for me. The stuff of sonnets, our relationship is not. We do say, "I love you" to each other. It seems the right thing and more romantic than the more accurate statement of our relationship with each other: "You'll do."

Still, my worst day with the S.O. has been far better than my best day with the ex, so that must be progress of a sort. Plus, she has brought a lot of structure to a very disorganized life. She has got me focused on some goals besides a girl's ankles up in the air, and gotten me focused on saving money. She's actually taught me a lot on that score. We do, however, maintain complete and separate finances though. I will never ever, ever, share money with a woman again!

So pop the champagne! I've got the silly cards, and I know I'm going to get dragged into the shop to buy her the jewelry of her choice tomorrow. What the future holds-hell, I have no idea-but for today and the next few days we will savor the present. Come to think of it that's just about all anybody can do.

And if it does not work out? She can keep the furniture so long as I can keep my computer and the car! See what a nice guy I am?

"Some people come into our lives, leave footprints on our hearts, and we are never the same." - Unknown

"We all want to fall in love. Why? Because that experience makes us feel completely alive. Where every sense is heightened, every emotion is magnified, our everyday reality is shattered and we are flying into the heavens. It may only last a moment, and hour, an afternoon. But that doesn't diminish its value. Because we are left with memories that we treasure for the rest of our lives."
- Unknown

Skippy-san

Cross posted at Far East Cynic.

Be careful down under!

2006-12-19T14:01:00.000Z

I was lurking around looking for something Australian to post-just to have a little fun, you know, when I came upon this news broadcast. Apparently, Australia is a dangerous place to eat.

So Sourrain-watch out for the KK's!

Christmas music

2006-12-18T11:35:00.000Z

Yesterday the S.O. and I went to a Christmas concert with a combined US Navy and JMSDF band playing songs for the holiday. It was quite good and a good compensation to the fact that I was unable to play golf. They played an adaptation of one of my favorite hymns-Emmanuel. "O ransom captive Israel..........."

Religious or not, you have to admit Christmas produces some good music. I love putting Christmas Carols on the DVD player while moving around the kitchen making dinner. ( Speaking of dinner I do have another food post coming your way.......).
Its been interesting to learn some of the carols in Japanese and since I studied German in college I know a few in that language too. I can now sing Silent Night and O come all yea faithful in 3 different languages. That knowledge and S$3.40 will buy you a mug of Starbucks coffee. (Small size of course!).

The band played some neat things. They had March of the Toy Soldiers which is another of my favorites. During my college years, we used to have one parade in December before exams would begin. The Band Company would always play it and we all got a big kick out of it. It's not a song you can march too very well though.

Speaking of my alma mater, they also used to have a church service with candles and Christmas music that was one of the highlights of the year for me. You can click here to download some of the music in an MP3 format.

As an aside, I was married to my ex in front of that very altar and flags. If I had known what I know now, then, I would have turned around and run like hell.........

But I digress.

Christmas is also the time of year for TV specials something else I am a sucker for. Last year I got to watch something unique. On NHK they had "Rudoplh the Red Nose Reindeer" animation special. Its the original from 1965 dubbed in Japanese. I watched it as good Japanese listening practice, plus I did not have to struggle with the translation so much, since I have seen this show probably 30+ times in my life. Nonetheless, some of the Japanese interpretations were interesting. For example, the song "We are Santa's Elves" was translated as 私たちはサーンターサンの好きな人。( "We are the people Santa likes" ). "Bumbles bounce" was translated as "Bumble jump!" . Not quite the same, methinks.

Here is a list of my favorite shows- I suspect some of them have made their way to where many of you live-even down to Australia. Then again maybe not.

Its a Wonderful Life
A Christmas Story
White Christmas
A Charlie Brown Christmas
The Grinch who Stole Christmas ( Cartoon version, not the crass movie ripoff!)
Rudolph
Miracle on 34th Street ( the original B&W version, although the remake is not too bad.......this movie is also known as the story of my sex life!)
Donovan's Reef (Don't ask me why this is here, I just like it!)
Holiday Inn

Which one is the best? That's easy. A Christmas Story is without a doubt my favorite Christmas movie. The story is well told, tastefully done, genuinely funny, and original. While most folks focus on the "BB gun" piece of the story, for me it is the description of the boy's father: "My old man was the connoisseur of using the "F" word"; " Over the years I got taste many kinds of soap in my mouth, I found Palmolive to be the best...." .

They don't write stuff like that anymore. I sure wish they did..............

When one starts waxing poetic about TV its time to close. I will leave you with one more shot of the chapel and the advice it gave every one of us cadets every day walking past........

Got your shopping done yet?

G'day folks!

2006-12-16T12:22:00.000Z

Not much time to blog,but suffice to say, having heaps of fun here at Melbourne.Leaving tomorrow for the second leg of down under at Sydney..if it was half as fun as this, I'll be a satisfied little customer.Other than the crazy weather,can do without that. Intermittent sunshine with loads of cold bouts,this is Melbourne's summer.Hopefully Sydney will be a little sunshinner and less wind-blow-me-this-way.

Its funny how I've refused to study in Melbourne because it sometimes seems like everyone that I know have studied in Melbourne,intergrating into this cosmopolitan city.But now I understand why - Melbourne's absolutely great!It is fast catching up to my favourite city of all time, San Francisco. From the seaside chill factor of St Kilda's to the slow drunkeness of the Yarra Valley wineries and the hole-in-the-wall operation serving the best xiao long paus (Shanghai Dumplings), Melbourne is a city second to none. They have nasi lemak in every corner and even durian ice cream that tastes eerily like the real thing.The longer I spend in it's lull, the more I yearn to become a part of it's buzzing energy.Will need to look into a hairdressing or butcher's course.

Another thought of the moment:- Now I know how it feels to be like the English/Americans just spending heaploads anywhere I see them on holiday...it is dirt farking cheap! Well,not really,but comparatively to English prices, many things are 2.5 times less. The bliss of pretence that you are filthy rich.

Oh, to dreybee & moo, we'll see ya in less than a week.Yippee!

till next time, sayonara!

ps to skippy: Thanks for guest blogging again!

The 10 stages of Drunkeness..........

2006-12-15T13:28:00.000Z

This is a post I made over at my blog early on when I started blogging. It still the number one hit getter..........don't ask me why but I get more Google searches about this topic than anything else. I thought I would share it with you and seek your thoughts:

Neptunuslex made a recent post about Drunks and Politicians which looked at some of the buffoonery of some prominent Democrats lately. By way of introduction he explained what he called the "7 stages of drunkenness". Leave it to a Hornet pilot to take the shortcut home, he left out a few stages. There are 10 stages of drunkenness, not 7; trust me I know- I've been to all of them at various times. When I saw his post, I knew something did not look quite right, so I checked with some of my comrades in one of my former squadrons, the World Famous (and now defunct) Seabats of VAW-127 :

If anybody knew a thing or two about getting drunk it was us. Our skipper used to refer to his wardroom as "a bunch of refugees from an CAAC (alcohol treatment) ward." That's not to say we did not do our fair share of hard work and we did A LOT of flying. Check here and here for some of our "on the job time". It was a good squadron to be in: a work hard, play hard outfit. When it was time to play, we did play hard.

So if I may, I'd like to set the record straight. Here are the "official" ( at least as official as any set of bar rules / jokes can be) 10 Stages of drunkenness:

Stage-1 No Name associated. Still mostly sober, relaxed, cold beer is tasting good.

Stage-2 Witty Charming Part I. That's where you think you are witty and charming- and you are. Chicks dig you. Some women in the bar start looking better and better.

Stage-3 Patriotic. Somebody puts on "Proud to be an American" by Lee Greenwood and it brings a warm spot to your heart. You'll also be in the mood to kick anyone's ass who does not like the song.

Stage-4 Witty and Charming Part II. That's where you think you are witty and charming; you think chicks dig you- but you are not and they don't. ( Unless they are ahead of you on drinks by a couple of stages). All women in the bar start looking good.

As an aside, any body remember this little ditty from the New Riders of the Purple Sage?

Well I guess it's been at least an hour, and I didn't plan to stay.
I only dropped in to drink a beer, and float off on my way.
It was a pale and rather plain girl over in the corner sipping wine.
When I did not sit down at her table, she sat down at mine.

And she's looking better every beer.
Her hair is soft and shiny now, her eyes are bright and clear.
How could it be I didn't notice her when I first came in here.
Now she's looking better every beer.

Well the bar lights and the candles throw a little color on the chin.
And two by two the people leave who one by one came in.
The jukebox plays and the coke-filled ashtrays warns the time that flies. And every time I drain my mug I can't believe my eyes.

She's looking better every beer.
Her hair is soft and shiny now, her eyes are bright and clear.
How could it be I didn't notice her when I first came in here.
Now she's looking better every beer.

Anyway.......Back to the task at hand.

Stage-5 F**K dinner! Many people enter the matrix at this stage.

Stage-6 "Crank Up the Enola Gay! We're going to Hiroshima!" This is the 'should I stay or should I go' point. Go home now and chances are pretty good you'll be up for work on time the next morning. Stick around and your chances of appearing in the newspapers have gone up significantly. ( Also in Japan, you are advised to come up with another name, they don't seem to find this one particularly funny for some reason........).

It almost always goes down hill from here.

Stage-7 Rich and Powerful . This is where you ring the bell in the bar for no reason, you buy ladies drinks by the half dozen and you tip the barmaids very well. If you have an ATM card in your wallet, you may run out to resupply your cash. This is another potential "exit ramp"; if you have a met a girl who likes you, or if you are in Neptune's or Fenwicks and the two of you have agreed on a price.

Stage-8 Introspective. Having opted not to head for the exit ramp or having found no one to go home with, you continue drinking and turn you thoughts inside (this is generally considered a bad move). You contemplate everything that has gone wrong with your life; with no else to talk to you you even make the mistake of drinking and dialing your ex. Warning, it is at this stage guys like Hemingway have reached for the shotgun.

Struck out again, eh Skippy?

Stage-9 Invisible. You can pee in the street and its no big deal because no one can see you. Which of course leads to a HUGE surprise when the officer slaps the cuffs on you for public lewdness.......

Stage 10- Bulletproof. You can pee on the railroad tracks in front of an oncoming train because it cannot hurt you. Thanks to the antics of people at this stage, the folks who publish the Darwin Awards have something to write about.

So there you have it. There are lots of lists of these rules out there and the sequence may change depending on the circumstances, but this the list from "the trained professionals".

Your mileage, of course, may vary.

Skippy-san

Power shopping.........

2006-12-14T17:05:00.000Z

I found a new store for Sourrain. Wonder if they have an outlet in Leeds?

Food wonderful food.

2006-12-13T13:27:00.000Z

I promised you some food ideas and here they are. Only problem is they are not mine. Sadly for Sourrain there is no Nasi Lemak, but there are things here equally as good.

One of the blogs I link to is A Geezer's Corner. Published by a a gun toting former submariner who now works with a nuclear reactor in California, he has published a lot of his recipes. I've tried the following one just last night. Its for some mighty tasty bean soup.

Follow the link for the recipe!

Its pretty easy to make, although its best made and simmered over time. When it comes to eating, its always best to add some white bread or corn bread and the following two staples:

Catsup, and hot sauce.

Enjoy!

For a complete list of his online recipes, follow the link here

Holidays.....and traditions

2006-12-11T22:05:00.000Z

Ever since I came to Japan, the December holidays has been really weird for me. Generally it becomes too expensive to fly back to the states, given that as New Years approaches the air fares zoom. Part of THAT is fueled by the fact that Japan takes the first four days of the year off. Before I met the S.O. it was a time of prowling around Roppongi and other less reputable places looking for Miss Right (for tonight!). My first New Years here I spent new years day sleeping off new year's eve. Thank God it was the one day of the year the trains ran all night. Since meeting the S.O. we usually exchange gifts on Christmas, have dinner together and as for New Years? Well, we've just agreed to disagree about how to spend that. She favors quiet and reflection, and I favor dressing up, Auld Lang Zyne, and boozy kisses at midnight. Suffice it to say she gets her way more than I get mine.

Which got me to think of how the holidays are celebrated around the world. Without meaning to, Christmas has become a holiday celebrated even in countries without a Christian tradition. Probably there are some who might argue this, but the fact that there are Christmas decorations in Shanghai at least proves one part of my theory:

Retailers will jump on anything that makes profit!

Now when I was growing up, we had a relatively "normal" American Christmas. I use the word normal sparingly because in our family, family type gatherings always had an underlying layer of tension. That applied both when I was teenager and then subsequently when I was married to the ex. However we followed a formula. Christmas Eve was a ham dinner, usually followed by a trip to church. Christmas day was opening presents in the morning, eating as little as possible until the Turkey Dinner was served. My mom never varied her menu: Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, scalloped oysters, pea and asparagus casserole, bread, wine, and milk for us underagers.

New Years had its own ritual too-New Years eve would find me scheming to get to a new years party, and after I had children, not being able to do that much. New Years day was a set menu: Pork Roast, Potatoes, Blackeyed Peas with what my father called Hog Jowls. (Pork Loin with fat.) The theory was the more Blackeyed peas you ate the more money you would see come your way the following year. The Hog Jowls were for luck. This meal was usually followed by copious amounts of college football on TV.

Now in Japan, the Christmas and New Years holiday are just the opposite. For a young 20 something single person, being with out a date on Christmas eve is the low point of the year. As was described in the Tokyo Classifieds a few years ago:

On Christmas Eve, trains will be packed to shame any weekday morning. Every single road on the map will be fender-to-fender. Cell phone lines will cease to function, due to an overload of calls being made by couples trying to find each other in packed train stations. Oh, and don't even bother trying to find a hotel room. Yes, Christmas Eve in this country frightens me to the very core.

For those of you who have just arrived in Japan, Christmas here has been turned into some kind of second Valentine's Day. Spending Christmas Eve alone is the most degrading thing in the world for a young person in Japan. Apparently, the correct way to spend Christmas is to go out to an overpriced restaurant (usually of the French or Italian variety) with a member of the opposite sex, and then, after a few minor detours and an exchange of overpriced gifts, to end up in an overpriced hotel room with a view and share more than just presents.

And there is, of course, the little detail of of the Christmas Cake:

I observe with a blend of amusement and disbelief the distinctly Japanese (commercial sector-generated) custom of combining strawberry shortcake (don't forget to light the birthday candles and blow them out while making a wish) and Kentucky Fried Chicken (make sure you reserve it well in advance, or you might have to stand in line for two hours to get the 12-piece party pack) on the Christmas dinner menu.

Arguably there are worse ways to spend the holiday, but as an American it is different from what I was used to before I came.

New Years on the other hand is very much family time. There are New Years parties, especially in Gaijin heavy areas but on the whole they are not the norm. People go to see their families, pray at the Shrine on New Years day and eat the food that mom has either prepared in advance or purchased at higher than normal prices. Its called Oeschi Ryori-quite good actually.

Now Sourrain lives in Leeds and I know little of English Christmas tradition. I have been in England during December , up in Linclonshire, and saw in all the pubs flyers for making reservations for Christmas dinner. I'm not sure how popular and pervasive that tradition is. And I have no idea what Boxing Day is all about.

I spent New Years in Naples once. I paid some ungodly amount of lire to attend a New Years party at the AFSOUTH officers club in Pazzuoli. Good time, but different than I expected. It was mostly couples there which limited oppotunites for yours truly. The ticket price covered all the booze though. The real point of the story was, in Naples on New Years eve get off the streets around midnight. Evidently, it was a Neapolitan tradition to throw old things out on the street at the stroke of the new year. I'm told that can include things such as washing machines. Not sure if that is true, but it sure did get noisy when midnight came and went. Lots of fireworks and sounds of metal on concrete!

So what say you? Any other interesting Holdiay traditions that are worth passing? Wonder how Sourrain and Bacon spent the December holidays in Malaysia?

cross posted at Far East Cynic

He's back!

2006-12-10T06:49:00.000Z

There goes the neighborhood............

Sourrain has been kind enough to allow me back for another stint of guest blogging. Hopefully I will get it right this time. With luck we can post something nice enough to get noticed by the big dogs and her blog will get thousands upon thousands of hits.

She says she is on her way down under. Wish I was going there. I make a great valet...... :-).

I have been to Australia only once. It was in 1981 when I was on the voyage of the damned spending 249 days on one of America's floating bastions of freedom, and we spent 6 days in Perth. It was awesome. For me it was like being able to go home in the middle of the cruise. We had been at sea for 79 days and now we ashore in a country with: Nice women, good bars and taxi drivers who did not try to cheat you and they spoke your language. ( There was that whole funny accent thing, but hey you go to party with the taxi drivers you have....).

Currently I am here in Hawaii, leaving tomorrow to return to Japan. When I get back I'll have some new food posts. In the meantime I think we should all ask Sourrain only one question, when do we see pictures of the new house? (Or the bikini again? :-).

Short post for now-better to follow-I promise.

For Sourrain, HAVE A GREAT TRIP!!!!!!!! I promise not to mess up the house while you are gone.

leaving on a jet plane

2006-12-08T16:15:00.000Z

again and again...

Merry christmas all, be nice to Skippy who is dusting the web dust as I gallavant Down Under.He did a how-to-cook Japanese summer food the last time, if you are nice he'll post you a how to do the best shabu shabu! I am so busy I don't even have time to email him at the moment, so thank you skippy!

Will probably still check in once in a while, dying to do another blogging-in-the-hole KLIA series!

failed adulthood

2006-12-07T08:13:00.000Z

I went shopping yesterday with a purpose..to buy baby stuff and also new mommy stuff .Like, how hard can it be rite? Baby stuff only wor…so cute and easy to buy. Cheap summore..So along I went, shopping for baby stuff…in the course of my shopping I stopped at all 4 kiddy-like stores (you mean there is a certain look to a kiddy store!??)

Dixon kids
Disney shop
Pumpkin Patch
Sainsbury Kids dept.
Some toy shop

And I came away with…….

*drumroll*….

NOTHING.Big Huge Ziltch NADA.

I am such a failure. I felt so useless and helpless, walking around amongst all the kiddos pulling their mommy's skirt exclaiming for dis and dat..I feel like they are all staring at me and silently taunting me with the singsong repertoire that is of playground cruelty.I can only imagine what baby joel thinks of me now...

Baby Joel: Hi this is my aunty cum godmom cum failed.com. She is so hopeless she can't even go out and buy all those cute clothes for me..teeny weeny socks that fit her thumbs or the cute little reindeer costume that is too cute to resisst. Or even some toys to let me pass my boring nap times. How hard is it to pick a mobile?The one occasion she managed to buy something she got it for 6-12 months baby.H-E-L-L-O…just because she always call my daddy fatty doesn't mean I am that fat ok..I must be a baby hippopotamus…I is only less than one week old..stupid woman buy me clothes fit for a 6-12 month old baby? Some more thinking want to buy me a Tiffany & Co. rattle. Better save the money up and let me have free flow ice cream.

But at least she has great taste….GAP baby wor..now, if only there is something we can do about her lack of common sense..

I think my lack of ability to pick out baby stuff might have to do with the fact that it is dead of winter here,and most cutey patootie baby stuff are made for winter…therefore suffocating baby Joel if I were to get it for him.Maybe I should get some pointers from here. Or blogger mommy that I have been stalking to get ideas...I need to stop doing that..feel even more hopeless as I see how capable she is. I think minibean might be born on the same day as Joel as well!

a short story of a week..

2006-12-06T10:33:00.000Z

I had been dilligently ignoring this blog…It is quite unappetizing to blog without pictures; and I have so many! Wahliao damn toolan.Anyway, couple of updates:

Christmas
Is officially over for me.Exchanged pressies with outlaw group 1 - received a whole bunch of crap gifts - eh, just because I make jewelry..there is no need to buy me useless fugly jewelry ok! I give you a string of pearls you give me a plastic beaded necklace!? Sibeh insulting ok..and also some jewelry box from India. I know I know, the joy is in giving,not receiving, but it makes my blood boil when I am given something that I can't do anything with, effectively polluting space in the house collecting dust;because I don’t like it, and I don't want to do the same thing to some other poor sod that I am wrapping up presents too…esp jewelry..it would've been quite insulting to lunabliss et corp. with receipient thinking it's my own creation.

Although I must say I can't wait to see what the other half of the outlaws will be buying for me this year.

Babies
have officially arrived in my world. In a space of 2 weeks, 3 of bacon's pals announced that their wives were pregnant. Jasmine announced she's pregnant again after cute Sarain May. Then for the news I've been anticipating for months….maggy's popped! We welcome Joel Goh E Vern to the big bad world…pix will be up as soon as I can get my grubby hands on it. What do you do when one of your oldest friend give birth? Panic! I don’t know what to buy! I am a failed adult (oh gawd am I an adult already?!) therefore I don't buy into the yomeishu crap or even ginger. I don't know what to get the mommy! Worse, I don't know what to get my self-professed god son (I self announced that fact).I might go the chinky side and buy him some gold..or the posh side and buy him some baby toys from tiffanys..I think they have a sterling silver rattle. The mother might killed me if I did that.."Do you know how many hotel buffets can we have for that one rattle!! Har?Har??! And god, the bottles of Chivas.." But I want something that the baby can remember me with…since he's the first in what I will forsee to be a line of many a football team

Correction..I did buy a set of three bodysuits for the baby,following harajuku cat's example when we were at gap over the weekend.To show what an incompetant adult I am, I bought clothes meant for a 6months-12months for a week old baby. fail.com.

Shopping
Is going overboard. After endless shopping and wrapping over the past 3 weeks, christmas shopping is officially complete,but I am now buying stuff for me! How ridicullious…I now have presents for myself.I've even been buying full price books...a shite history of nearly everything, Zadie Smith's On beauty and Black Dahlia.Even bought some Malaysian cookbook,god save my soul...

House
Is nearly ready.We have a new bed in and super duper comfy sofa..but still awaiting delivery for our mattress.Wardrobes have not been built yet by Bacon,it'll be his project between xmas and new year. I did get a shock of my life yesterday when I arrived home…a HUGEASS TALL lampost is now right in front of the house! OMG! I will have orange light streaming in the house. And that is after Bacon just put up sensor lights all around the house because its so dark when I get home. Blardey hell…grr.

Trip
Is not planned yet. We have no idea what are we going to do other than mucking about in Melbourne and Sydney.I have been planning stuff for KL but not Australia.I am departing sat morning at 6am, mucking about in Amsterdam airport for 4 hours(world's most boring airport) , arriving KL later that night, then arriving Melbourne Sunday night.Two WHOLE DAYS of travelling.Unbelievable.I hate long journeys:(. Hopefully we'll stop by KLIA long enough for me to pop out for some nasi lemak. First thing to be done in Melbourne? Have a bowl of steaming pho dac biet!

Oh, and moo and me will be in the same country at long last….no fate.com is now got fate.com. We are spending xmas eve's eve's in KL! How exciting! Well, for me maybe.Moo might be dreading it..but he knows that if he don't tell me he will be in KL the same time as me, I'll probably kill him and send dead rat to his house.Maybe a snake or two too.

Blog
Will be left unloved for a whole two weeks at least.I had been so busy, I've not even advertised for guest bloggers like the last time I was away…Might be able to steal a bandwith or two at the bro's pc,but doubt it.

sheep in the city

2006-11-28T09:34:00.000Z

Harajukucat's posting of Yorkshire vs. London got me thinking about my own priorities. Being a thorough and through city girl, it has been hard for me settling down in Yorkshire where the sheep baa and the cows roam free.Well,not really roam free, but any city/town centre that you can reach all ends within 20mins by foot is not really a city city per se.

I miss the buzz of being in the city. I miss the weekly happenings, the special sales, the wide variety of food, shops, the rude people.I used to wonder what do people in places like Kuantan (an east coast town in Malaysia, akin to Whitby) or Alor Star (town north of Malaysia..akin to Barnsley in the UK)do during their weekends. There are but one shopping complex in the whole town. And obviously you won't see the likes of Armin Van Buuren playing there - I think in Kuantan nightclubs are even banned..complete with entertainment of any sort. Heck, I could not even imagine myself living in Penang, which is probably considered the second biggest city in Malaysia after KL….even having being born there

And fast forward a year and here I am, in a tiny hamlet of a town (apparently the fastest growing city in the UK!) and UK's third biggest city. Then why do I feel like a sheep in the city? I feel I stick out like a sore thumb…catcat's observation of getting lost in London's crowd but not being able to do that at Leeds stands true. I had not grown up knowing discrimination, and this is probably the first place I'm living in with such a small population of 'ethnic minorities' . On the plus side, people usually remember and recognize me and bacon….we went back to homebase two months after we paid for the bed, and the sales guy serving us not only remembered us, he remembered which bed did we order.I doubt that he just has a good memory.

On the plus side, this IS exordinarily ordinary,and I'd rather be anything other than ordinary.

I still sorely miss the buzz of a big city..but hopefully one day I will grow up and my priorities will be reset to a more relaxed lifestyle,where everything is at a slower pace = living longer. At the moment, given half a chance, I would move back into the city - despite coming back with an inch thick of soot on my face every day.

You can take the girl out of the city but not the city out of the girl.

horny mooners

2006-11-27T13:49:00.000Z

If you've been reading this long enough, you should know by now that there's nowhere on earth I rather be than on an island paradise. Typical of a cancerian, it's a double whammy being born to parents who literally grow up within 100m of the sea. And so where else would I rather be on the pseudo honeymoon than on an island?This is super duper long overdue (and also *cough* wedding posts *cough*)…since I have no access to an internet connection to upload pictures, we shall start on older super outdated posts ya:)

Since this is supposed to be a romantic thingy, we decided to go posh and stay in berjaya redang instead of my usual lets-stay-in-a-hut

So he paid extra to upgrade to a 'sea view' thingy. All that means is that we are just a teeny tad closer to the beach than the rest of the cattle class

What we see when we step out...

The first afternoon was spent messing about…seeing that it was pissing cats and dogs until about 5pm!

Yeah, even paradise have their occasional bout of shit english weather

Peekabooo

I like coconut trees..can or not?

The first sunset.By the time I got dressed for dinner, it was already pitch black - this will need to do

Release me please, says the sun to the clouds

Day 2- cattle class buffet with nasi lemak--yumm

Our own little boat..yes,just us

Our happy boatmen

Gone fishin'

Feet in the sea

Lonely

I like casaurina trees.

Washed away

Sunset day 2

View from dinner table

Lunching

Seeking sanity at sunset day 3

Serenity

Coconut sunset

Darkness calling

Memories blurred

Footsteps come morning

Sun salutation

Waving goodbye

Sorry folks, my own bloody fault for leaving it so long..I don't remember most of it but I took about 150+ pix..hoping that it at least details 'the moment'. Tioman was probably the last place I envision myself honeymooning ever..but it was a suprisingly refreshing change.When I was a little girl I've always envisioned honeymooning in faraway places….Paris? Been there done that. HK?Been there.Bali?Been there.London? No freaking way.All the other places can wait, I just needed to reconnect with my comfort zone to remind myself of what happiness is - being one with the sea and a couple of days running around in bikinis….not caring how much of a lump I look in one.

Will work backwards for wedding posts…:).

changes to your favourite blog

2006-11-24T11:54:00.000Z

Changed sidebar to add on two additional link sections - one of random posts from the past and another one on various travelouges that I've blogged about previously.I like looking back and reminiscing - like last christmas

Not sure that I like the look of it..a little too long winded methinks.whaddaya think?

sun, please shine and take me away

2006-11-23T11:48:00.000Z

I miss the sun…

Today's a rare day of sunshine @ Leeds.I'm going out to take pictures for lunch

Update: It is now 12.22 - lunchtime. And currently pissing it down tiuniamachauhai..

Happy turkey day!

2006-11-23T08:39:00.000Z

Its' thanksgiving today, if anyone care. An all american holiday - this is usually celebrated hard core in the States. The day where you give thanks for the bounty that was reaped from the autumn harvest (also known as the Harvest Festival)..and also signifies the arrival of christmas…the day after thanksgiving has been historically the busiest shopping day of the year in the States where everyone go crazy on their plastics in the commercialisation that is christmas. One little note: I think its fairly strange that I still celebrate and love all holidays american style - 4th of July, Thanksgiving, Halloween.I also celebrate deepavali and merdeka..if I can I would be celebrating all year long. Since Deepavali I had Indian food, Chinese New year I had scottish haggis (don't ask) today I shall have the traditional roast turkey complete with sprouts and spuds with the addition of a Yorkshire pudding. Not many people have tried this, but I actually make a dead mean turkey.Moist on the inside, crispy skin on the outside, I stole my recepie from Whole Foods - and never looked back ever since.MaybeI will pop one out after xmas and serve it to the outlaws

I had also used thanksgiving as the marker day for christmas…therefore this scrooge did a headcount of presents yesterday - and I am doing suprisingly very well. Most people on my list have two gifts 'assigned' to them…and most of them probably need another one. I've lost the mil and the granma il's presents….purchased them at Camden when I was last down at London and of course, left it to Bacon to safekeep = dissapeared! I am having problems buying for men though…I have the ignorant accountant, the bro in law, fil and step fil. Then there is the assorted people that Bacon call friends.I had been asking around work for ideas…aftershave is a good one and some other guy suggested remote controlled car/helicopter/rocket. I'll probably pop over M&S and grab some man toys…compass,keychain sudoku ect.Bacon keep telling me that he don't care if I don’t like Christmas, HE does. My reply was that it was because I was buying all the presents on his behalf - he has not bought one single miserly present…therefore = no stress. And it's his family and friends that I'm buyin for. If I was him (sit back, relax and let the presents roll in without spending a penny) I would love christmas too! But anyone with any ideas for xmas gifts - let me know!

(at the moment everyone is getting candles/incense/soaps, or all three. Bacon's family and friends are going to be one fragant lot)

Ding dong the scooge is dead, the scrooge is dead!

Things you should know about me before you die..

2006-11-22T11:21:00.000Z

Somehow, bloggin just isn't the same without picture. I find it so hard to express what I want to say…waaaaaah!Am going to try to use the mil's pc to upload over the weekend..bear with me..

So I've decided to do an 'about me' section….yeah.that should be every blog's starting point but due to the fact that my other 5 blogs did not survive I see no point in creating one for this, never predicting it will last this long!

