Ad hoc trip to Malacca

The decision was totally spontaneous.

My colleagues and I went for a good dinner at Seremban last weekend. We came all the way from KL just to try out the BLUE tilapia. Yeah, you heard me right, its not the typical red tillapia, whereby the modified fish species was reared in natural hill fountain water, hence doesnt have the usual inland fisheries (ikan air tawar)'s fishy smell. The fish was cooked in salt baked style and Portuguese style. It was so yummy that 5 of us finished the two fishes within 10 mins.

The salt baked fishes (fish wrapped in paper and baked together with salt rock in tin foil), The portugues fish (tasted like eurasian style, with alot of spicy chili shrimp paste)

On top of that, we have our asam (tasted more like belacan) prawns, fuyuyaoma and hakka style sweet vineger pork.

We started our dinner at around 730pm, an hour later, we were on our way cruising to Malacca. It was totally the spur of the moment, and the excuse was, well, since we are half way there, so why not. And i'm glad that we made that decision cuz the whole trip was simply fun!

Hello Melacca!

The entire ambiance was serene but lively at the same time, many tourists were wandering around, shooting picture, taking the river cruise, enjoying romantic walks hand in hand.

So we went to the famous Jonker street, saw some interesting things like colorful trishaw which has a BIG woofer (installed underneath the seat) bombarding Beyonce's song at 1000dsb, San Shu Gong which sell all the local delicacies like Gula Melaka etc.

Talked to an uncle who made spiral potatoes chip (thin potato chips sprinkled with chilli, salt and curry powder) and free posing for me.

At first i thought this is the 'kao qin' fortune teller thingy (whereby people will shake a wooden bottle full of sticks, and then when one of the stick come off, you just bring it to Shi fu to decipher and tell you when you gonna get married, have how many kids dadada...), but it turns out to be chopsticks carved with chinese surname.

i ate the famous curry fishball, octupus lok lok, dim sum (7 for 3 bucks!!! can you believe it), and of course the famous cendol with lots and lots of gula Melaka, yum yum!

It was 1230am by the time we left Jonker street and waved Melacca good bye, but the night was still young for those people who were still drinking and dancing at the bars, and the queque for Satay Lok Lok was forever long. It was indeed a great trip and i think i'll come back again in near future.

The renovation

Many had asked me how's the progress of our house renovation. "ok.... fine.... progressing ...." was my answer for the past one month. Now here comes the truth.

After the whole excitement wore off (during the first two weeks itself), it slowly become a drag and a pain in the ass. The renovation had been delayed for nearly a month now. The contractor is slow in his job and was poor in his communication skill. His standard answer to all our queries was "ok, ok, can, can, no problem.." but never bother to explain what he meant by saying "can", what is the cost implication. Plus there is issues with old piping etc. which was out of our expectation.

Peter and I have alot of friction due to the disagreement in the renovation work. He was the bridge of the communication between the contractor and myself as most of the time i am not able to monitor the progress of the renovation due to my long working hours. Being the miss fussy pants, i have alot of requirements whereby poor Peter have to become the postman to convey my words to the contractor and vice versa. When things didnt work out, he had to listen to my whines and complains, and at the same time he was frustrated with the contractor's 'chinaman' working style.

That's why i wrote the post "A house is not a home" quite some times back as a reminder to myself that never lose sight of the most important thing, which is US and not the house. I appreciated that Dorcas promptly dropped a concern email to me once she saw the post. It was really sweet for her to do so but i am super bad when it comes to reply email (hehe.. sorry mate!).

I have to say the entire process was thorny and painful, but i am thankful that we have achieved most of our objective for the course of past two months. And i really hope that by this week, the first phase of the renovation will be completed and i can move in on Merdeka day (what a coincidence!). So far, the renovation list includes:

1. New plaster ceiling
2. New bathrooms (I love the master bathroom the most!)
3. Tearing down the wall between the kitchen and living room
4. Re-routing and replacing old pipes
5. Replacing all the old doors
6. