Post Christmas Blues

Its approaching the end of 2011.

Many had started to write posts such as: 10 most memorable moments in 2011 or 10 greatest achievements in 2011. I don't understand why are people so obsess with the number "10". If I end up writing such a post, I will never limit myself with 10.

Anyway, its two days after Christmas. I'm sitting in the office while my husband went for a shopping spree at KLCC. Thats why i'm blue. Nah, truth be told, am feeling one kind because there were so much of anticipation and hypes building up all the way to the Christmas, and in a blink of an eye, it ended. Don't get me wrong, my Christmas was fabulous. But the fact that it turned into past tense so fast before I can drench myself in the Christmas spirit makes me cant help but sigh.    

In fact, the shopping malls started to play all the "ji ke long dong qiang dong qiang" songs even before the Christmas decoration tears down. Wow, that's fast. I felt i was sorta left behind, while others had started to march towards the new year. 

Often, many feel a sense of loneliness or emptiness after Christmas season. Its like a void deep inside which can never be filled by any Christmas gifts. Some are recovering from the burnt wallet, some are wondering so-what's-next? Some felt a emotion sharp turn which nearly send them into depression. But, my blue was a different kind of blue. 

There were so much to feel, so much to do, so many friends to meet, so much of love to share during the Christmas, but Christmas day is just ONE day in the cycle of 365 days. In fact i somehow managed to stretch the celebration to 4 days by having church Christmas night event on 23/12, Christmas mass and family Christmas dinner on 25/12 and two Christmas gatherings at my home on 26/12. Gosh it was super hectic and I cant recalled the last time I've baked and cooked so much. However, it still felt NOT enough. How I wished the celebration can be extended to the whole year round, and i don't mind listening to Micheal Buble's I'll be home for Christmas for another 365 days. s 

23/12 Church Christmas celebration, all the girls performing mimes for "We are the Reason"

Of course i can still have the gatherings with my friends and families during normal days and not only during Christmas season. But Christmas has this wonderful (and strange) effects on people. I find that people's heart are more open because its the Christmas season. Maybe its the Christmas song, or maybe its white and snowy decoration, or maybe its the peaceful and jolly ambiance. Whatever reason it is, it brought smiles onto people's face easily, it makes you want to skip while walking, it makes your heart felt light and fluffy.

I just wanted this good feeling to go on and on.

2011 Christmas was a special Christmas for me, as I'm celebrating my first Christmas with my 'new' family. Peter and I took up the challenge of cooking the Christmas dinner for the whole family. We had pork ribs, paella, minestrone soup and the cheesecake (which was failed to set, bleh). The food was all gone before I can even take the picture of it. It was a simple dinner with just great conversation and laughters, and I enjoyed the Christmas night with my extended family tremendously. I mean I'm close with Peter's family, but that night, i felt like we were closer than ever. It was finally dawn on me that they are my family now. I guess somewhere along the line after being away from home for 8 years, I've found an anchor and a home here in this city which no longer foreign to me. 

If I sum up one thing which the Christmas this year had taught me, that would be "Cherish the moments of  love". The great moments in our lives are precious, but fleeting. So enjoy and make full use of it when it still last.   

Its Christmas season

2 more days before Christmas come. Hooray!

I know Christmas has been commercialised pretty much to the extent of maximum nowadays, and heck Jesus is not even born exactly on 25th of December. BUT, i still cant contain the bursting joy in me, knowing that end of the year is coming and this is the time for friends and family to come together and celebrate the fruits of labour which they have harvested throughout the year.

Anyway, in the spirit of Christmas, i shall share with you what Peter and I have done with our Oven for the past few weeks.

In Clockwise, 1. our first roast chicken (stuffed with lemon), its super juicy and easy

2. My raisin and nutty chocolate bar, its easy to make but its too sweet!

3. My first chocolate butter cookies, again its too sweet, will use dark chocolate next time.

Oh, the gals and I had a good time at Plan B the other day, it has a very hip bar-semi restaurant look and its perfect for hang outs!

We ordered a salted beef sandwich (which has a very good texture and taste!), carbonara (very very CHEESY and CREAMY), Morocon lamb pie (the meat comes in chunks but the lamb taste is a little tad too strong to our liking) and the grilled cheese burger (perfect!!)

Cakes, cakes and cakes!!! Happy birthday to our gal Elena!

Ps: See Kohyee with her forever busy with iphone pose

That's all for now, Merry Christmas to all!

"I wish we could put up some of the Christmas spirit in jars and open a jar of it every month." ~Harlan Miller

Death

Last night, i came across this quote about death in "Norwegian wood"- 

"Death exists, not as the opposite but as a part of life"

I believe everyone at one point of their life would have thought about the matter of death. In fact i've thought about it multiple times in my life, about the meaning of death, what's come after death, and how my love ones should continue to live their life happily after my departure.

I'm working with a company which provides informatics solutions to forensic institution (especially mortuary), hence in the 4++ years of my working life, i had saw many dead bodies- Fresh, exhumed, stored in freezer for 10 years, virtual body in 3D, you name it. I wont go into details as they were really not pleasant experiences, plus i dont want my boss to stumble across my blog through google search of keywords.  

I remember there was one Saturday night, about a month before my wedding, i have to witness bodies of 16 orphans who were buried alive in an orphanage hit by a landslide. It was nearly 11 pm when the forensic guy from the hospital called me to go to the morgue to assist them with our company's software system. I give a call to my boss to inform him about the situation, took off my pyjamas and put on my jeans, then drove straight to the hospital, all within 15 minutes.

When the midnight came, the bodies started to reach the mortuary one by one. Despite of the multiple ambulances and so many bodies, the entire forensic department was eerily quiet. One of the medical personnel told me later that it was because the deceased were orphans, so there were no families came with the body. I was speechless when the words struck me. There are many deaths in this world which are not been mourned, and there are many souls passed away unnoticed by the world.

Suddenly the silent was no more uneasy nor eerie. It was deafening, with a deep sense of sorrow.

Then the autopsy started, body was opened up, one by one. It saddened me to say this but I have to re conditioned my mind to view those body images displayed on the screen as an object and not a human who no longer can breath, talk nor move. That was the only way i can carry out my work and deliver what i should, with a total detached emotion.

When i drove back home at nearly 2 in the morning, my heart was heavy. I don't know how the forensic pathologists can go back home every night have their dinner with the family, have normal conversation, go into bed and sleep soundly after facing so many death during the day. Maybe they have compartmentalised their personal feelings towards the living and the dead, maybe death had become a routine in their life.

Sometimes, life itself has a way to remind us about death. Death is not foreign, nor its opposite of life. In fact, its part of life. We are all part of this vicious cycle of life and death which no one can be exempted. And i asked myself from time to time, am i ready to face it if it comes today? or i will be like the rich fool in one of the parable in the bible- unprepared and poor in spirit?

Do you think about death constantly? i know its a taboo for some, but maybe we can talk about death openly sometimes. Inevitably, we all have to face it one day, cuz death is the only certainty in life. 

My Nephew

Say Hi to my nephew! 

Frankly, i've always felt like all the babies look the same. But when i finally saw this cute little fella, i was able to identify my sister's mouth and eyes in him. Am totally bias in this but he looks super cute to me, you know being so baby, so little, and ewwwwwww..... i wish i could hold his tiny little fingers now. 

Kudos to my sister as she went through more than a day of hard labour to bring this fella to the world. By the way, there is this question which always lingering in my mind and finally i got the chance to ask the person with the first hand experience.

"There is always a saying that the moment you see the face of the baby after long hours of excruciating labour pain, all the pain just went "poof" and vanished! IS IT TRUE?"  

My sister answer was "Vanish you head la! of course the PAIN is still there".

So here it goes, the myth is now busted. 

The making of the kitchen

Yesterday Sunday service message was about procrastination and its bad consequences. While listening to the message i made an effort to list down all the things which i supposed to do but ended up in my procrastination list. 

I guess there is no surprise that blogging the back dated events was on the top of the list. SO, out of great shame and deep regret, i wrote this post the moment i went back home. Here comes the making of my kitchen. which occurred a month ago. ;p

Day 1: Basically cleaning up the space and hacking the wall for the electrical plug outlets

Day 2: Things getting intense as the contractor removed the existing build in cabinet and semen top

In between, there were dust everywhere, i nearly die of continuously stepping on dusty floor.

Day 3: Fill in the cement gaps

Day 4: New floor and wall tiles

1st Weekend: The credit of painting the wall solely goes to none other than Peter and myself. The funny thing was we painted the wall at NIGHT. We were running around in the morning buying the necessary accessories and meeting vendors, so for the two consecutive nights during the weekend,  we were in our most worn out clothes, climbing and painting the wall until its glow in white.  

There was more dust. 

2nd week: The subsequent week was all about the carpentry work. We have chosen a C shape black granite kitchen Top and glossy white wall cabinet. The chunk of the moolah went to the Fotile kitchen set which includes the suction unit, the induction electric ceramic cooker and the built in Oven. 

By the end of 3rd week. Our black and white theme kitchen was completed. 

I was in complete euphoric as there was no more DUST!!!
ps: Pardon the picture of the jars of snacks. Gosh I love the IKEA air tight jar!

Taiwan Trip part III

Here comes the long awaited third post of my Taiwan Trip. I have to admit that since the trip was like 2 months ago, i find its kinda hard to remember all the details. Well, hopefully the rest of the posts will come swiftly in no time, i cant stand myself going through another 2 months of procrastination.   

Second part of our second day of the Taiwan Trip started off with the visit to the infamous Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall (中正紀念堂). Chiang Kai Shek was the successor of SunyatSen after he died in 1925. He served as the President of the Republic of China in 1954 and moved his government to Taipei, Taiwan. 

The memorial hall is located in the Liberty square (自由広場), its a big squarish compound surrounded by a white color entrance ark, A Chinese National Theatre and a National Concert Hall at each sides and the memorial hall is facing the ark. The compound is so big (240,000 square meters) that it takes around 5-8 minutes just to walk across to the opposite site. 

Peter was greatly amazed by the Gigantic ark. Yes, we were trying out the panorama shooting mode and the output was kinda hilarious. 

Now, my turn. This is one of the Chinese Theatre or National Concert Hall (they look exactly the same anyway), and the opposite one in panorama mode.

And here i am sitting infront of the memorial hall

The building looks magnificent in white, the wide space and white tiles accentuate its magistic and i gotta say this is how a national monument supposed to look like. 

And then we started our journey of climbing up the thousands steps (okok, its only 89 steps) of staircases to the hall where the famous statue located. It almost reminded me of our very own Batu Caves 292 staircase.

The famous Chiang Kai Shek Bronze statue (the picture does not justify how big is the statue, its about 3 floors high in its actual size) and the changing of the guards which take place every hour, attracting many visitors.

There is this inscription on both side of the wall which says: The purpose of life is to improve the general life of humanity and The meaning of life is to create and sustain subsequent lives in the universe. If you have watched the recent Jacky Chan 100th movie 1911, you will understand the statement better. Its basically corroborates the ideology of democracy. The fact that the Chinese democracy was achieved through shedding of blood and sacrificing of lives, the statement sounds much more meaningful than just a fancy slogan.  

Underneath the hall (behind the staircases) is a big museum which showcases the history of Chiang Kai shek. There were so much to see and digest, from official documents, letters, to the chair he sat and the car he drove! but sadly its all written in Chinese.

So, peter can only admire all the pictures in order to figure out the historical events

The impressive miniature of the CKS Memorial hall

While we are viewing the display in the museum, i heard a loud noise from the hallway and discovered that the changing guards actually walk all the way from the museum area (underneath) up to the main hall (above) where the statue is. The funny thing is they will march all the way in and take a lift to go up, while maintaning their perfect posture and no smile at all time. how cool is that!

oh, the guards are pretty cute too. for some reason, they all look the same to me. Maybe that's their selection criteria, not too tall nor too short, slim built, short hair, dark skin and small eyes (seriously!) 

Overall, Peter and I enjoyed the visit to CKS memorial. I wish our country have a memorial hall like this, not the 'istana' type which cost billions to built but only meant for private use.

Disclaimer: This is a picture grabbed from Google

P/s: Last picture to share here, this has become our favourite thing to do for the rest of our Taiwan Trip. ;)

Meme

This is for peter.

My dear always like mimicking the Forever Alone and Trollface meme. So before i start to explain what the heck is this Forever Alone and Trollace, see this. 

Forever alone                                  Trollface 

Don't ask me why, Peter just love to crack me up with these. 