• Exordinarily Ordinary started as my wramblings on how exordinary my life was, yet ordinary to many of my peers. Early influences include Shaky & Spike.My best blogger friend-like person is Moo
• I once started a blog just to whinge about this ONE guy I was obsessed with. And I posted daily.Every day.I made dreybee read it. Every day.
• I am excitable,uncontrollable and most of all, loud. I am protective and extremely loyal, but will drop you at a heartbeat if you hurt me.
• I love vices, and sometimes wonder if I am growing up too fast and moving too close to ordinarily ordinary.
• For the same reason, I collect Mr. Potatohead figures, shotglasses and rubber duckies.
• Bacon, the other white meat, collects alcohol.Lots of it.And retro records.Ala 1950s
• I always have enough money saved up to make an impromptu round the world trip,money that I can use to pack up and go when/if it gets too hot to handle. I call it my runaway funds.I still have it.
• I used to play the guitar. As soon as I started getting quite good, my parents bought me an expensive Charvel. I promptly quit.
• I started raving because some guy broke my heart. I could not bear listening to commercial love songs, therefore I had a year filled with nothing but songs without lyrics.With that came the boozing, the late nights, the pack a day habit and the best time of my life.
• That same guy also made me realise that if I could survive what he put me through,I can survive anything. I am invincible.
• I want to write a travel food book when I grow up…or work for Hallmark penning verses to cards - if you know me, you will agree!
• I came one inch of moving to Paris…and chickened out at the last minute. Now my french is back to elementary at best.
• I've always wanted to explore the world and had lived in different countries.Now that I had moved permanently, I wanna go home.
• My fav city in the world(other than KL) is San Francisco. I can sit for hours just watching the world go by.
• My friends are all from very different background - I don't collect more than a small handful of friends in every stage of my life.And I love them all the same.
• An ex bf called the cops on me once. No, I did not beat him up. He was threatening me to dial 911 and accidentaly did.
• I don't know how to deal with babies.I think they are as afraid of me as I am of them.
• I had a shihtzu named sasha who was as lazy as me, she hated walks.She slept in my room every night watching my bedroom door for intruders. She died of a stomach failure.It broke the whole family's heart and we vowed never to have another dog
• I now have a black cat named tetley whom I am a stepmother to.
• I have fat feet.It makes it hard for me to buy pretty dancing heels
• Fact: All my ex bfs, and now bacon, can cook to varying degrees.From a full fledged chef to baking,roasting and spring rolls.And we wonder why am I fat.
• I am addicted to sugar.Not a day goes by that I do not have a choc of some sort
• The one and only award/piala that I've ever won was for an art competition I entered when I was 5.I won 1st prize with my stick figurines.All the jealous uncles and aunties kept telling me it was just to humour me. This leads me to...
• My deepest fear is that I am not as creative as I wished I was

To be continued...

home is where your stuff is

2006-11-20T10:44:00.000Z

I rushed back to old house at 3.30…arriving to find that most of our junk had been moved in the first load,leaving me with other ect items and also stuff to trash i.e. mucky sofa.Cleaned up with the mil a little, leaving the house dirty would cost about £500 in deposit..reminding me of my apartment in Fresno. Catcat was running around dead scared - there were strangers everywhere and nothing in the house. He was a rescue cat - was found locked in a garage when his owner had moved out..so he had reasons of being afraid when he sees things being moved out of the house.

Anyway it is now spick and span and ready for anyone to move in. Seeing that it was pitch black at 6pm, we moved into the mil's house complete with catcat in tow..set him up with food and water, and he seemed a little calmer then.Popped down to get some chinese takeaway in - I've had so much takeaway food I swear my blood is 50% msg flavoured now..Aji-no-motooo…

Bright and early on Sat morn @7.30am, had leftover fried rice (they were amused at the fact that I can eat fried rice for breakfast - hey, if I can have iHOP's pancakes-steak-eggs platter for breakfast, fried rice is nothing). Enegrised, I eventually got to see new home - boxes strewn all over the place, my mattress and shoe cabinet in the kitchen next to rotting container of tofu. Imported Kev over to help move boxes

He's that guy on the right - yes, he's single girls

He was so helpful that in under 4 hours, all the boxes were at the correct rooms and all the furniture were properly placed….after being stuffed all day in the downstairs lounge. . Mind you, he moved most of the boxes alone as Bacon was back in the old house clearing out the shed.I unpacked utensils and other kitchen stuff ect..by 2pm we've cleared the kitchen to resemble the hearth of the house! I still have bags of bah kut teh spices, curry mixture ect in a huge KLIA bag sitting on the floor,but can't do much about that now..there simply isn't enough cabinets in the kitchen! Must have a dedicated cabinet for food soon…

By 3.30pm I was completely knackered - the rest of the weekend was spent buying more stuff - a trip to ikea (with many more to come), a tumble dryer,groceries to stock up for the week now that we live a fair distance away from shops, curtain poles and curtains.Did'nt get curtains after all - stole some off the mil for immediate use as I'm sure the neighbours are sick of seeing us walk around half nekkid.

Frankly, quite proud of the fact that we have most things sorted out in 2 days time…now I just need to get some cabinets to unpack my clothes in ! However, bacon's plumbed in the washing machine and I've even managed to wash one load of clothes yesterday..with 3 more to come.Can't wait till my tumble dryer arrives to produce crisp clean DRY clothes!

This DIY thing is so amusing to me…bacon drilling holes in the walls, moving stuff, choosing cutain poles ect…back in Malaysia I would get someone else to do all that.He was amused at the fact that I've not done any DIY…well, other than the spice rack I made in Kemahiran Hidup (Shop class) class when I was 14.

In other news, I hate Christmas. I have got to be the most miserly person on Christmas..I can't stand the fact that all the shops are always full, parking's a horror and traffic is a complete standstill. GRR! And I have to come up with my own xmas list as well for gifts I want and also start buying gifts for other people…I hate I hate I hate….such a scrooge aren't I?But it's gotta be done, and hopefully this weekend I'll start some shopping around.Have some ready stocking stuffers,but no major purchases yet for the outlaws.

move my house!

2006-11-16T16:20:00.000Z

Dear readers/gawkers

Rumors have been floating around on whether we have moved...so here is the official notice!

Please be patient whilst le bacons move pigstys!TOMORROW! As it will be a new home, we will not have a phone line installed until early december (that means no broadband)..and unless I can get a hold of another pc other than my work PC, no pictures will be uploaded!

What will I do now??No FlickR Pro for 2 weeks at least!

We will also not have any TV reception.Sigh.Oh well, at least I found my camera:)

a-shopping we go..

2006-11-16T09:48:00.000Z

Typical of any housewife wannabe, I enjoy the weekly grocery shopping. And it's not only me, Bacon shares in this bizzare love of relpenishing our fridge. So much so we go grocery shopping all too regularly - I pop into Sainsbury or Morrisons' every couple of days, with an almost weekly trip to ASDA (Walmart) and the occasional visit to Tesco.

A moment of truth: I enjoy grocery shopping full stop. I had my first introduction to larder management when I ran away to Paris/Bruxelles for 3 months…the boulangerie/pattiserie would get a visit from me in the morning and I'd pick up a tomato on the way back as well and sometimes a trip to the fromagerie.The mad rush for the supermarket for bigger items that I cannot carry will start when exbf gets back from work - grocery/supermarkets shuts at 6pm.As I had way too much time on my hands, I get cooking everyday.Lunch AND dinner.

Highlight of the week in Fresno is always packing dreybee and anyone else into my beat up civic and slowly crawl to Albertsons/Food4Less/Foodmart for weekly replenishing and the occasional jaunt into the mexican ghetto for cheapo grocery followed by the hmong ghetto for delicious bowls of pho.Ah.ghetto hopping….good times...

Anyway, I think I've lost the plot of the whole post…ah yes, trip to the grocery store with the bacons:

Strolling along with his basket..lalalala

I love the name…roooool and mop! Like rock and roll…rolled pickled herring.Don't care much for the taste though

The *other* white meat. Something you'll never find in Malaysian supermarket shelves.

I can't cook fish, so I buy smoked.Just like La-La Chong's with a squeeze of lime and pickled raikon.

Men need their own sort of tissues - the big sort.Cause they have big porus noses

I love cookies(look at the size of me!) - esp the Smarties ones

Xmas tree tortilla chips to usher in the xmas cheer

*salivate*.Why ang moh desserts are always way nicer (and cuter) than our halo halo/ais kacang?

Mommy mommy, someone ate Rudolph's face!

Stocking up my sweet tooth - I love em' Pink Smarties!

I *heart* sushi - yes, I'm a discount monger.Nothing will ever beat Zen's sushi though.

Hair Mary! Hair Mary! Hair Mary!

2006-11-14T09:15:00.000Z

The before

The after

In living colours

The bright-eyed will also have notice the return of the camera! Yes surrr....after about a month I have found the camera again! It felt like being reunited with a chopped off thumb...

death by hair

2006-11-10T10:21:00.000Z

No, contrary to popular belief, my haircut did not kill me by suffocation. It will make an 'exciting' appearance either Monday or this weekend, as Bacon is away all week with his phone and the memory stick inside.

Patient abit can or not??

Suffice to say, it kinda resembles the newly-single Britney's pob (no, I'm not comparing breasts..just hair) .No, I did not go out to look like Britney . Somehow this haircut don’t look very nice after being stuck under a beanie for a couple of hours - a must in this ungodly weather. As flat as a training bra.

I'm done with the 3rd and hopefully final interview, and yet,no one has decided what am I actually going to do.Which is a real pain in the behind.It's an exciting organization, and blogging this exciting opportunity here is probably going to jinx my exciting chances of actually getting in…but I'm quite sick of the interviews already and the fact that I am unable to prepare for it because no one knows what am I being interviewed for! How more bizzare can it get?
So now it's going to be a wait for a coupla weeks wait whilst they try to figure out whether I'll get it or not.At the moment I'm not too optimistic about it - it don't look good. It's more likely that they are unable to fit me into their myraid of operations - therefore me jinxing it by posting this up.

Life goes on in Alcatraz..which at the moment,is a hub of activicty therefore the lack of updates on my pob.
………………………………………………….

I am continuosly commiting financial suicide by nonstop clothes hoarding. On a weekly basis. I know christmas is nearing, but buying presents for myself continuously is just plain losing the plot. Oh well. The first step to a cure is admitting you have a problem. And I do. I should be banned from the high streets and malls. I should not be allowed to attack Marks & Spencers with the mil in tow persuading me that everyhing looks nice on me. I should not be allowed to go anywhere near the city centre for fear of accidental shopping. The last one is a little hard, seeing that I only work 15mins walk away from the shopping hub. I walk into town regularly for lunch…and I tend to go after work on thurs and fri when they have what they call 'late-night shopping' - basically shops open until 7pm. 7pm you say?? Yes, most are closed by 5pm,which is a good thing, if not every day would be late night shopping for me.

This pseudo fashionista wannabe thing is not working out very well on my purse strings.

after 4 years.....

2006-11-06T14:12:00.000Z

Across continents, job statuses, marital statuses..

My barnet has been chopped

The last time my hair was anywhere near this short was in Jun 02.Prior to that, I've always had short hair,the longest being just below the shoulder blade.The last I checked, my hair was reaching the end of my spine.It is now above my shoulders,sitting pretty on my neck
.......................................................................................................

They say a woman changes her hair whenever she is depressed. This holds true for me, other than the fact that I chose to splash my hair with all colors of the rainbow instead of chopping it. All shades of yellows,oranges,reds,browns…yeah, I know,not really rainbow hued..bleah.Life kept changing, my hair followed suit like a chameleon in training.

After contemplating this drastic move for the past three weeks, a walk-in into Toni&Guys ( I keep saying Thomas & Guys!) sponsored by Bacon did the job, and now I no longer feel like a nest of birds reside on my head anymore.It also helps that I now need 10% of the amount of shampoo & conditioner that I used for my longer hair.Economical.

Oh the joy is unbelievable. I now look like a tomato.

the day it turned zero

2006-11-02T15:05:00.000Z

Mar 2002 - Shaver Lake, California

Yesterday , at -3 deg , was the first bout of winter wonderland in the UK due to the happyfyingly chilly nothern winds.Not happy. My ears feels like they're falling off.my nose feels frozen to the touch. But due to the bizzare sunniness of the whole day (need sunglasses), I am actually sweating, believe it or not, after walking into town earlier. But my ears are still numb from the painful chills. Go figure.

I've dugged through my packed boxes to retreive last years' winter clothes - at the rate the weather's changing, I simply cannot afford to just keep buying new clothes every other day!!!! Oi, winter clothes are not cheap ok (more material, thicker, all that jazz) …but I do quite fancy the mixing and matching of different outfits to create 'a look' .I feel the pressure to be pseudo fashionable here due to the everchanging stock(every other month) in the shops signalling a new trend and out with the old….and me walking in with my painfully so-ten-minutes-ago polka dotted hairband has the salesgirls cringing in pain. Well, not that serious, but close. I remember I could wear the same thing for a few years in KL, and it'll still be on sale!!

I've also stumbled across some pictures of our first snowy trip back in 2002 - back in the days where we were not stuck in Gua, Goa or GB - but in Fresno. It felt that we were like the three stooges…in a good way

Ken the Iron Chef showing off his icicled (sp??) boobs

coming down the mountain elv swerved and hit a side post, scratching his beloved civic.

The way we were one chinese new year in 2002

The way we were one hen night in 2006

A day in the pigsty

2006-11-01T10:04:00.000Z

Temple Newsam is an ancient family manor house - those with the ubiquitious drawing room, sitting room, dressing room and the likes, complete with coats of armours, ancient china and the lot. Le Bacons made a trip there last weekend - but due to my coffee-less condition, I did not take any pictures at all whilst exploring the house! Shame on me! I was sleepwalking more than anything else..

BUT, like with any manor house worth it's weight in salt, Temple Newsam has a working farm attached to it! Yes, complete with animals and such! With paid entrance (£5.50 to both house and farm), you also get free feed to feed the animals with. We both have Leeds Card, which is a discount card for various tourist attractions, free food and discounted gym entrance in and around Leeds. We've used the tourist attraction and free food benefits, but I have yet to step into a gym:(. But we do get free entrance to Temple Newsam, which brought us here on a sunny Sunday noontime...

Baaa..my name's Bacon...baaa

Some animal feed for three bags full of wool?

I love stripey pigs...they somewhat look like 'badak' (not sure what that is in English)

Don’t cha oink at me..

We are family...

I've got all my sisters with me...

And one badass momma...

I'm a badass too!Me, me,me!

Little piglets incubating.They're about a week old

Goat meets pig.Goat eats feed.Pig eats goat meat.

We're quackers!

Autumn's fast descending

This was, I reckon, the last bit of warm sunshine we will be getting for the year - it will be 6 months gone before we're out for a nice walk.Ah well.

(all pictures taken on a sony ericsson - my camera's still MIA!!! )

money makes the world go 'round

2006-10-31T11:34:00.000Z

Its not funny man.

After a drought of picture-less blogs, I had, at last, stole Bacon's memory stick off his phone and brought it into work to upload. And just realized that either my usb drive is not working/memory card not working/usb memory card reader not working. Or all three.
Is it a sign of bad things to come?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For the life of me, I can't understand the need to attend three interviews. I passed interview no.1 with the big boss. Interview no.2 was with his wife (???). Now, on the verge of handing in my goodbye sneer, I am required to attend interview no. 3 with another board member - at a yet unconfirmed date. WAHLAU. I had never been for three interviews for the same job before.I mean, you would think that by the second interview they would know if they want you.I want a yes or a no, if it's a no, at least I can get on with life and figure something else out. Now it’s a 'very promising' maybe. I'm a bag of nerves again and it shows.

Actually I'm afraid that at interview no 3 they might just figure out that my mandarin is total shite.Yes, they don't know yet. Cheeky I know, but I've not been given the opportunity to explain!

I swear,if I get this new gig I'll treat myself to a brand new T-10 in white. And maybe a car.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Weekends with harajuku cat are always a constant bleed to the pursestrings. We started out at a Burberry clearance store and she walked away with a gray knit dress. And me, I bought a sweater for the outlaws' christmas care package. Sigh.I know, how caring of me.

Then headed off to Thorntons Café , where the Seville Orange Choc Mousse that I had was to die for. Literally. Many times over. Harajukucat's Lemon tart was a statement in all it's tartness as well - I think we will be going to thorntons' from now onwards instead of my favourite jaded starfux joint.

