F.O.O.D pt 2

Peter latest experiments

Not so successful tortilla casserole. We bought chunky beef rather than minced beef which was a big mistake, its rather chewy but the taste was alright

Paella, the spanish rice dish. yum yummmmmmmmmm... with seasoned chicken breast cubes and prawns, very flavorful but a bit moist though

Since we love Paella so much, this is second version of Paella, with Chorizo Sausages, this time we put less water which turns out to be perfect. Its definitely a more convenient and tastier version of fried rice.

I think we will hook on this for quite some time.

A few weeks ago, Peter and I went to Frontera, a Mexican Restaurant at Jaya One for a dinner with his bunch of friends. The restaurant serves various kind of Nachos and Tex mex cuisine and its a cheaper version of Chilies restaurant.

As usual, am trying to capture the ambiance and the food presentation using my lousy phone camera, which of course had failed miserably. Therefore, i have grabbed some nicer photos of the restaurant deco from sixseal.com

from sixseal.com

Famous super spicy buffalo wings. it was alright, not as spicy as what i thought it was.

The main course, Devon's Beef/chicken Enchiladas, some sort of mexican style beef/chicken wrap i guess. Cheese Burger topped with Chilli Con Carne (Peter's and Mine) with fries and coleslaw as sides. The cheese burger comes with big juicy beef patty, huge and great cheese. Its so huge that its enough for two person.

Hien's Chicken burger, again the portion is quite big. Han li's desert, forgot what is the name. Some sort of caramelized soft pudding.

Anyway, the bill come out to be RM20 per person which is quite affordable for a Tex mex meal.

The long and short of it

Reading on Manglish most recent post-Pain had prompted my rusty grey matter to think. Anyway, kindly read this before proceed to read the rest of my post.

In my opinion, addicted to (non physical) pain is nothing unusual. Some of us tend to 'enjoy' being traumatized, or to an extent, being tortured emotionally. As pain is the most intense emotions of all. Feeling pain intensifies and elevates the significance of an individuals. In another words, feeling pain makes one to feel alive.

However, the focus of this blog has nothing to do with this self-inflicted pain. The part which dawn on me is the long and short term happiness as mentioned in the post. According to the author, the short term pleasures are usually associated with food, sex and any activities/ entertainments which give sensory pleasures; while long term happiness usually has a more holistic goal- such as having a good life, healthy figure, good career and good relationship etc.

The author, who is a Psychology Professor asked this one million dollar question in his post. "Is it better to be a happy pig or sad Socrates?"

Seriously, i think i'm a pig who try to be a sad Socrates.

There are too many times during those happy moments when i'm trully enjoying myself, my conscience will start to barge in and stop this pig from indulging further, even it may not necessarily be a sinful pleasure. Sometimes, i'm depriving myself of simple acts such as eating ice cream, hanging out too late, driving too fast etc. To an extent, its like having invisible infrared wires detector surrounding me, it beeps uncontrollably whenever the Socrates in me disapproves my act. What i didnt realize is that i'm placing a limitation to the amount of happiness that i should enjoyed, and falsely believe that by doing so, its serving my long term goal of happiness.

In that sense, I can echoed with the author that soemtimes it is alright to become a happy Homer Simpson and satisfy my immediate appetite (which may not be necessarily evil or stupid) which got nothing to do with long term happiness.

A simple example. Recently during Raya holiday, i've attended my church retreat camp at Bagan Lalang, Sepang. The last night of the camp a group of us are playing a stupid poker game and whoever loses had to do exactly what he/she was asked to as punishment. We have some wild punishments (like kungfu fighting, running around the hall while shouting etc.) and everyone was enjoying the best of our time. However, it was approaching 1230am and i was highly cautious about the time. Well, partly because i have a long drive back to KL the next day hence this old man Socrates keep telling me to stop playing and go to sleep, which i had obeyed, and left abruptly and i think it sort of spoiled the excitements and mood of others.

However putting aside the lame excuse (this 26 years old lady need 8 hours of rest to replenish her energy in order to drive 1 and a half hours the next day?!?), do i really need to deprive myself of perfectly good pleasures, including those involving companionship and friendship, because of wrong conscience (you know, good sleep is necessary for the good health of this 26 years old). Quoting the author's word, Some of this pleasures are easy enough to explain: food and friendship are evolutionary no-brainers, we enjoy them because they motivate us in adaptively useful ways. Hence why do we need to rationalize them or to think whether do they serve the long term goal of happiness or not.

Final Quote "Perhaps the good life doesn’t require constant warfare".

On being a Business Development Executive

I'd always been told by my friends that the my job seems to be some what more sophisticated compare to other white collars. Well, here comes the truth straight from the horse mouth, believe me, my job is as boring as yours, well, maybe 10X more demanding and exhaustive. My job scope is not only involves the business development activities, but also multitasking as a receptionist, Shauffer, postmen, even F1 driver (you'll know what i mean).

Just to give you a peek at a typical Wednesday in my life.

630am
Alarm rings, am still tossing and turning around. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.

635am
Suddenly jump out of bed, getting paranoid, rushed to bathroom

650am
Putting up my minimalistic makeup (bodyshop mineral face powder and black eye liner) and boring working attire (black long pants, spaghetti strap tee and jacket). Checking all my accessories in the bag- house and car keys, pendrive, purse, handphone, socks (yes, i only wear socks when i reach the office because all my high heels lives underneath my office table) and another millions of small insignificant accessories.

715am
Cruising on the road, listening to hitz.fm; occasionally sing like a mad fella to the radio; occassionally bites my lips to stop myself from cursing whenever someone cutting the queque or cornering me.

And occasionally ponders about insignificant things from what life is all about to why the traffic lights only have 3 colors.

755am
Reaching the office, thank God that there is still 5 mins before i'm late to check into the timetrax system.

"Mary, milo KAO please....."

Sipping my milo while checking my cooperate emails, 10 emails to reply, great...

830am
Internal meeting with management, projects progress review and blah blah blah...
* eyes rolling *

10am
Finalizing the tender documents for submission, boss was not happy with the final figure and asking for further mark up. Refuse to compromise and argued with him on why that will kill the whole proposition.

(whenever he was not looking at my direction of course)

1015am
Argument continues.... looking at my watch, 1 hour and 30 minutes to go before tender closes. Ok, i gave up! whatever you say boss, whatever you say.

Boss smiled happily.



1030am
Boss finally signs and stamps the documents, the whole admin team went havoc with the last minute printing and binding. They must be cursing me silently inside...

1115am
Finally the documents is ready. Rushed to the carpark. Took a deep breath and here we go my dear (Myvi), the rest is fast and furious.

1130am
Traffic Jam at Federal Highway. Great....

X10

1150am
Reach Jabatan Kimia Malaysia, PJ 10 mins before tender closes. Run to their Financial Department in my high heels and drop the application documents into the tender box.

Phew...

1200pm
Back to the office. Team members ping me, vendor mis called, boss asked where are you?

for the 100th times of the day.

3pm
Talk to team members, vendor, client, boss and 101 other person on the list. Finally all smile and walk away in satisfaction, my list of work for the day increases to 1o1.

By the way, whats the time? i need my lunch!!

5pm
Forget about lunch, i've only reach the item 10 in my 101 list. Colleagues start to pack their things and bid goodbyes to me. Yeah yeah... Selamat buka puasa...

505pm
The entire office is empty and silent. i can hear the sound of my finger hitting the laptop's keyboard.

This is suck.

530pm
Thats it! i'm going back home. Nothing can stop me, not even the remaining unfinished 81 tasks on my list.

6pm
Traffic jam.. eavesdropping to kill my time, well, not intentionally cuz the neighbor car driver is talking so loud on his phone... Hallo Mr, stop blaming your girlfriend for dumping you, who on earth can stand you nagging nonstop over petty things like an old nanny.

615pm,630pm, 645pm, 7pm... still stuck in jam... Of course its your fault Mr, you are not just naggy, but also a control freak and dictator....

710pm
Reach Wangsa Maju, driving rounds and rounds before i found an empty parking space. Peter still on his way. Munching my bak gua buns and finally stomach stop protesting.

745pm
Peter finally reached. He looked as exhaustive as me, squeezed his hand and give him "i understand" look. Silence speaks a thousand words.

8pm
Sent Peter back home, played around with miko and Quiqui (doggies) for a while, rushing to the church for the sketch pratice

11pm
Finally reach home.... after yawned a hundreds times. Hair messy and smell like a stinky old lady.

1115pm
zzz.....

* The end *

On being 26 years old lady

A little while ago i wrote a post on the past 5 years of my life. Well, a stroke of similar thought hit me again this morning which send me to deep ponder.

"What will be life look like in 5 years time?"

I'm not young anymore to be honest. Of course if you ask an 35 years old lady, she will tell you to F** off, what is 26 compare to 35? But again a 16 years old will tell you that you smell like ancient. Its all about relativity. However i think my friends can pretty much echo with me in this since we have all reached our 1st quarter life.