Now let me further elaborate on these meme, well, its something like the "planking" or "Where the Hell Matt is" craze which went on and spread like wild fire across internet, but instead of 'doing it', people actually "drawing it". Forever Alone is used to express loneliness and disappointment with life. While Trollface is meant to portray the expression someone makes while trolling (Trolling is an act of intentionally anger or frustrate someone else). People exploits these rage comic character by drawing (ugly) comic strip about it. For example,

Forever alone

trollface

Now let me explain to you how Mr. Peter executes the meme. Sometimes while he is driving with me sitting beside, when the car go stagnant infront of the traffic light, he will turn his head 90 degrees slowly (yes, the word is SLOWLY) and show his Trollface expression to me. Or at times when we are lovey dovey hugging each other, he will pull out his forever alone face just to kill the moment. And when i go speechless with wth expression, he will laugh his pants off. 

wth expression

Yeah, that's what we do when we are alone. 

Anyway, the motivation of writing this is i read this post- Day of Memes this morning, Its about these bunch of pretty girls mimicking various memes and post it on her blog. It's so funny and i cant help but to challenge Peter to mimic this meme. 

So, here comes the LOL guy. Can you do this? ;)

LOL Guy

Reference from http://knowyourmeme.com

Embrace ambiguity

The rain continues to pour mercilessly in Thailand. Sometimes, it makes you wonder will it ever stop. Not just the rain, but also the quakes, the suffering, the uncertainty, the ambiguity, and the march towards end time.

Frankly, i still don't know what's my part to play in this grandeur plan of life, suffering, end time and eternity.

To make it worse, ambiguity is my biggest enemy as i'm the type of person who cannot tolerate having no certainty towards what's ahead of me. I need to know whether my bank account has sufficient to pay off my car loans next month; i need to know where my career will lead me in another year time; I need to know even the weather forecast, so that i can plan my journey and prevent from stuck in jam. Don't get me wrong, its great to micro-managing, as it clears off nearly 80% of all the short term ambiguities. However the approach does not relief me from the macro ambiguities in life which i have no control over, and these ambiguities have far more impact than just being immobile in heavy traffic for a few hours.  

English words is so rich in its essence that sometime the word alone tells a story. The root word of "Ambiguity" is "amble" in Latin, which means wanderer. In the state of ambiguous is like wandering around, without a clear purpose. However, there is always a boundaries or a scope of the act of wondering around. The planets wonder around the sun, the electrons wonder around the atom, the molecules wonder around the being. and somewhere in my spiritual journey, I realized that as long as I have a clear purpose in life, I may wondering around, I may divert from the road, but I will still reach the final destination. 

In this age of ambiguities where mass disasters occurs every other day, many have taken the step of faith, relieve from work and step into the battle zone itself to serve the needy. I have nothing but admiration for them, especially the brethren from Christian Disciples Church at Thailand. They loaded their vehicles with survival kits and went all the way to Chainat to deliver the goods to the areas which do not have access to government aid. Their courages is great, their compassion is real, their stoic attitude in the face of unexpected is the true testimony of their faith. They were the ones who embrace the ambiguities with open hearts as they know where their final destination is. 

If you like to contribute monetarily, do go to their website @ Love the Needy. I can also help to assist you in donation if you want less hassle. But sorry folks, i dont know whether you can claim a tax break for this or not, but let us do this in the true spirit of compassion and charity. 

You can never make friends when...

You can never make friends when... 

it comes to business and work related matters.

I dont know whether those of my friends who work as sales person/product specialist/business executive (or anyone who has interaction with customer/ vendor / business partners) agree with me on this or not. When i first started in the business line, i was the forever sincere and accommodating person. I will try my best to fight for customer rights or benefits (even though it requires me to face my boss head-to-head), working late hours and all means to cater to business partner's need (although sometimes its ridiculous and trivial matter such as printing 100 copies of the same documents and send to their office in person ) and the list went on. If you want to laugh at my naiveness after reading all this, by all means. Because sometimes i laughed at my own stupidity as well.  

Sadly, being 4 years in the position had taught me a hard lesson that no one appreciate you being sincere when it comes to business, in fact the client will try to take advantages of your courteous; boss will scold you for being too nice with the vendors and not squeezing till their last drop; business partners will said can you make another 100 copies of the same for the other client of his as well. 