The carnage to my purse continues at M&S, where I purchsed 3 pairs ofThe carnage to my purse continues at M&S, where I purchsed 3 pairs of these . All the same color,just different sizes. Bargin abound, these are in storage for christmas distribution - but I've started wearing mine. Harajukucat was good in M&S - she didn't get anything at all!

Then we were off to Gap, where I can literally be the poster child for (Yesterday I was top to toe outfitted in GAP), I grabbed a cord skirt and a pair of work pants - and matched it with a brown sweater that I already have in white. In an effort to curb my usual craziness in GAP, harajukucat talked me out of buying the cord skirt, and I hypothesized (correctly) that Bacon would disown me if I bought that sweater in brown as well as having the exact same one in white. So, damage for a pair of work pants = £22, which is painless, compared the the hundreds of pounds that I've spent in GAP this year.

( I probably love GAP because I am a comfortable size 6 (US) there. ANYTHING in size 6 fits me …and for someone who used to be a size 12 (US) , it is VERY important to keep the illusion that I am not fat. An illusion,mind you)

Next up is Next - and this, I entirely blame on harajukucat. I never go into Next if I was shopping alone, their clothes never fit me well enough and I hate having to search through so many racks before getting to my ideal size/design. However, harajukucat always walks away with great bargins from there, and this time was no different. We trawled through a bucketfull of hoiseries (tights, stockings,socks,footless tights, holdups) not realizing that it was only £1 each. End damage? £5 each and enough hoiseries to last us for a year.

I have so many shopping bags that I left my fire engine coat in her car...another new purchase just made two weeks prior.Sigh.I am but an unfaithful lover clad in my dreams of becoming a bonafide fashionista.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sunday was family day - we visited Bacon's family, the pigsty. Literally. And not the human kind,in case you think I'm having a bitchy moment.More to come with pictures.

AND HAPPY HALLOWEEN ALL!

growing pains

2006-10-27T09:41:00.000+01:00

I seem to be going downhill with the quality of my posts lately..sorry..alot going on my mind,but mostly the plot to escape Alcatraz seems to have zapped all my energies away.

Just like Alcatraz, the view is nice from mainland San Francisco; you only realize how dire it is when you're actually in it with the likes of Al Scarface Capone. It is all an illusion of 'nice', but at the end of the day it’s a prision, holding me in like a caged eagle.

I feel stifled, I can't breathe. I'm dying a slow and painful death of brain drain the longer I remain in Alcatraz.I still remember my elation when I found out I had been chosen to join Alcatraz,but was soon jolted out of my reverie. Imagine this ; waking up every day looking forward to the 5pm tick when you can leave Alcatraz - at least for the night.

Growing up really sucks. Especially when you realize that you can't just quit 'just because lar, I dun like mar'. With very serious matters of mortgages,loans and needing to afford your own food, being in Alcatraz is, at least, better than being in the sea..paddling away like a lifeless seal.

I miss my mommy:(

I so think I've totally lost the plot here..

A floater's dillema

2006-10-25T10:39:00.000+01:00

So. Stepsis no. 1 has gotten engaged with the accountant. The same ignorant fool whose parents are Malaysian and asked me if we celebrated Christmas in Malaysia. The same one who dislikes 'all things non-British'. And was of the opinon that all chinese people has two names - one of them being fake, asked me if my name was fake.

(yes, the same one that I always want to beat up - is officially joining the dysfunctional family)

This has strangely enough, caused a big uproar between Bacon and me over the weekend. I am of the opinion that he should still know his roots - his parents should educate him on his roots, and not just embrace all englishness and leave it at that. They should teach him about malaysia and how they grew up, his relatives who visit every year should educate him on the cultural differences that is from Malaysia vs. freezing england. This man, I believe, is experiencing an identity crisis, therefore chose to just embrace all englishness and nothing else.

Bacon, in a sudden streak of dick-headedness , thinks it shouldn't matter, because this pseudo Malaysian Chinese has an ENGLISH PASSPORT, so he is BRITISH, so it is ok to NOT know his roots and just INTERGRATE as a BRITISH. I told Bacon that it's ok for him to think that way - he can trace 4-5 generations back in this same square kilometer of land. His stupid argument is because he might have swedish/norwegian roots stretching from eons ago (as in possibly 10 generations back!), but he is BRITISH therefore he is ENGLISH.

No, it is NOT ok to know where you are from. Because you will NOT know where you are going.History is the most important lesson there is.

After a tiring hour of shouting match between packing up the house, I just told him to wankoff. I don't know. Maybe it's me,thinking that it's important that everyone know where they are from. I do not want my children growing up thinking that being english is all there is to the world - that the world revolves around them. I know Bacon being his nationalistic self is very into supporting England and all that shit - if you've not seen that sort of people,just pop into the nearest English pub during and England footy game.

I am frankly confused as to what does the future bring to my children. Bacon is arguing that if we ever have children they should identify themselves as ENGLISH but realizing that their mother is not (I-dont-want-a-british-passport-i-don-care!) , and understanding where they come from. Bacon is torn between super supporting his England and trying but failing to understand what it is to be a floater between cultures. I don't think he'll ever understand; his roots are so embedded in England, he'll always know that this is where he belong - and not have the feeling of never really belonging anywhere but being proud of it.

taking the edge off blue mondays..

2006-10-23T09:40:00.000+01:00

The seven dwarfs met up with the pope on his tour to the forest. Dopey seems particularly interested in questioning him:

"Pope, is there any dwarf nuns in England?"

"No"

"Then, is there any dwarf nuns in the whole of UK?"

"No"

"How about Europe?"

"No"

"Are there any dwarf nuns anywhere in the world at all?"

"No, there are no dwarf nuns anywhere in the world"
The rest of the 7 dwarfes," Haha, Dopey shagged a penguin!"

--------------------------------------------------------
The below proves that Malaysia is not the only country in the world where the ratio of worker to supervisors are 1:10

BORN BEFORE 1986?

2006-10-20T14:30:00.000+01:00

*I don't usually do forwarded stuff,but I can't help it...just proving a point that today's kids are made helpless by the gazillion stupid protection enforced on them!!

According to today's regulators and bureaucrats, those of us who were kids in the 60's, 70's and early 80's probably shouldn't have survived, because our baby cots were covered with brightly coloured, lead-based paint which was promptly chewed and licked.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, or latches on doors or cabinets and it was fine to play with pans.

When we rode our bikes, we wore no helmets, just flip-flops and fluorescent 'spokey dokey's' on our wheels.

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or airbags and riding in the passenger seat was a treat. We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle and it tasted the same.

We ate chips, bread and butter pudding and drank fizzy juice with sugar in it, but we were never overweight because we were always outside playing. We shared one drink with four friends, from one bottle or can and no-one actually died from this.

We would spend hours building go-carts out of scraps and then went top speed down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into stinging nettles a few times, we learned to solve the problem. We would leave home in the morning and could play all day, as long as we were back before it got dark. No one was able to reach us and no one minded.

We did not have Play stations or X-Boxes, no video games at all. No 99 channels on TV, no videotape movies, no surround sound, no mobile phones, no personal computers, no DVDs, no Internet chatrooms.

We had friends - we went outside and found them. We played elastics and rounders, and sometimes that ball really hurt! We fell out of trees, got cut and broke bones but there were no law suits.

We played knock-the-door-run-away and were actually afraid of the owners catching us. We walked to friends' homes. We also, believe it or not, WALKED to school; we didn't rely on mummy or daddy to drive us to school, which was just round the corner.

We made up games with sticks and tennis balls. We rode bikes in packs of 7 and wore our coats by only the hood. The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke a law was unheard of...they actually sided with the law. (true is that.my parents always think I'm wrong even when I'm not)

This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers and problem solvers and inventors, ever. The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas. We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all.

And you're one of them.

Congratulations!

Pass this on to others who have had the luck to grow as real kids, before lawyers and government regulated our lives, for "our own good".

For those of you who aren't old enough thought you might like to read about us.

This, my friends, is surprisingly frightening......and it might put a smile on your face:

The majority of students in universities today were born in 1986....The Uptown Girl they know is by Westlife not Billy Joel. They have never heard of Rick Astley, Bananarama, Nena Cherry or BelindaCarlisle.

For them, there has always been only one Germany and one Vietnam. AIDS has existed since they were born. CD's have existed since they were born. Michael Jackson has always been white.

To them John Travolta has always been round in shape and they can't imagine how this fat guy could be a god of dance.

They believe that Charlie's Angels and Mission Impossible are films from last year. They can never imagine life before computers. They'll never have pretended to be the A-Team, the Dukes of Hazard or the Famous Five.

They can't believe a black and white television ever existed.

And they will never understand how we could leave the house without a mobile phone.

Now let's check if we're getting old...
1. You understand what was written above and you smile.
2. You need to sleep more, usually until the afternoon, after a night out.
3. Your friends are getting married/already married
4. You are always surprised to see small children playing comfortably with computers.
5. When you see children with mobile phones, you shake your head.
6. Having read this, you are thinking of forwarding it to some other friends because you think they will like it too...
Yes, you're getting old!!

puff, puff and away!

2006-10-18T10:52:00.000+01:00

Smokes-away!

" Smokers around the world are celebrating the emergence of a new airline, Smintair, or Smoker's International Airlines. The brain child of German businessman Alexander Schoppmann, the smoker's airline will be based in Düsseldorf, Germany, and fly several international routes, starting in March 2007."

And now you can smoke up whilst you fly up! Whilst this is all fine and dandy, it would be like being stuck in a car,with all windows wound up, and everyone lighting up. As much as smokers love their smokes, I don’t think anyone actually like to inhale second hand smoke- even smokers. Unless I am lighting up, I abhor being around puffing smokes.

BUT apparently, they will have a special mechanism of pumping all that noxious smoke into the atmosphere, to be recycled with 'fresh air', "Non-smokers will find the cabin air more refreshing than on any other flight with any other airline, as SMINTAIR adds fresh outside air to the conditioning system" . Oh, how wonderful will that be, better than aircond!

In the same page where you can download the article,"Smoking does not cause lung cancer". Fancy working for them? "Allergics against tobacco smoke or militant Anti-Smokers are kindly asked to not apply."

Cannotstandlaughoutloud.com

World events condensed into 40hrs.In mandarin

2006-10-17T21:15:00.000+01:00

In the latest episode in my wild hunt for a career, I have been offered an interview for a PA position. In the deluded minds of the agency, it was the bottom line that counted - he was prepared to offer me the moolah I wanted. A very curious company organising high-rise events for the uppercrust of society - not in the fashion way,more of politicans and high-flying ceos.

On two condition.

That my mandarin is passable.
wo pu hui jiang hua yee.wo si xiang jiao.hen xe lian.
(I can't speak mandarin. I am a banana.very pitiful)

Well,not exactly.But close enough for me to feel that a part of my life is missing. I have always wanted to be able to speak and write passable madarin.I listen to Jay Chou non-stop at one point in time,which improved my comprehension of mandarin (I translated each and every painful word by seeking out the lyrics in english). With my mother tounge being hokkien/fukkien/taiwanese, I have, at least, a chinese dialect that I am proficient in.With a mish mash of self-taught cantonese, my cantonese has, according to friends, apparently improved immensely in the past 5 years. The most refreshing comment was a friend's mom, who had not seen me in 5 years exclaimed, "Wahlau,your cantonese damn geng now wei".Which I am proud of, but I do wish I am good enough to blog in chinese ala mooiness or YC.

Second condition?I am interested in Politics.
With my last post being completetly ignorant and un-PC, this should show you where I am politically. Skippy is my guru in politics...I don't comment,but I savour his mostly political pieces as an unbiased opinion of a lay man.

All in all, the description of the company intruiged me enough to reluctantly agree to an interview.And the today the agent rang me back. Apparently the ceo was so impressed with my cv (he asked them why the heck would I want to be a PA, but if he was impressed with my cv,I'm probably an ace in drawing flowers and decorations to the truth) ,he is looking into creating a job for me...therefore I will not be interviewing as a potential PA but a potential I-dont-know-what-or even-if-it-might-exist.

I need a crash course in world events.And I need a new suit. The agent warned me to look 'good enough to eat off'

Yeah,thanks to adding on to my stress level. Time to hit Zara,Warehouse & Dorothy Perkins for a 'professional yet sexy look',as suggested by Bacon. With 40 hrs to go,I don't have much time.

ps:anyone want to give me a crash course in world events, pls email me asap @ milimail at gmail dot com!!

Politically wrong

2006-10-17T09:11:00.000+01:00

Fag in hand, I rambled towards the bus stop in the fogged up weather that is the english mornings . This early morning without the sun thing is not working out very well for me…and it doesn't help that my soft sheets are so nice to sleep in. Dazed in dreamland I suddenly had a very un-PC and completely mad thought that made me chuckle like a mad hatter feeling her way around in the fog-clogged road.

France conquered Vietnam = a lot of Vietnamese migrants who are currently into the second and third generation

England were the colonial lords of India (in bimbo talk;they were really big in India)= a lot of indian migrants into the second and third generation as well. This also applies to Malaysia and Hong Kong…although in smaller numbers

Netherlands were the colonial lords of Indonesia = a lot of indonesian migrants in Netherlands.

America 'took over' Philiphines = a lot of philiphino migrants in the States.Heck, they are everywhere. (Skippy will probably kill me for this totally bimbostic observation)

Then can someone tell me why Australia, who never went to war and essentially started off as a throwaway prison island, have so many people migrating there from all over the world - including the British who first started it off anyway???

Another totally uninformed,unpolitically correct observation from me. Apologies made - it's the weather and the lack of sun driving me mad.

cheers to you, life

2006-10-13T11:49:00.000+01:00

Over sushi last night (and a little happy over the free champagne and pink champagne chocs) , harajukucat and I bitched over the misfortunes of others…the band of outlaws and other assorted friends/collegues. (I sometimes wonder if all girls are that bitchy, or is it just me and the people I know). A dreadful feeling of nostalgia swept over me - I had been anticipating it for the past week - this dreadful feeling of missing life and missing old friends. Missing gossips that swept from Japan to California to Singapore to Penang to KL and back to UK (dreybee you know which gossip this is!). Then realizing that life goes on, and I am only on my next chapter - there are still people around enriching life - and to bitch with.

Over the past few years I have met so many assorted types of people - something like the Cadburys' assorted choc tin that I love. From the orange-centered to the caramel, and choc coated toffee to vodka-filled…love and hated,they had all touched mein one way or another.
(not in the perv way! Well, at least not all of them :P)

Every picture a timestamp like every page of a wellthumbed much loved book. And now I am turning the next page

Did your parents speak to you about the birds and the bees?

2006-10-12T12:18:00.000+01:00

Well, mine, like scores of asian parents, certainly didn't. Other than the obligatory "You are a big girl now..". They just one day decided that I know all about it - from what sources they don't really want to know. But if yours did, they probably did not mean this:

The birds and the bees may be gay, according to the world's first museum
exhibition about homosexuality among animals. With documentation of gay or
lesbian behaviour among giraffes, penguins, parrots, beetles, whales and dozens
of other creatures, the Oslo Natural History Museum concludes human
homosexuality cannot be viewed as "unnatural".

It goes on to mention that a Dutch zoo had once organised tours to view homosexual couples among the animals.Can you imagine Australia Zoo (Steve Irwin's family zoo) having a 'night safari' to view coupling of your choice - homosexual, bisexual, asexual or straight? And the article goes on to mention that one of the exhibits shows two giant erect penises flailing above the water as two male right whales rub together . Bonobos, my favourite sort of monkeys, are apparently bisexual - relations between males are 'special'

Now, do we really want to know?