Gone are the days when my heart is still young, i can partying all day and night (not that i've ever really done that) and live like there is no tomorrow. At the age of 26, tomorrow means my muscle started to loose its elasticity, my bones is marching towards porosis, even my cells started to degenerate every second while i'm typing now. What i really wanted to say is that its perfectly normal for a 26 years old lady to start to think about how will she be like in at the age of 30 years old. Is there is something to look forward to? will she eagerly anticipates the days to come?

Actually it wasn't particular hard to come out with the answer for the question. First of all, you just need to ask your inner child to remind you the 30-years-old-me who you've always dream to be. As a child i had 2 goals in my life, and it never change though my innocence waved me good bye and eons years had passed by.

The goals are:
1. Sing, sing and sing.... for all my life
2. Be a housewife

I did sort of think I’d like to be a lecturer. However that never came close (Except for a few interviews and lousy salary offer) and while I could make it happen now, I just don’t have the inclination to. In contrast, my passion for music never left a single moment of my life. Although am not doing much and i'm light years away from being a singer, but to consider what’s next is kind of a foreign concept to me.

I was brought up in the church and basically was in choir since the age of 5. I sang both saprano and alto, occasionally tenor when we dont have enough guys in the choir. And that has sort of build up my interest and foundation in music appreciation. At the age of 15, a music conductor came to my church on one of the sunday service, and it was a coincidence that i was the song leader on that day service. After the service, he approached me and tell me something which i will never forget in my whole life.

"You will live to use the voice".

And i felt like receiving a holy enlightment and the sky before me was open wide. You can imagined something equivalent orgasm or Buddha attained his Godly wisdom under the bodhi tree. Anyway you get what i mean.

The truth is, I was never an intuitive person, probably the most conventional person with the rationality of 50 years old trapped in the body of a 15 years old young girl. i brought a set of religious teaching and hardcore rationalities everywhere with me, to an extent it deprived me from experiencing a lot of possibilities in my life. However, there have been a few times in my life that i just knew something, it may not even be something that i trully wanted, but i know its a moment of significance in my life. If i were to shed the conservative me and boldly went full force to pursue after the call, it might changed the whole course of my life.

I did, for a good 8 years. i picked up guitar, became a song leader, did some backup singing and recording for some well known christian singers. But my road didn't went that far as what i've anticipated. when i stepped into the corporate world with the title senior business development executive, reality kicked in and the passion slowly subsided, i was brought back to ground zero. But there are times i wonder, if i didnt diverted from my dream path or stop the outcome of this amazing intuition, where will I find myself in?

Anyway, enough of the blast from the past and back to the question.

I would like to see myself singing happily (again) at the age of 30. Not the blast-the-stereo-and-sing-like-a-mad-fella-during-traffic-jam kind of singing, but more of lyrics writing, choir singing or even taking up some music lessons. Maybe one thing i should do to kick start is to song lead again.

phew... thats quite a long post i wrote. That happens when my fingers run faster than my mind thinks. Anyway, guess i need another time to write the second part of the dream of this old lady.

Till next time then.

A monologue

A monologue which i had with myself while driving to work today.

Why human tends to complicate things?

Its because human have feelings.

We love (intentionally or subconsciously or intuitively) to relate our feelings and emotions to the way we do things, to a situation, to a circumstances, to a general issue which got nothing to do with us at all. In a way, its like what Peter telling me sometimes, i am 'personalizes' the issue', or 'dramatize' the relations.

If the client is being unreasonable why does it has to upset me so much? i dont have to be accountable for sales number nor i'm risking Company 5 years growth plan.

Its because they had be-little my professionalism, they are not respecting my humble (maybe its not so humble after all) opinion and it hurts my pride. And that's when the feelings factor kicks in and express itself in full blown.

If my friend carries a different view towards life and religion why does it bothers me so much?

Of course it bothers me cuz we are from the same flock called 'best friends'. The differences will do us part someday. I hate to admit but yes, i have this feeling called 'fear'. I fear that one day our difference will not be just some tease or constructive debates which we'd enjoyed, but more in a form of misunderstandings and arguments.

So the problems is not much with others, but lies within myself?

Yes i guess so. Maybe when someone is doing or saying something to me, most of the time it is about THEM and not ME.

But (yes there is always a but) I do need a small room for my insignificant and tiny feeling. Sometimes, i do need to be told that having the feeling of wanting others to see and feel what i see and feel is not all that wrong. I do need to be listened when it really concern me.