As the result of the bad experience, i have try my best to stay professionally when it comes to business, there is no i-friend-friend-with-you, cuz its all about business. I don't wish to befriend you but its nothing personal because business is all about being mutually beneficial. Decision is made and actions are taken based in the context of mutual benefits and not feeling. You have a business request, and i have the solution, we agreed on the working relationship and the price tagged along with it. Therefore we shake hands and the work begin. When the deal is done, we say all the best and hope to work with you again in future. There is no "lets go out for a drink next time", or "lets continue to be friends although the business is over". 

If the client is asking for sponsorship or a meal, i will comply the request if my boss said yes, its not that i friend-friend with you. But frankly, I hate the business luncheon, business dinners and whatever meals which the intention is not to fill the stomach but to fulfill the business objective. Sometimes when the setting is out of office, suddenly everything is let loose, people will start to bitch about their boss, their company, competitors and they expected you to either nod your head and agree with every words they said or you should offer them equally juicy news. And to make it worse, sometimes you are forced to talk about the topics which you only talk to you friends, just to keep the conversation going. "Oh, where do you live? where do you usually hang out? oh i like that restaurant as well". blah blah blah. Its as though for that 60 minutes, you have to psycho yourself that the person is somewhat you friend.

Unequivocally, that everyone who treat me as the person with title "Product Manager", and not the "Susan" i am, will be "unfriended" when the business/ work is over. Opps, maybe thats not the right words, as there is no friendship to start off with. Maybe 'dissociated" is a better words but i like the word "unfriend" more. Its like you can unfriend a person from your facebook's friend list when you (wish to) no longer in contact with them. 

Today, i have the urge of 'unfriend' a person so much that i wish i can dig out his facebook account, purposely add him then unfriend him just to release my dissatisfaction. He is my company's distributor, and i have constant interaction with him as sometimes we will go to see customer together. I will do technical explanation and he will do whatever necessary to close the sales. We are in good terms but again we never went cross each other's line, so there is no reason for me to dislike him. This morning, my company hosted a discussion for a group of clients, and since he is the appointed distributor for that particular client so he came as well. The sales manager asked me whether i wanted to join the lunch with the client after the discussion. I said go ahead without me, as the distributor can handle (aka entertain) the client (anyway that is why he was being appointed anyway). To be frank, i used the sentence "He pandai-pandai handle them la". But this is not an insult by all means, this is supposedly how Malaysians talk in a non-formal setting. 

Then my sales manager open her eyes widely and mouthed to me: "he-is-sitting-there!!" and i know at that instance i'm dead on the spot as he would have overheard our conversation easily. Well, the conversation ended and i pretend nothing happened and went back to my work. You would have thought that the story ends here, but this is just the beginning of his "annoys-susan-plan". He purposely went and sat beside me, asked another colleague of mine who sits in a cubicle away from me about some product related questions, when he knows exactly that i have the answer for it. I don't know whether he did it purposely to belittle or annoy me, but i remained poised.

Then before he went out for the mentioned luncheon, which i told my sales team to go ahead without me, he delivered the final blow and ridiculed me infront of my colleagues, "But we need you to handle the client ma". I nearly puke blood when he said that, but i just put on a poker face as though i dont know he is being sarcastic. Please tell me, how to have a "friendly" relationship when the distributor do this to the product manager of the principal company? I'm not trying to imply the differences in  positions here, but in business, isn't professionalism is the least of the expectation? 

So the insight if today is "do not initiate friendship when it comes to business as 100% of the time, you will regret it eventually, worse still, immediately".

Gourmet Pizza making

Peter and I love to cook. It was a joint interest which we have developed across the years of being together. However, both of our mothers never really taught us how to cook when we are young. I suspected it was because they scared that we will trashed and burnt their precious kitchen. Hence, we grew up thinking that cooking was only meant for housewife, and the only cooking skill which we mastered was boiling instant noodles.