Of course, like all homosexually-related exhibitions/parades/documentation, there are the usual christians who are insisting that homosexuals will burn in hell. Yes, with brimstone and hellfires and all that. And interesting theories flood the question on why homosexuality exists…my fav is:

And a study of homosexual men in Italy suggested that their mothers and sisters
had more offspring. "The same genes that give homosexuality in men could give
higher fertility among women," he said.

did a black cat cross your path recently?

2006-10-11T13:14:00.000+01:00

When you are on a roll, nothing can stop you

Firstly, my blog screwed up and wouldn't accept page breaks, so my posts resembles one of an imbecile not knowing how to space out words or make paragraphs - I can distinctly hear my st. 3 class teacher screaming down my ear that I need to pace my words. If you can read this, it means that I have manage to fix it after 3 days of playing questions volley with moo.

Secondly, I seem to have lost my camera. Again. This time I seem to have misplaced it somewhere in my mess of a living room. I suspect Bacon misplaced/stepped/hid it when he was tidying after my mess. I am on the verge of severe withdrawal symptoms of not taking pictures for a week - yesterday night at dinner, I took pictures using Bacon's phone. The snotty french waitress thought I was bluetooth-ing the tatin aux pommes.

Thirdly, some asshole smashed the rear windscreen of my car yesterday night/this morning and stole Bacon's laptop. Yes, yes I know, never leave anything valuable in the car; I can attest that Bacon never leaves his laptop(s) in the car, but yesterday for some unknown stupid reason, he left it in the booth and not the backseat like he usually do; and promptly forgot to bring it into the house.Damn toolan. I was greeted by the happy sight of a police woman taking our statements down at 7.20am today.On the plus side, she sent some CSIs around to dust for prints and collect 'evidence'. Fucking efficient right. I didn't catch them, but Bacon stayed home today (no point going to work when you cannot work) and chatted with them whilst they were doing their work - its so bizzare but we watch about 4 episodes of CSIs per week, so we are into this sort of things, just never expected to find them working around our car dusting for prints and blood.He lost all his work stuff and we lost about £50 in excess to replace the windscreen.

How more 'suey' can I get!!!!

Oh, and yesterday the Bacons celebrated their 2nd year of togetherness.

je ne regrette pas

2006-10-10T12:25:00.000+01:00

Today I dream

Of the life that was and the life that could have been

Of opportunities missed

And chances taken

Of endless weekends of reeking whiskey breath

Mingled with the morning-after starbucks iced americano

And conquests that were made and left

Just as quickly as the smouldering of the cigarette after

Smiles that starts as rapid as the arrival of the next Chivas

And lost as soon as the dj stops spinning my life away

Of people who stuck through thick and thin

Of living life with no regrets.

*thinking of an old friend, who composed beautiful pictures out from a car wreck that is me. i miss you, and i wish you well. I wish we were still friends - just like old times.

my blog,my beef

2006-10-09T12:51:00.000+01:00

exordinarily ordinary have crashed and burned - there seem to be template problems but I have not actually done anything to it for ages.It is now apparently visible (but very screwed-up) in IE but totally non-existant in firefox. I need to go through my template with a fine-tooth comb,so bear with me.

It's been more than a week since I've been stuck burning out at work - damn drama. I've gone through 2 bosses in a space of 6 months, one's been retrenched and another one has quit.Then there is me..stuck in space,trying to balance everything out and learning without direction.Its been so hard I have been subjected to wearing glasses to work - my eyes are hurting from staring too long at the PC with my contacts.

Posts may be sporadic for the week due to work commitments.Then again, everytime I post that I will not be on fulltime blogging mode, I always end up posting more than ever.

Moving on to other good news, we had purchased a new bed and a new sofa!

Including the more than 50% off (was £1799) and 5-year insurance, we just splurged about £1000 on a pair of sofa. I love the retro-ness of the handrests and the yummy choc brown! Of course, the fact that it is ala Joey&Chandler's La-z-yee Boy chairs helps as well..we fell asleep on them at the showhouse.

We bought a brown leather bed as well - sorry,no pix here. After the numerous discounts, it came up to £275 without mattress..which I forsee will cost us another £400 or so.

After all that excitement, I coughed up another £30 for a quick spree at Gap. Ahh...the bliss of spending money. Or Mastercard.

damnit!

2006-10-05T11:12:00.000+01:00

I've just missed my counter turning 11,111! It's now standing at 11,121 stalkers.

I've been waiting for 3 days and I don't believe I've missed me. Yes, the smallest things amuse me.

Goodbye...I shall miss you my sunshine

2006-10-05T08:33:00.000+01:00

"I don't want!"

"Want la…c'mon, you know you have to, it's time"

"I don't want I don't want…go away, leave me alone"

"It's Friday soon…..c'mon, a few more days to go, open your eyes"

"Leave me be! I want to sleep! "

10 mins later

"I lazy to take the bus from here - err…can you drop me off?"

"I asked you to wake up just now…I'm running late now!"

"C'mon la…please la…it's cold la…"

"Grr….ok"

This is the daily conversation that we have at around 7.20am, Monday to Fridays. Increasingly so now that it's getting cold; with the highest temp being 15c, we are well nudging along towards winter. I remember how in Fresno it would only get cold after Halloween (it's like a benchmark date for me); which means there are loads of people dressed up in the most popular costume of all time - as a hooker. Everywhere I looked in school during 31st October are girls in hooker garb. I miss Fresno

But I digress.

I believe I suffer from SAD - Seasonal Affected Disorder (or something like that) - I get depressed when there is not a lot of sunlight out and I get depressed when it gets too cold. The sun is now setting at 6.30pm - 7pm, which means that it will soon be setting at 4pm. My fav temp hovers around 20c, which I must admit, we tend to get here in summer more than the whole year in KL where it hovers at an uncomforable and sweltering 30c (if you are lucky - it dips to a freezing 26c at night)

So it's with an absolute dread, I welcome Autumn with a pout and stromp. The only good thing about it is the layers and layers of clothes that I am allowed to purchase (hiding my post-wedding flabs), seeing that all my winter stuff are already packed up in a box.

Goodbye my summer
Goodbye my friend
You have been the one,
You have been the one for me....

Reason 1234 why I heart him

2006-10-03T10:16:00.000+01:00

Because I don’t think I can find anyone else who would go to London and return the same day with a dozen of my favourite melt-in-mouth, 340-calorie Krispy Kreme, trudging it along Kings' Cross into the 2-hour train ride back home.

Bring me to the truth,o yummy burger..

2006-10-02T21:45:00.000+01:00

It's not often that Le Bacons eat out on a Monday - it being the night where Bacon prefers to run like a pig chasing its own curly tail round and round a football (court?) for 5-a-side. So Mondays you are more likely to see me at home catching up on ironing men' clothes and preparing a late dinner.

(un)Fortunately, Bacon was kicked badly in the shins last monday...it's a dark angry purple now.This means no football, and a nice meal out!

The Oracle is a nice little bar by the river aire in Leeds City centre. I was last there for the steak nite (the day I lost my rings!) , and I've always wanted to try out the half price burgers on Mondays - but football always wins.

So off we went,trudging towards the Oracle with one angry purple shin.After deliberations, we decided that we are going to go halves on the Tandoori Lamb Burger and the Ultimate Oracle Burger.

The burger is the amazing height of 5 inches! Absolutely delish,served with a slice of Gouda inside and BACON! The meat patties reminds me of my fav burger joint of all time, In-n-out, which is only available in the west coast of california

The lamb burger turned out to be lamb kebabs served with pitta bread, minty yoghurt and tomato relish. The lambs were a little overcooked and tough,but I loved the minty yoghurt dip.

Total damage? $7.75 for two burgers, including a portion of shoestring fries (the burgers come with a gorgeous nutty salad and not fries).Bargin - seeing that a big mac costs about the same with twice the fat and half the flavour.Pints are pulled at $2.50 each of carling,cafferys,tetley's...the usual suspect.Wednesdays are steak nite, with a choice of beef,gammon or salmon at $7.95 per head,including fries and side salad - a must-try for a nice,yet cheap alternative to weekday dining.

Oracle is situated at Brewery Wharf, over the bridge from 42 The Calls and a 5 minute walk from the Malmaison and The Corn Exchange.
3 Brewery Place,
Leeds, LS10 1NE

the red hot lust

2006-09-28T10:14:00.000+01:00

its that little something, that wild oat you sow. the chilli in the curry, the cheese in the pizza - we've all had (or wished we had) one of them in some shape or form at some point in time. the one man that you've gotta have. the one man that you know it will be near impossible to keep. the one without the future. but yet so tantalising. your relationship is based on nothing but obsession and lust.

signs that he puts the x in the xxx

you daydream about him, and at night you wish that you dream about him
he's so wildly bad for you and you know it
you cannot see the both of you being together in 3 years time
you cannot imagine living in close proximity with him
you think his body is hot hot enchilada hot and his butt is just absolutely to die for.
you just know you're going to get hurt but you don't care
you'll travel the world for him.
when meeting up with him your heart beats so hard that if you opened your mouth, it'll probably pop out
when you are apart you count the seconds till you see him again
every beep from your phone makes you jump like you've been electrocuted
when he touches you, your knees seem to be affected by early symptoms of osteoporosis and your whole body will be convulsed in an involuntary shiver (maybe its because you're butt naked)
you have sms conversations about your underwear
he's different from anyone you've ever met before, look wise, cultural wise, attitute wise, smell wise.

(plus points for you if he comes roaring in your life on a motorbike with a permanent scowl)

You know what I think? I think it's perfectly healthy to have an obsession. Most people think that it unproper, and why on earth are you wasting your youth away, but I say go for it. Experience is the spice of life. And there is no life worth living if you've not had a bad boy/girl before, permeating your thoughts, your movement, your senses. As long as you do not mistaken it for love, because baby, it is nothing but pure red-hot lust. When it's over, you wondered what on earth did you ever see in him. As hot as it burns, it fizzles out as quickly, and you're left with nothing but a memory and a smile on your face.

go for it girl:)

Waving goodbye to my very first garden..

2006-09-27T12:08:00.000+01:00

This will possibly be the last shot of Le Jardin chez Bacon for the year. Seeing that I am one of the most untalented (and possibly laziest) gardener in the world, I had done superbly well for a first try. Even my mother, the acclaimed gardener (my friends describe my mom's garden as 'hotel manicured') do not believe that I had actually grown anything - she thinks I've just bought it off the supermarket and took really nice pictures of it. So she is insisting that I take pictures of it coming off the ground to prove myself.

The best has got to be the comment my mom's friend made when I told her that I'm growing strawberries, " HAH?You grow vegetable ar? But you used to be so happening wan wor….aiya,what happened to you girl?"

Lolz.I feel so honoured.

Since we are moving homes in 3 weeks time, anything that are not in pots will be left behind…which is most of my plants and that includes my cherry tree and multiple root plants. So join me as we wave goodbye to the product of my 4 months of laziness….presenting my blooming garden in September:

My dark orange sunburst sunflowers - this is dedicated to my fav mom-to-be, maggie (her fav flowers!)

Fresno chilli peppers and Apache chilli peppers - more fiery than cilipadis

Fresh from the ground; my albino carrots, onions and beetroot.

(cat grown with love,not miracle-gro)

Watch my garden grow
Dead blooms
Cabbage Patch moi
Plants are growing

I give and I give and what do I get in return?

2006-09-26T15:13:00.000+01:00

I don’t know how men do it. Anniversaries, birthdays, valentines' day…how do you figure out what to get your better half a gift worth their weight in gold, figuratively speaking?

I hate receiving things that I have no need for (an ugly vase, a silver plated necklace - they have all ended up in the trash or as pass-me-on gifts). Not to say that I don't appreciate the thought,but I hate it when I receive gifts that I have no use for, thus polluting the tiny space that is my home.I've also consistenly received cookbooks - don't know why. This is why I always give huge hints to Bacon as to presents.I must say, he has consistenly done very well…and even though I had come up with major hints, he still manage to surprise me in a good way…usually by pretending that he has not bought me jackshit and suprising me with things that I've mentioned many moons ago.

Le Bacons are fast approaching the two-year anniversary of when things first got serious. As this is our first as Mr & Mrs, I was hoping to get something to commemorate the occasion. No, I don't want a Selangor Pewter engraved platter nor matching articles of clothings. No cuddly soft toys either.

Even though I will benefit from it, I don't think it's very romantic to get him HMV vouchers or a sofa or a dryer. I know he's been dreaming of a posh lawnmower,but frankly, I prefer him to slave over out lawn than get it over and done with in 5 mins. Heh.

Strangely enough, he don't really like me giving him presents. Which makes it hard as he gives no hints. The only thing that he ever requested for were tickets to see Kylie Minouge - which I wanted to but somehow Kylie was at the back of my mind and I never got around to buying it. Poor Bacon threw a stromp when he found out that I knew she was having a concert and hid that away from him, on the 'pretense' that I wanted to surprise him with tickets. And promptly forgot to buy it. Luckily his cousin came to my rescue and offered him two extra tickets.

So it is now up to me to prove myself to not be a failure in the art of giving.What can I buy the boy who has the best wife in the world (aherm) and a pair of Kylie tickets?

a brief peek into the heart of yorkshire

2006-09-26T10:11:00.000+01:00

York is the epitome of the fairytale english village. It's the picturesque Enid Blyton storybook tale minus the golliwog (you're not allowed to call them golliwog anymore, by the way. PC gone nuts.You are not supposed to sing Baa Baa Black Sheep, it is now Baa Baa Rainbow Sheep ). My last trip here was a visit to the famed Betty's tearoom and basic bumming around on a holiday mood. Having moved really close to York, I had not made the effort to revisit this town - usually I get misled by the Factory outlet stores on the outskirts of town where Armani and Hugo Boss goes for 50% off.

We were here for the York international Food and Drink Festival, and there were some strange and wonderful food here as well…we had a wild boar burger (half eaten) and some dutch pancakes - which looks like the Kaya Balls in malaysia and taste quite like it as well . Unfortunately, I seemed to have lost all my pictures related to the food festival; so here are some other peeks of York

York Minister. Bacon at the entrance to the town centre - it's like what you see in fairytales of Sleeping Beauty and such, there is a stone wall going all around the city to prevent unsavory attacks from enemies

Time waits for no one. Especially not a wild boar burger

Bounty of the land - fake vegs for autumn at the windows of Betty's

life on a tropical paradise

2006-09-25T11:14:00.000+01:00

Coming towards the close of diving season, the island bug has hit again.Every so often (evey week) I dream of an island life. And here is my dream - a catalouge in full color; pix by the-one-from-redang and me

Follow me to paradise

My name's not nemo

The leatherback

I'm a trigger fish, not tigger the tiger!

We are chrismas tree corals..give us presents NOW

I am a giant la-la (trans: clam)

Table top corals (not table mountain casino for those fresnans)

The la la between the sticks

The-one-from-Redang

Mornings in paradise

Afternoons in paradise

Swim away your worries

All rights reserved - for more, see:
sourrain's photos tagged with lifeinperhentian

bienvenue au bon weekend!

2006-09-22T10:05:00.000+01:00

Since Wednesday, I've been waking up thinking that it's Saturday. I hate the shock when I actually snapped out of my dream and had to roll out of bed.But tomorrow shall bring no such shock!