Can you do that for me?

F.O.O.D. pt 1

Was caught up in extreme buzyness lately. All sort of documents continue to pile up on my table which makes it looks exactly like a mini dumpsite, and i'm the dumpster diver who professionally working day in and out under the pile.

Blogging is a luxury for me nowadays. Anyway to filling up the void of my absence, am uploading all the photos of my culinary experience in Chong Qing.

This was taken in the weird french maid authentic chinese cuisine restaurant

Pork with very yummy yam paste, wired spicy tomato-ish sea cucumber soup

Pork with pumpkin, mixed vege


Pak Choy, roasted chicken, steam fish in lots and lots of chili and ginger

Cashew nuts with Mixed Vege, Chong Qing famous spicy steamboat

long bean, sze gua and fruits platter for my Vegetarian Indian colleague

And many many more dishes (at least another 10) which i didnt have the chance to shoot the photos. Well, i was all dressed up in suit and its funny to act like a Kampung girl right?

We had our dinner at a very rare Buddhist Vegetarian restaurant. It was so rare that we need to travel across the rivers and valleys to reach the place. Basically, Chong Qing-ians are all meat eaters and in the end they (the host) were having so much fun eating the food (Only to confess later that supper will be definitely a carnivorous meal).

The exterior of the restaurant and Garden salad


imitation of meat (ribs form and whole chicken), i think its made of soy, but definitely yummy soy


The imtation again, the cold plates and the california roll

Again, there are at least another 10 more dishes and although this time i'm more tourist dressed/friendly, the waitress stopped me from taking the photos as their restaurant is so exclusive, mysterious, and 'photo'hibited.

The afternoon i reached Shanghai, i was so tired that i ordered a plate of beef fried rice through room service. Nothing to shout about.

But where is my spoon???

To be continue....

China again!

Many people may not know or heard of a province called ChongQing (重庆) in China before, same goes for me. We recognized Shanghai as the financial hub and Bei Jing as Political hub, however few are aware that ChongQing is the largest and most populated (31 millions) municipality of China's four provincial level municipalities (along with TianJin, Shanghai and BeiJing).

Skyline of ChongQing

Surrounding by two mega rivers, Chong Qing is known as a "Mountain City", it's main topography is hilly and the whole city was constructed on the mountain slopes. When i first touched down, its a sheer surprise for me to discover that the unknown city which i never heard before is a Metropolitan bigger than the entire Malaysia itself. I've been to London, Edinburgh, Singapore, Hong Kong, but seriously, they are not even on par with Cheong Qing. Sky scrappers and alternating highways standing high up in the air, it simply amazing.

I flew to ChongQing on late Sunday evening (touched down at 11pm) and flew out on Tuesday early morning (8am), which means i only have 1 good day to do my business meetings, discussion with vendor and perhaps some sight seeing and local food tasting as well. Although it spells I.M.P.O.S.S.I.B.L.E, I've actually done it (Kudos to myself!). Morning started with a hectic business presentation and heated discussion with CheongQing Medical University, panel of Forensic Pathologist and Police representative. This is the first time i'm presenting using Mandarin and frankly i was completely dried after the 2 hours meeting as i have exhausted all the Chinese vocabulary i know for my entire life.

During the meeting and infront of Chong Qing Medical University

The customer was kind enough to treat us a luxurious lunch, which was hosted at somekind of weird restaurant with authentic chinese food and OLD European style internal decoration. The food was fabulous but the ambiance was wrong, its like having two conflicting and split characters under the same roof. You can see flora pattern, vintage ceramics bowls, spoon and fork utensil, and .......waitress dressed in french maid custom! My jaw dropped the instance i saw the cosplay waitresses.

My jaw dropped two times when i saw my Indian colleague simply cant take his eyes and hands off the waitress. Who the hell shake hands with waitress so passionately when they came to restaurant???

In fact, the vegetarian dinner we had was equally fascinating, which looks like this:

which i will write in greater length another time.

The city tour ride after the dinner was the highlight of the day. Being a mountain city, Chong Qing has the most interesting architecture and city contour. We went up and down the hill, cut across multiple mega bridges and hilly terrain, and ends up at the best photo shot spot, which is at the intersection of the two rivers at opposite side of the city.

The photo was taken at the 'ark' where two rivers Yangtze and the Jialingjiang intersect.

Overall, it was a good experience for a short business trip. The only problem was the hours and hours of transfer in between the provinces (flights, rides) which wears me out completely. In fact was having nose bleed the night i came back from shanghai.

Guess i was overdosed with China.