Then somewhere in between our instant noodles and scramble egg (which supposed to be sunny side up in the first place), Jamie Oliver started his naked chef series, and then Gordon Ramsey's Hells kitchen came along, and then Nigella Feast.... Suddenly, cooking seems like a cool and posh thing to do. Man who gets his hand dirty kneading pasta dough looks masculine, and ladies in apron oozing a sense of sexiness all over. So weeks after weeks, Peter and I were fixated on the cooking shows showing on Travel Living Channel.  And strangely enough, the cuisine which caught our attention was the Italian. 

Peter loves anything and everything when it comes to Italian cuisine. At first we went shopping around for herbs. Rosmary, dill, basil were the common items in our shopping cart whenever we went to Cold storage. Then Dolmio or Prego was forever vanished from our dictionary when Peter started to make his own pasta sauce. Before we even realizing it, Italian words/ phases dominated our vocabulary - al dante, il prosciutto, al fungi, pomidori etc. And it was really fun, it felt like we are learning another culture itself through its food. 

A month ago, Peter and I subscribed to a 3.5 hours of Gourmet Pizza making class at The Cooking House. We enjoyed the whole process as this is the first time we make our own pizza from scratch! 

Here comes the stainless steel worktop and my happy husband who is eager to start! 

Mixing, kneading then the dough was left for setting (for around 20 mins), no picture of kneading as its impossible to take picture with the flour sticking on our hand. The dough puffed up nicely after a while and it was used for 4 different type of pizza. Basically its just mixing different type of ingredient either on top / into the pizza bread. 

Pizza Dolci is a sweet pizza with orange marmalade and fruits. We use alot of mashmallows, preserved can fruits such as peaches and the binding element was cream cheese. It was something new for us as we didnt know that the same pizza dough can be used for fruits top ups as well.

Pizzete Fritte is mini fried pizza with tomato salsa and shaved parmesan cheese. Its basically bruchetta but with pizza dough instead of baguettes/ French bread. The freshly prepared salsa was superb and i like the acidic taste of balsamic vinegar along with the salty taste of the parmesan cheese.

Calzone Al Salmone Affumicato is the infamous folded or stuffed pizza with smoke salmon, tomato, cheese and capers. Out of the pizzas, we love this the most as its easy to make (basically its a BIG curry puff except its filled with salmon and cheese instead of sardin with potatoes). The calzone tasted so good and I love the crunchy bready texture and the fragrant smoke salmon with chives.

Before and after (baked to perfection)

Calzone Al Salmone Affumicato, yummy.

The last but not least was the Pizza Quattro Stagioni (4-in-1) - Mushroom-cheese, Tomato-anchovies, cheese-basil and artichoke-olive. The chef (cant remember his name) basically dump all the leftovers material into a big pizza dough outlined into 4 quarters, as easy as that. Since we didnt get the chance to do the Pizza Quattro Stagioni, the chef used our leftovers (some tomato / salsa sauce) and cook together with lots of garlic, basil and pepper to make the topping for middle eastern bread with no cheese. 

I have to say its not rocket science to make pizza, and both of us are inspired to make our own pizzas once our kitchen is renovated. So, next time if you visit our home, we will make sure no more cold dominos, it will be homemade fresh from the oven Pizza! :)

Love Happens

Our dear wedding photographer uploaded our wedding photos in September, so check this out Walking down aisle-peter & susan 

At first i was thinking of uploading 1 more batch of our wedding photos but i think the photographer did better than me so this is the last post of my official wedding photos blog series. 


This post took me ages to write, and i'm glad its finally done. I've intended to publish this right after wedding, as a recollection of the post wedding feelings. However, its really difficult for me to pour out my heart in words, without any inhibition. Its a feeling of being stripped naked, whereby all the hidden pages of my life are now laid open for other people to read. At the same time this is also a love confession to my one and only, in words and in entirety. Sometimes a hug or a kiss can speaks thousands of words, as there are no hidden emotion behind such intimate gesture. But to put thousand of words forward in order to show those same intensity of emotions deep within, its harder than it looks.


So here it comes, dedicated to him - my now and forever.  


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Official Wedding Photos Part 3: Wedding Entourage

This is the second last post about my wedding photos.

Our brides maids and best men

His boys

My girls

And two of my dear flower gals

Words cannot describes how thankful i am to my dear dear friends, who had tirelessly lending us their helping hands during the entire process. Undoubtedly, all of you are important parts of our wedding, and we can never be thankful enough for being the witnesses of the covenant of our love.

Love you all so much.