A lot going on this weekend:

Winter clothes
With the looming freezing weather, it's time to chuck out my beloved slippers of all guises and slap on warmer shoes. I have a pink suede handbag that needs a coordinating shoes, I need a new winter coat, I need warm work-clothes, a new pair of sneakers (you say trainers, I say sneakers)…the list continues.However, due to my looming need for a clothes dryer, a sofa, a chandelier ect…I can only buy one of each, and probably 4 warm tops and two pairs of pants (you say trousers I say pants - so kill me ). Last year's winter shopping wasn't very succesful due to pinched purse strings, but this year I should be much better off and there will be no need for me to salivate at clothes - I just make them mine! Spotted a couple nice winter coats, but since I can only buy one, I need to shop around to see if there's another that I like more. I still can't decide if I want to go all-out in a fire engine red coat or the virginal white direction. With cute buttons or big bow? With turtleneck or a cute doll-like round neck collar?

York Festival of Food
This one's a gem! Heading over to York on Sunday for a pigout session and probably joining the ale trail.I get excited with anything that has to do with food - gluttony knows no bounds. I wanted to head over for a leisurely Sunday buffet at my fav thai place - but I'll probably forgo that and head over to the food festival instead. Sneakily, I might try to wing a side trip to the York Factory outlet to replenish body shop smellies - depends on how nice Bacon is feeling on sunday

House stuffFirst buyer coming over tonight to view mi casa. I still think we're selling the house short - but its too late now. Need to make my bed when I get home tonight and wash a couple of plates - as usual,my house is a huge mess. Heading over homebase over the weekend to look at some sliding doors for my wardrobes ect..the usual homely stuff. Need to start planning plants for the spring - I'm still amused at planting my own lillies, tulips and daffodils.And of course, I need to source for boxes and pack my life. Again.

I heart stepfamily

2006-09-22T08:21:00.000+01:00

This will be the last in my trilogy on racism.There is no point loitering on this topic too long..as I believe that some people are not worth grumbling over.I was going to reply to Otto's comments on my previous post…but its' too long and deserves its own post.

Now, I try not to blog about family too much here, as there is always a high possibility of them googling me and finding this…they know (sorta) that I have some sort of presence online, and had always asked for this site / my flickr site.

Once upon a time, Bacon's parents split up, and his father married another woman who have two daughters. After about 10 years , stepsister 1 now has a boyfriend, whose parents are actually Malaysian Chinese(surprise surprise). So you would think that it would be great for me fitting in since there is a pseudo Malaysian on the dinner table whenever we do one of them family dinners. Nothing could be further from the truth, and it came to a point where I so wanted to just stand on the table and scream at him.

Over easter dinner at the outlaws no. 1, the f-i-l cracked a joke that there is nothing wrong with the french - they are just so; foreign. And foreigners are strange. Me being the 'foreigner' on the table had to of course, grit my teeth and continue munching on my fatty lambchops. Hey, you can pick your friends, but not your family. Then the pseudo malaysian pipped up, " Yeah, they are just not english are they, I love their country, just don’t like them cause they are not english"

Now, what is wrong with the picture?

HELLO? Your parents are Malaysian, with chinese roots. SO ARE YOU, ya little wanker. And here he is, sitting there happily criticizing everything/anything non-English. And being typically cheena, I can't put it down to him being uneducated - typical of chinese parents, he's an accountant. And have shiploads of relatives from Malaysian visiting. And he'll make fun of the fact that Malaysian chinese have a chinese name and a 'fake' english name ( it is called part of our name ok!) , and happily asked me if my name was fake and what was my 'real' chinese name.

Hmm.

My mother is cleber can or not? She picked my chinese name via an english name can or not? Your mother never give you a chinese name that means your name is fake is it now?
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
I sometimes worry that my kids will grow up just like him, stupid, ignorant, and identifying with some segments of the british population, proceeded to insult his own parents.

Case in point no. 2. Now stepsister 2 is a spoilt little brat. She has not travelled anywhere other than Tenerife in Spain (which is more like Haadyai for people living in Penang or Singapore for people living down south) so that does not count. And this little prat…she used to come over all the time, and just sit there like a useless dummy. She'll tell Bacon off that he's not seen some of his friends ect - hello, we just got married we want to paint our bedroom can or not? My breaking point was when she came over one day and we were cooking tomyum bihun. She asked us what were them 'noodles' made out of, and I said it's rice noodle. She proceeded to comment that why everything in our house is made out of rice. I just looked at her and stated that same shit, different day, all you eat is potato anyway.

Then once she came over when I was hawking lunabliss jewelry. Right smack in the middle of December, and she was wearing stilettoes with no socks or stockings and complained that it was freezing.Seeing that its only 5min walk to my house, I told her that she can go back to my place and grab a pair of my new socks to keep her tootsies warm...yeah, I was trying to make nice since she was there keeping me company. Little prat replied, "No thank you, I don't do stuff like that. I'm BRITISH"

She don't come over as often anymore. Maybe it's because everytime she's here I will go for a long bath or watch tv up in my room. Oh, we will never know the answer.

Whose fault is it?

2006-09-20T15:49:00.000+01:00

I used to work in a company who is always full of expats…with Bacon being one of them once upon a time .Most people who are sent over to work in excompany are around 19 - 35 years of age, not your average high-flying expats with one arm around a petite dark sultry chick with long-hair-till-the-ass the from Carnegies or Beach club.

It was my first exposure to small-town kwai lous (call them farangs,white man, ang moh). And as a huge MNC, lovely excompany stated in their terms and conditions that they are NOT allowed under any circumstances to have any locals in their rooms.WAH, I is malaysian, I is smelly fart.It also states (in not as many words) that socializing with locals are discouraged.I is Malaysian, I is bad influence.

Then the Malaysians. Small-town big-town irregardless, they stare with awe at the blue eyed blonde haired gods and goddesses, and treated them as such. In all the training and induction classes, half the people there are besotted with their trainer - the abovementioned blue hair blonde eyed monster. The monsters never speak to them out of training, due to their own twisted the-locals-eat-tortises mentality (or in dreybee's case - I-eat-cats; or Otto's I-eat-you-for-dinner). When I first started seeing Bacon, I used to basically garner a lot of hate-stares amongst 'his girls' . Imagine, even Bacon had a fan club to his name (this kind of face also can sell??) ! Our relationship was a hot topic amongst excompany's grapevines, with the expats persuading him it’s a holiday romance - tingtong macadongdong perception before Little Britain even made it's name.

Whose fault is it then, the ignorant-from-birth kwai lous or the piss-scared MNCs forewarning them about the heathen locals? Perhaps its' the jakun Malaysian treating them with so much awe and respect. Do you think they will stare at awe at the sun burnt paddy farmers up in Kedah and Perlis who had been feeding us for centuries?

Creative juices are running on dangerously empty.Bear with me.

Superiority complex

2006-09-18T15:38:00.000+01:00

There has been so much talk of inferiority complex, where someone always feel that they don't quite measure up, no self confidence if you wish. However, I've had my bouts of what I like to call superiority complex; where I feel that I am so superior, I would just ignore the people that I feel is inferior to me.

Hold your horses, I'm not being lan-si or class-consious. It is just a defense mechanism.

Example in point:
Last weekend, I met a friend's girlfriend, whom upon realizing that I am Malaysian, mentioned in all seriousness that I might eat her pet tortise. Then she asked me in all seriousness again if I had tried fish and chips yet. It was the first time in my life I was gobsmacked - is she for real???!

If I did not adopt the mantra that I am superior to her culturally-wise, exposure-wise and wisdom-wise, I would get really cross at her for being totally and completely racist and patronizing. I can't even credit her being ignorant due to the fact that she is a village girl and had no further education than O Levels (comparative to Malaysia's form 5). She had actually worked in Malaysia in my old company for 6 months, and being lucky enough to be afforded the chance of living in a different culture for 6 months, should realize and rejoice in cultural variety. I can say I do not know of anyone who had not had fish and chips before.Even my grandmother.

Now picture this. My beloved cosmopolitan KL vs. her small town farmyard with the nearest shops being 15 mins drive away. Who is the superior one now? Do I rib her for being so quaintly rural?I am not saying that farmers are thick or inferior, but I do feel just a tad boiling mad when small town idiots treat me like TingTong Macadongdong off Little britain; the stereotype example of a thai/philiphino/russian mail order bride. Hey, I don't even want to live here in the first place! I earn nearly double of what she earns -even whilst I was working in Malaysia and earning RM, still earned more than what she gets here. But she will always treat me as inferior to her farmyard-minded racisim

Her bf,whom me and Bacon met whilst he was working in Malaysia, being nearly as blinded as her, bought me some 'strange and wonderful' food to try. She started squealing because it is apparently 'disgusting' and utterly inedible. Guess what the strange and wonderful food was?

Good ol' american beef jerky (tasting deliciously like bah kua; chinese sweetmeat). Not realizing I had lived in California for 3 years - heck, I actually tried beef jerky whilst living in Bruxelles before I went over to california.

I don't think I'll be making that hike to hicksville to visit them again. If you've ever encountered racism - just remember, you are a better person than them, therefore it's just like leaving a mad dog to bark against a tree…barked long enough with no reaction,will realize that his racism is futile and stupid.

PS: I'm not sure if her blatant display of inconsiderate-ness is due to true racism or just pure ignorance - but since she's lived in KL for 6 months, is still unforgivable irregardless.

PPS: I also happen to think that most English are now sufficiently exposed to foreign cultures to embrace it rather than acting like a total schmuck being racist - this is not an attack or generalization of all English/British.

Musically retarded

2006-09-18T10:10:00.000+01:00

I've been tagged by Skippy:

List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now. Post these instructions in your LiveJournal/blog along with your seven songs. Then tag seven other people to see what they’re listening to.

Grrrr…

Music.Hmm.The last time I purchased a cd was literally months ago. So here's my shame:

I don't feel like dancing - Sissors Sisters
This song has been on the radio all the time that I can't help but get it on my mind on an everlasting loop. It's so 80's, its hip! Retro anyone with the dirty disco fairies?

Put your records on - Corrine Bailey Rae
Off the last cd I bought.We wanted to play her for the wedding, then realized that she has some sad depressive dark songs as well as happy uplifting ones.

Chasing cars - Snow Patrol
Thanks Grey's Anatomy, which seemed to have adopted it as their theme song, this has been running around my head like a marathon runner on crack. " If you'd just lay here, if you'd just lay here…"

Monster - Automatic
Opening act for the Kaiser chiefs when I saw them in April, they rocked then, and had progressively climbed up the charts since.

I can't think of any more at the moment..blame it on the Sissors Sisters and their "Ta-dah" album.Need to steal Bacon's HMV vouchers to get their album - on second thoughts, Bacon would be escastic to have their album. Christmas and birthdays, Bacon always gets HMV vouchers whilst I always get GAP vouchers.

Anyhoo..I tag : dreymer, Mooiness & Mikel

the bacons @ V Festival, Weston Park 2006

2006-09-14T13:21:00.000+01:00

Let my eyes be your eyes:

Welcome to my home for 3 nights…suprisingly,it was really comfy. One tip for virgin campers..do NOT turn on the light in your camp and then proceed to change.Not a good idea,every sillouheted bump and nipple is visible from miles.Like wayang kulit (trans: shadow puppet).

The brothers having breakfast - cranberry juice with kit kats. I had a pot of tuna pasta salad..go figure.

Whilst walking around, I bumped into a giant pot noodle..

It's the UK version of cupnoodle/ mee in my mug. I bet Moo would love living inside this truckstop…mmmm,instant noodle.

There's also vanfulls of footlong hotdogs…

The occasional Ninja turtle roaming the land..

My favourite place, the teepee,where steaming hot cups of chai tea beats starbucks' ass

Giant snake and ladders game to be enjoyed by all (I was cheated out of my championship..:()

And it starts pouring cats and dogs..

As soon as the sugarbabes starts singing. Coincidence?I think not!

Hello??Yes, this is Bacon…is that Cow?

Whilst grooving to the Loose Cannons, I bumped into Sponge Bob sponging his way though the beats

Hungry? How about some chow mein and Sweet and Sour chicken McNugget? Yes, McNugget instead of chicken.

She sell sea shells by the sea shore? How about sea shell speakers?

Tired?Redbull gives you wings! Or wheels…whichever you prefer

The race for the illusive Nasi Lemak

2006-09-13T10:25:00.000+01:00

Woke up bright and early on Saturday morning after a drunken night doused with illegal Absinthe/Listerine. Pam being Pam, is still dead asleep at 9.30am, so I hopped up to her living room to put my plastic face on whilst Bacon slowly awakens to the ambulance and fire engines sounds that is of Camden. Heard the toilet flushing, and out came Rico, all hungover from the absinthe but still wide awake because it was just so darn hot.

Being typically Malaysian, we started talking about food…yummy this and yummy that we of course decided to go for Nasi Lemak.Nothing says good morning more than Nasi Lemak. With grumbling stomachs, we realized that the only person who knows where it is (she bought me there last time) was dead asleep…she even left a note not to wake her up believe it or not. Rico started ringing his pals, but they just know that the Malaysian restaurant in SoHo is bad..there are a couple of good ones but they had no idea. Irregardless, we decided to try our luck, and at 11am,hopped on towards Leicester Sq in search for our nasi lemak.

Walking through the labyrinth that is the streets of London's Chinatown, I knew it was in a small foot-traffic only road, but we still couldn’t find it after 15mins. And Chinatown is only small.Rico approached a guy making delivery to ask if he knew any Malaysian restaurant (yes,we think everyone is Malaysian in London).. But being a hongkie, that guy had no idea. Then we came up with an idea of asking this Malaysian girl that works in a bakery whom Rico had met previously when going for his 'bolo bau' (trans: Pineapple buns). She pointed us all the way up the street. So like good little piglets, we went in search of Nasi Lemak with her directions.

5 mins later

Still no sign nor smell! What the heck…we then ended up in a noodle place which wasn't very nice after all, but we were starving!

Sulkily,we headed back to the bakery for bolo baus to take away for later.After a long discussion, we got new directions to the C&C restaurant - the alleyway was next to a Pizza Express and hidden by a delivery van! Shocking. As we were stuffed from the heavy yet undelicious breakfast, all we did was just stare at the menu salivating but could not possibly fit another grain of rice in our bulging stomach. At one point I exclaimed, "Wahlau, roti canai £4….wan to die ar?? 7 times also not that expensive man..eat gold ar?". Then typical of me, I turned and saw the restaurant manager smiling at us and he even asked us what would we like to have. Of course, at the moment of being caught as a cheapo, I just said I've had breakfast, will return later.

Being as kiasu as I am, the next day I woke up early again, and hopped over to leicester sq. Whilst waiting for C&C to open their lemak doors at 11, we headed over for a wander in Soho and met some delicious looking cakes

At 10.55 sharp, I returned to C&C…just so see that their doors are not open yet. Bloody hell. I asked them what time will they open, and they said 12. That won't give us enough time to eat and meet Pammy's mom in Notting Hill for 1.30pm! GRRRRR…another wasted trip with no nasi lemak to show for.

Undeterred, we headed on there again after Notting Hill festival.Third time lucky you said?

At long last, we meet again...

Pam's dry pan mee

Kopi ais dua

I'm with chanel Rico, I'm a penangkia Sam & I'm a hippy Pam

How to spend more than you can earn

2006-09-13T00:40:00.000+01:00

Buy a house costing 10 times of what you earn (GROSS before tax)
Cost:195,000
Spend nearly one month's salary on air tickets to Australia
Cost:1,000
Upgrade to Flickr Pro (yoohoo!)
Cost: 13.99
Plan blog migration
Cost: 25
Bring the cat to the vet due to a broken paw
Cost: 50

Every thing else, you have mastercard

Yes,all are bought and I shall live the next 6 months to 30 years in paying it off.One thing I can say, Flickr Pro is worth it's price in gold.

Robbie Williams Live @ Leeds!

2006-09-12T10:10:00.000+01:00

A suprisingly warm afternoon, we rushed to Roundhay park for the mad 90 000 person gathering to see mr robbie in concert.I can honestly say I have no seen so many bodies in one place.Being the kiasu (trans;scared to lose) chinese, I realized the years are catching up on me when I was planning our escape as soon as we got in. Well, don't blame me..look at the crowd,you would too.

I sulkily sat through Orson, as I don't care much for them.However,when Basement Jaxx came on, I was back to where I belong,bopping and hopping.They were absolutely great,with the right amount of vocals and beats

Even little girls want a piece of them

Bacon is all smiles awaiting his robbie..

And in he comes with aplomb

My highlight was take that's Back for good - back when I was a teeny bopper..Mark,Jason, Gary…I never really liked robbie

Due to the fact that Robbie was so tiny we wouldn't be able to tell the difference if it was a gnome on stage instead, we ended up watching him live on tv again on Saturday as the second night of Roundhay Park's gig was televised live. I now have more than enough Robbie to last a lifetime.

Counting lambs

2006-09-11T10:48:00.000+01:00

I woke up on Sunday, thinking about a hair cut.Have not had my haircut for a couple of months…seeing that I couldn't persuade Mr Chanel Stylist Rico to butcher my locks with a kitchen sissors when I was at London...little did he know that I butcher my own locks with garden shears. Hmm, where should I go?Who can I trust enough to chop my locks?

Wait a minute, I'm back in KL and heck my hairdresser is only down the road in Taipan,and seeing that it's a Sunday, I wouldn’t have to pay for parking in Taipan and walk a mile. Seeing the stupid hairdresser will probably spend 3 hours on my hair anyway, free parking is a bargin. Hmm, what should we have? I quite fancy having curly locks for a change, it might be quite nice.But that'll mean I can't color my hair like I usually do, or it'll just be a disaster.I'll chop my locks shorter,but not too short so I can still have a swinging bop. And Bacon will probably love a day to himself.

And then I opened my eyes, and looked straight into a lavender/blueish wall. Hang on a sec, my walls are sherbert green.Where the heck am I?!

Bloody hell, I'm still in England.And this dreams thing is getting strange. Last night I dreamt I was parading around in LAMB clothes.

A little prayer, a lit candle

2006-09-11T10:18:00.000+01:00

Like every other day, I woke up to my GE radio alarm clock, slamming down hard on the snooze button but not actually suceeding in shutting it up. But somehow it was different. Instead of the usual noisy ruckus that is the Breakfast Show, it was a slow instrumental tune on radio. And in my sleepy state, I thought of how nice it was to be waken up by a slow instrumental tune rather than a loud noisy chatter…and I slumbered away.

And then the DJ came on.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we regret to inform you, the United States of America has been attacked.I repeat, the United States of America has been attacked. An act of war has been commited on this nation"

HUH?

Some sick DJ's idea of a joke? That woke me up. I turned around and flipped on my tv to NBC.FOX network. ABC.All showing footage of two buildings crumbling (I did not know the twin tower exists until they collapsed,so kill me for my ignorance).Like the rest of the nation, I was glued to the screens.My spongebob squareface flatmate came into my room (she had no tv) and being the el geeko she is, told me that she heard at 6am (California being 3 hours behind New York) on her way to class that school will be cancelled,but she will be going irregardless and I should get ready too.I was glued onto my screens until the very last minute before I headed on to school.

Due to the scare that was going around, we were let out of classes at around noon, classes were cancelled for the rest of the day, together with Disneyland and supermarkets who were closing in fear of further attacks on places where huge amount of people congregrate.

For the next week, there was nothing on TV but the twin towers crumbling down. I cancelled my trip to Chicago on my folks' insistence. Scores of people lined up in the army recruitment centres to sign up, America was going to war.I can honestly say I have not seen displays of patriotism like that - you sign up for 2 years irregardless of whether you go to war.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

It's been 5 years, and what have we achieved?

Do you remember your September 11?

Update: Spike & Skippy's thoughts

Enter sandman dreams

2006-09-08T16:11:00.000+01:00

Not many people can remember their dreams - and I am one of them who can never remember my dreams.Other than the occasional dream when I would be walking around barefooted and feeling really humiliated. I don’t know why, seeing that I love going barefoot usually, but this was the only recurring dream that I remember.

However, yesterday's dream was so bizzare that I woke up thinking how am I going to blog about it. I know..its like how more lame can I get…dream also dream about blogging.Now that I rehashed the dream in my mind, it seemed lamer than ever, so the below might be real boring reading but I am going to pen it down anyway. I wanted to catch dreybee to tell her this,but since I've not seen her online in donkey years, I shall just blog it

Dreybee met my ex bf only once before, as she was still back in Fresno when I started going out with him. We always talked about going over to his restaurant for a meal but that never materialized whilst I just got bigger and bigger wolfing down carbonara and delicious tataki of tuna.

Anyhoo, yesterday I dreamt that we were back together again…and for some reason, dreybee was coming out clubbing with us (me and him never did any clubbing together before) . We both (me and dreybee) wanted to have dinner first at a posh restaurant,but D was whinging that he wants to go some hawker stall. He whinged so much we decide to 'lose' him, so we headed towards 1Utama,where we planned to run away from him as soon as we arrived (why would we want to do that instead of just asking him to get lost is beyond my sleeping self). But as we were getting into the carpark, he whinged again and made a sharp u turn towards 1utama 2's parking instead. And this kept happening…and I keep trying to dump him, but he whinged so much I couldn't get a word in…we even tried just opening the car door and jumping out .And in my sleeping self, all this happened within the 6-hour window that we apparently picked dreybee up and drove around whinging.

Maybe it's got to do with the fact that he was and still is (according to mutual friends) very critical of everyone and the only opinion that is right is his. Maybe it's because he puts people down to make himself seem better, but no one ever seem to be able to tell him that it's wrong to do that and get away unscathed.Maybe because I knew the relationship was wrong for me and yet I stayed with him for so many moons because I was afraid.Of being alone of going without. Of wasting my time, of wanting him to be the last love of my life. He hurt me so much I got myself tattoed, lost myself drinking and I stayed single for nearly 2 years. Maybe I needed to realize that I am now out of a psychologically torturing relationship and should appreciate Bacon more admist all his flaws and irritating-ness (we were fighting yesterday because I did not want to bring his Michael Schumacer poster with us to our new home) .

I don’t know,but I do find the whole thing oh so strange.Anyone can read dreams?What were your strangest dream?

smalltalk: Bloody hell, Blogger is eating up my pictures again!

The pop king vs. the dance princess

2006-09-05T10:05:00.000+01:00

Some says opposite attracts. Put together a happy pop fan and a trance head non-commercial music lover and you have us.People always think that it's the female who's into all this poppy happy girlband boyband thing.I really wonder why.

The last time I really enjoyed commercial music was when NKOTB (for you youngesters, it is New Kids on The Blocks) was in fashion complete with the curry-puff hairstyle. From then, I drifted around seattle grunge,alternative, pseudo rock,french pop and then I stumbled into lyric-less songs, and I had roughly stayed there ever since.I must admit, the one thing that pushed me to dance music/chillout was the fact that I got my heart broken and it wouldn't heal as long as I listend to all those commercial songs which always speaks of love unrequited.

So it's with great shame that I announce:

The Bacons are going to watch Robbie Williams! Complete with chantings of "lobbie, lobbie oh maw gawd lobbie!"

Hahaha.

(pic off vh1)

A concert that nearly did not happen, we picked up tickets earlier this morning from the post office. For the past 8 months, Bacon have been announcing that we have concert tickets for the Sunday gig. Because we had extra tickets to sell, I checked the concert dates, and realised that Robbie was playing on Friday and Saturday. Bacon being bacon, still insisted that he had tickets for Sunday.

So imagine our shock when we realised that we had received tickets for FRIDAY. Not even Saturday, but FRIDAY. And gates open at 2pm. What am I supposed to do, walk out at 1.30pm for lunch and don't return? It's just Bacon being tyically careless - I checked his email, and he did indeed get an email last november that we had 4 confirmed tickets for Robbie on FRIDAY. If there was any amendments to the dates ect, bacon was to email them back immediately. And this was back in NOVEMBER. We've sold the other two tickets, happily announcing to his friend that it's for Saturday.

After some running around, Bacon manage to confirm that Lobbie is only coming on stage at 8.30pm. However, I can't wait for Basement Jaxx to come on at 6.30 as the supporting..woohoo! I remember watching Bush in concert, but enjoying Moby more as the supporting act (yes, back in the stone ages when Moby still played supporting). Basement Jaxx rocks, so hopefully I would be able to rush there in time for 6.30.

Everybody now, "lobbie, lobbie, lobbie….."

We are now nearing victim no. 10,000

2006-09-04T08:29:00.000+01:00

Good morning all

I am now staring at my counter, which stands at 9993 page loads over the past year. Yes, I know that's not actually that many for a blog,but I get excited over teeny little things - can??

Just awaiting for it to turn my first 5-digit counter.woo!

Did not do apeshit all weekend..I slept,read,watch tv,ate...all in bed. Poor bacon had to run around cooking,cleaning.Intermittenly I slept until 6pm yesterday..with bursts of food here and there. Well, I did try to head out to Starbux,but on the way tehre Bacon decided to pop by a furniture/junk shop to see whether it still exists..by the time he managed to find the shop, I was already doozing off so we headed home.

Ah, bliss of not doing anything. And now, the nightmare of the week begins again

(sorry posts have been so sparse lately, dealing with big-ass dramas here at work)

Tanggal 31 Ogos - Happy Birthday Malaysia

2006-08-31T00:01:00.000+01:00

Hujan emas di negeri orang,
Hujan batu di negeri sendiri
Lebih baik negeri sendiri

Roughly translating to:

Golden rain overseas
Rocky rain at home
Its better at home

Merdeka had been a very significant day for me in the past year. It is a day to reflect on the past, the present and the future. Of how my country had evolved in many different facets and take on various guises.From the days where my prawn mee during school recess cost RM 0.10 and the RM5 plate of char koay teow I had recently.From the hot, dirty sand-blown and mud-caked kampung house that my grandmother used to live in - and now she lives in a low-rise apartment.Now that it's so clean and cool inside, it's not the same anymore. Good or bad, it is still home to the best nasi lemak and char koay teow in the world, not to mention the world's largest pencil just round the corner from my place

Last year I was contemplating on the irony of having to work on Merdeka for a company belonging to the colonist that granted us Merdeka.This year irony don't even begin to describe my thoughts as I contemplate working every single Merdeka day in the future in the land of the colonist. But then again, is there anything really to celebrate as I watch the country of my birth turn a ripe old age of 49?

As I watch from afar the political infighting of the cream of our political society, I cringe at the thought that I am labelled an outcast in the country I called home. As ethnic chinese, we are now being accused of trying to take over the country and cause racial uproar. That the very country promoting the muhibbah (happy happy joy joy racist-less society) shiet are pointing fingers at the chinese race that we are communists and want to take the country over from the 'bumiputras' (earth prince - aka the malays). I cringe at future merdekas filled with dread, as we are being osctracised from our own country.Is it absurbd for us to be treated like fellow countrymen and not racially quota-ed out from the higher education system which,by the way, our tax money pays for?

It has been 49 years since special rights are given to the ethnic Malays to help them improve their lives with better opportunities at work and at school. Which means two generations of Malays who had grown up accepting the fact that the government is there to help in work and in school with the imposed quotas. But people tend to forget that it is also two generations of 'the others' with broken,trodden down spirits leaving the country, seeking greener pastures elsewhere so that they are not osrtracized in their own country. Mostly not even greener pastures, just somewhere where we are not treated like second class citizens.

I remember when I first moved to Fresno ,filled with wonder at the fact that ethnic minorities i.e. chinese americans, korean americans ect are actually covered by the affirmitive action policies,therefore are given priority in student loans ect to help them better themselves and therefore the ethnic minority society .Absolutely amazing. I found that a wonderful, brilliant idea. Until I found out that most western countries have affirmitive action policies similar to the one in the States. And I started to question my identity as a Malaysian, about how I love and call Malaysia my home,but for Malaysia to treat me like a second class citizen.

Happy birthday Malaysia. In the spirit of Malaysia, let's work towards acceptance that we are all, afterall, fellow countrymen.

And don't forget; merdeka is also the birthday of many people in Moo's family.Happy birthday family Moo.

A dying redang

2006-08-30T14:06:00.000+01:00

Not many things in this world makes me cry - other than breakups and fights with the bad boyfriends . But this is making my heart ache and my eyes wet.

My last view of Redang

Yes, I have an obsession with marine life. I love beaches more than anywhere else on earth, even big bustling cities. I am never happier than when left alone with the fishes or just lazing on the white sandy beach. Swimming with sharks and turtles has left me awed with the beauty of the ocean, and how lucky Malaysia is to boost some of the best islands in the world (in my experience - miles better than the famed Bali or Philiphines' Boracay). Being a grumpy cancer, it helps that I have been brought up close to the seas on an island to adventure loving parents who brought me fishing when I was a month old, by 4, I was expertly stringing worms as baits.At age 24, I wake up early in beautiful Perhentian and join the dive shop owner as she trawl the beaches picking up yesterday's rubbish.

Like many things, beauty is exploited when no proper training/warning/education is given to the gazillions of tourists that throng the famous 3 of the west coast of Malaysia; Perhentian, Redang and Tioman. It's sadder still that those who regularly pollute the islands are Malaysians. But there are no lack of irresponsible uneducated overseas tourists as well - I nearly strangled the bro-in-law when he mentioned that it would be nice to have an aquarium filled with corals and coral fishes i.e. nemo-like. Bacon had to hold me down I kid you not. I can't understand why would someone kidnap nemo for their own viewing pleasure.

Corals which take thousands of years to grow and mature can be broken with a kick of a swimming foot. Some people believe that since everyone else is doing it, why not them? Dead corals,washed up on the beach, disintergrate and turn into the beautiful white sand that you lie on.

Leave nothing but footprints, bring nothing but memories. In Redang's case, it it too late now…but there is still time to rescue whatever that is left. Do not allow Redang to turn into Pangkor, where even the locals have not seen a live coral in years.

I heart Aldo

2006-08-29T13:23:00.000+01:00

Meet my new best bag

An accidental purchase over the weekend in London.From £35 down to £14.99, this was my pick since Bacon is only allowing me one bag from all the treasures in the shops. Seeing that I am seeking for greener pastures and really,really need a bag to stuff all my application forms in a stylish manner, I had to go for urban formal rather than kitschy cute. Well, we always really,really need a bag.

For those heading towards London - there is a little known secret that Aldo has an outrageous discount centre in Camden Market with bags,shoes and accessories at more than 50% off.With all that choice, it was really hard limiting my purchases...I woke up the next morning mumbling, "I need a new bag...and also shoes...*snore*"

And ooh, guess what, I got a pair of matching shoes as well

I *heart* Aldo!

I'm still tired..

2006-08-23T13:20:00.000+01:00

........sorry lah, no pictures nor updates yet.Been so so busy this week,all I want to do is take a day or two off to recharge.Why you ask?

Bacon off somewhere south on work all week
...finding it hard to wake up without someone kicking my butt awake at 7am
Paid a deposit for Plot 10
...so busy trying to clean the house and make nice when the evaluators come on friday
Still trying to recover from V
...still sleeping at 10 everynight
Going to London this friday for Notting Hill Festival and catching up with Pammy
...need to pack and plan itinerary..sigh.
Drowning in work
...Been piled with things that I don't know about and frankly can't be bothered with
Moving on to greener pastures
...Had enough of this shit, it's time to move again,so need to reevaluate my situation

On other good news, I'm off again to wagamama's tonight...hmm,what shall I have?

I'm a V survivor

2006-08-21T10:48:00.000+01:00

How does 60 hours of shower/bath deprivation and trodding in mud without somewhere to even wash your hands sound? Or waking up at 4am dying to pee,but unable to face the long ,cold mud-caked walk to the nearest smelly portaloo?

Quite fun actually.

Back from WW2...too tired..couldn't even climb up the stairs..need a few days to recover...be back with pix and videos when the huge swelling on both my poor feet subside.

Wagamama's hit Leeds!

2006-08-18T11:27:00.000+01:00

I did not realize how much I'm into noodles until I moved here. Spoilt by the variety of Vietnamese pho shops and mid night wonton place in San Francisco, I had never experienced a country which deprived me of my noodles.Until I moved to the Land of the Greasy Chowmein.

So it was with pleasant anticipation when I heard the name wagamama's mentioned. I remember slurping down steaming bowls of noodles a long time ago when it had a branch in Bangsar - where Red Chamber now is (or has Red Chamber closed down too?!). I remember the cool PDA thingys that they used to key our order in...hey, in 1998 PDAs WERE a novelty ok!! Huge bowls and huge spoons were a novelty then as well - and wagamama's were the first to use impossibly huge bowls and spoons.

It opened its Leeds doors on 31st July, and like good little puppies, I dragged Bacon and mommy bacon there the day after - don't blame me, I didn't find out it was open until the 1st,otherwise I would be there waiting for it to open its doors.In the typical style of a posh noodle bar, communal eating had never been more in-style in the UK. Long tables and long benches...it serves its food whenever it is ready ,so starters arrive after the main course.Which is good in a way; get it down you whilst its hot.

Prawn gyoza - strange how they deep fry gyozas and not panfry. The usual dipping sauce of red vinegar is replaced by some poor imitation of rice vinegar dilluted with some sort of liquid.Apparently their duck gyoza is so good it sold out the second day it was open for business.

Chicken Katsu - if you've ever eaten at any Jap restaurant with me,you would spot that this one's mine! Extremely cute presentation..the rice is shaped into a bottom-down currypuff with strips of fried chicken underneath it like legs. Japanese sweet curry is splashed all over it like ice cream topping. It came with a small salad-like thing at the side - yummylicious!

Mommy Bacon contemplating her huge ginger and lemongrass yaki soba.Very light tinge of lemongrass and ginger, it was not flavourful enough for my tastebuds,but she loved it and polished the whole platterfull off - using her chopsticks,she was proud to add.

Bacon's Spicy Beef Ramen. Nicely sliced medium-well done beef atop rice sticks (beehoon). Did they not realize ramen means instant noodle aka Indomie or Maggi? Nice nonetheless, but nothing will beat Yo Sushi's Spicy Beef noodle.At £9.20, I thought it was a little overpriced, although it did come with a fair amount of veggies and good quality beef....still nice though,in fact, I polished off half of it.

I ordered a portion of non-refillable miso soup,which was just mediocre, and had the free green tea which was amazingly lukewarm. The mil had a £4 glass of white wine and Bacon had his Asahi

Total damage? £38 = RM 255

can.die.com

But like all idiots, I'm heading towards it again next week.

Party like its 1999 @ V Festival 2006

2006-08-17T11:08:00.000+01:00

Sunscreen, check
hat, check
tent, check
bikinis, check
raincoat, check,
Phua Chu Kang wellies, check
sleeping bag, check
glo-stick, check
mosquito repellant, check
bottled water, check
toilet roll, check
torchlight, Oops, not checked

Yes children, the bacons are heading for V Festival on 18/08 ! In other words, like a rave ,but lasting over a couple of days.Compared to what I'm used to,it's more rock-like and candypop music (read: Girls Aloud),but peppered with some dancey acts. Due to depleting "fun time funds" no Global Gathering nor Creamfields this year, but there's always next year (fingers,toes and hair crossed).

Two full days of hedonistic fun-time.I can't wait.Will probably come back burnt, piss dirty,mosquito-ravaged and dehydrated with a bad case of diaorrhea.But really, who cares. We're there and we're not square.

Highlights of this year's V Festival:

RADIOHEAD and MORRISSEY to make V Festival debuts as headliners
Plus
FAITHLESS who will co-headline with Morrissey, Beck, Paul Weller, Keane, Razorlight, Kasabian, The Charlatans, Editors, Fatboy Slim, Groove Armada, The Go! Team, Rufus Wainwright, Bloc Party, Hard Fi, The Ordinary Boys, Starsailor, Girls Aloud, The Beautiful South, The Magic Numbers, Sugababes, We Are Scientists, James Dean Bradfield, Kano, Gomez, Sandi Thom, The Cooper Temple Clause, Mew, The Dears, The Cardigans, Delays, Echo And The Bunnymen, Nerena Pallot, My Morning Jacket, Pipettes, Matisyahu, Bell X1, The Divine Comedy, The Dandy Warhols, Orson, The Feeling, Xavier Rudd, Imogen Heap, Regina Spektor, The Crimea, The Dead 60?s, Kubb, Kula Shaker, Morning Runner, Matt Willis, Richard Hawley, Jamie T, Oceansize, Daniel Powter, Gavin De Graw, Biffy Clyro, The Rifles, Phoenix, Bic Runga, Art Brut, Liam Front and the Slowdown Family, The Saw Doctors, Dogs, The Young Knives, Jim Noir, Rushmore, Lily Allen, Pure Reason Revolution, Mute Math, Boy Least Likely To, Captain, Lorraine, The Upper Room, James Morrison, Paulo Nutini, Butch Walker, Seth Lakeman, Director, The Grates, The Milk Teeth and The Dodgems.

To tell you the truth, I dont know half of the acts that would be performing. I do much better with the dance music lineup for creamfields and global gathering, it's ridicullious really that I'm not going for either one of them. I'd love to catch fatboy slim and I've seen Groove Armada at a Kent event and caught Beck when he performed in Fresno eons ago.But hey, we've paid for the tickets and so we're going.At £120 a pop, this better be good.

The only immensely sad news is that there would probably be rain and cold windy weather of around 20-11 degrees...not good for mulching around fields in the planned bikini. I'm not sure if I can shuffle with Phua Chu Kang wellies,probably stomp more like it. Due to the miserable weather and the scarcity of the lineup, a mate just bought a ticket off ebay for £54.I am so angry.So,so angry. We got ours at £120 and it was sold out within a few hours,now people are hawking it for £54?!So here's hoping for the best...but the best is sometimes not good enough.

Dance, baby dance.

The plants are growing!

2006-08-17T01:01:00.000+01:00

The garden had exploded in the past few weeks to now resemble a mini jungle.However,this explosion also meant that all my plants which I had given up on had started to grow at an alarming state

Its a sun shinny day after all in le garden

Well, he loves it.

Something to remind me of my time in California - they're actually quite fiery

Fuschia & orange of my all time fav blooms

Still waiting for my tomatos to ripen on the vine.

And my teeny weeny carrot which is not exactly ready...

....but yummy otherwise!

I actually have 5 more tomato plants that are comming along nicely, a couple chillii plants and a whole row of beetroot..just not thought of taking a pix of.The only thing I regret is missing lavender season this year - I have no lavender in and its right now smack in the middle of lavender season.Aaargh!

The art of Jamming

2006-08-16T16:22:00.000+01:00

If he wasn't married, Bacon would've been thought of by some people as gay. Very gay. He cooks,he cleans,he arranges flowers in the house, color-coordinate my clothes....all the happy housewifey stuff that I am too lazy to do due to the fact that I have grown up with maids...and even when I was maid-less, can't be bothered to do all that. Apart from that, Bacon can also do electrical and plumbing around the house, put together shoeracks,mow the lawn...all husbandy things that I *pretend* to not be able to do.

One of Bacon's skills is the granny-like art of jam making. When the wife is not around, he made some cherry jam...and this time around, I've managed to document the art of making jam:

Blackberries on a bush

Picking

ta-da!

picked raspberries

blackcurrants from our garden

Stuff them all in a pan and boil away

Add apples-they have pectin which what gels your jam together

mulch it

When boiled, add sugar. He uses the type with pectin in it as well so it is more jelly-like.The only part of the recepie that needs to be rememebered: The weight of the sugar should equate the weight of the fruit

...and a stupid grin

Cool it for 30mins in the pan

And pour in glass containers!!!!

Ta-da! Now YC needs to design me jam jars labels.

Reality tv & le Bacons

2006-08-16T13:59:00.000+01:00

The British (like the Americans) are crazy about their reality TV. It's a wonder if they can recall a time before xfactor,pop idol,Celebrity Fat Club,Britan's next top model,The apperentice, i'm a celebrity get me outta here,love island and the most insane of all...UK Big Brother.

Now, I had watched different version of Big Brother before, as most countries around the world have their own series.It mostly faded away after a season or two.For those clueless few, this show dumps a dozen or so people in a house where they will need to live together without tv,internet,radio,reading materials ect. No communications with the outside world,bla bla bla..basically you have more freedom in prison,other than the fact that you can shag each other. Oh,and learning to live with your every move being televised on national tv...there are cameras even in the loo where you can see housemates wiping themselves after having just done one. Eew.

Big brother season 6 started 90 days ago in the UK..with the grande finale this friday.Everywhere else on earth, this will be treated with nothing more than a cursary mention in the papers.Here, ALL papers, including the Times,Guardian ect has full page spread on Big Brother and who's backstabbing who. And the tabloids will have full Big Brother editions, paying mega bucks to anyone who had slept with anyone in the house for a spill-all interview...which is nothing more than a so-and-so is soooo great in bed.

Anyway..I decided to check out what all the fuss is.And I am very ashamed to say,I am hooked.Hook line and sinker.I don't know what is the appeal of a house-full of backstabbing,bitching,whoring men and women, but le bacon have been so hooked we make sure we're home every friday to watch the eviction process.So hooked that Bacon had started voting for who to win;seeing that this week is the final week.

The thrill of this all is being a voyeur and judging who's a bitch and who's a good boy,who's bound to sleep with who ect,somewhat like The Sims but more emo.I guess in a way its like blogging.People who blog exposes so many different facets of their life to to general public withot realizing that little by little, readers do paint a picture of you.And somehow,there are so many other facets of a person that you don't see,therefore you judge them on what they want you to see or what you believe you see.You might believe that the people on reality shows are who they choose you to see,but you DON'T KNOW THEM. Maybe people just like to be given the opportunity to bitch about someone they don't know personally.I know le bacons had started discussing about who we hate more, essentially bitching about people we don't know personally.

And its just ironical that on the final eviction, le bacons would be out in a field somewhere with no access to tvs.By chance,not by choice.What is your experience with reality TV shows, and do you think they should replace mainstream TV shows?

Home sweet home

2006-08-15T08:00:00.000+01:00

shorttalk: I know that pictures are waaay surreal-scary bigger than usual or oh so small can't see-trying out photobucket's service,and cant be bothered to upload the pics again.Will try to make it pproperly sized next time sorry!

Most people,including Bacon,thinks its very fun and all that looking for a new house.After a whole week of constant websurfing and driving around stupidly,I have decided that it's extremely stressfull and should be avoided at all costs.Especially if you are not sure what are you looking for and am open to everything.

It's not that hard actually.All we wanted was:

3 bedroomed
good sized garden
not too cramped
areas with good schools;just in case I decide to pop one out

Our budget started at 140 000 (sorry,my american laptop does not have the pound sign!).Seeing that our two bedroomed house will probably fetch around that, it will still be within our limits.We looked at second hand homes,those lived in for just a couple of years...and realized that the bedrooms are usually skewed..the master bedroom is a good sized room but the other two rooms are usually split by half.English architects are not the best in the world I would say. In fact,some of the designs are so ridicullious I dont know what to make of it.Most of the newer homes are all cramped together that your parking is usually miles away from your house.

And then last weekend we found our dream home.Introducting code name Plot 10:

Because Plot 10 is a brand new house (yes,the exact one in the above picture) we are allowed to 'trade in' our old home..or what they call part exchange.This will take away the stress of putting up the 'for sale' sign and hoping that someone would come along and fall in love with this house.It would also be cheaper,quicker and more convinient,something secod hand homes cannot offer us.

The only sad thing about this is that it is located in the boondocks.Yes,even more obscure than where I am now.At least I have really good bus routes into town and a myraid of shops around here including a proper sized shopping centre within 5 min drive radius.

Plot 10 only have once an hour buses into Leeds, and the only walking distance shop only sells news paper.You'll be hard pressed to find a house without a pub within walking distance in England - but with Plot 10,not a soul in sight.From bad to worse.And what's more, at 195,000, it will ensure that we are on bread and butter for ages.We can afford to buy this fourbedroomed palace,but not furnish it.Ironical n'est pas?But this is how it 'could' look like if we could afford to splurge in Ikea:

Bacon and Mommy Bacon at the downstairs lounge

Kitchen

Another view

Upstairs lounge

Bedrooms

Master bedroom

Loo

I love it how we can choose our carpets,color of walls,kitchen fittings and tiles.It just makes it more 'ours',as our current home,as cute and cosy as it is,is still remnnants of a bachelor pad - my toilet's so completely blue,I feel I'm drowning.But due to the price and the fact that we don't need four bedrooms,should we wait a little longer and look out for new developements?Prices of houses are always on the rise,all the time

I don't know what to do, and we have until friday to decide.

exordinarily ordinary

We say goodbye again...

Baby steps

The Australian adventure

Oz day 12 - Washed away memories

Tales from hicksville 1

Oz day 11- And it rains in paradise...zz

Oz day 10 - Darling-ly Manly

best wedding presents are free

domesticated weekends

OZ Day 9 - Fishing for Money

OZ Day 8 - Sydney ahoy

Kylie @ Manchester Evening News Arena

OZ Day 7- pastas & scones leaving Melbourne

OZ Day 6-The end of an era

OZ Day 5- Kangaroos and Penguins

OZ day 4 -The Great Ocean Road

A paper day

Oz day 3 -The sun,surf,lobster and burgers

OZ day 1&2- Making it from Leeds to Melbourne

flickr

Happy 2007!

a moo is born today (29th Dec)

Quick recap

So how did you do?

bonjour

Seasons greetings!

Back to reality-Sourrain cannot put it off any longer.

Taking Stock

Be careful down under!

Christmas music

G'day folks!

The 10 stages of Drunkeness..........

Power shopping.........

Food wonderful food.

Holidays.....and traditions

He's back!

leaving on a jet plane

failed adulthood

a short story of a week..

sheep in the city

horny mooners

changes to your favourite blog

sun, please shine and take me away

Happy turkey day!

Things you should know about me before you die..

home is where your stuff is

move my house!

a-shopping we go..

Hair Mary! Hair Mary! Hair Mary!

death by hair

after 4 years.....

the day it turned zero

A day in the pigsty

money makes the world go 'round

growing pains

A floater's dillema

taking the edge off blue mondays..

BORN BEFORE 1986?

puff, puff and away!

World events condensed into 40hrs.In mandarin

Politically wrong

cheers to you, life

Did your parents speak to you about the birds and the bees?

did a black cat cross your path recently?

je ne regrette pas

my blog,my beef

damnit!

Goodbye...I shall miss you my sunshine

Reason 1234 why I *heart* him

Bring me to the truth,o yummy burger..

the red hot lust

Waving goodbye to my very first garden..

I give and I give and what do I get in return?

a brief peek into the heart of yorkshire

life on a tropical paradise

bienvenue au bon weekend!

I *heart* stepfamily

Whose fault is it?

Superiority complex

Reason 1234 why I heart him

I heart stepfamily

I heart Aldo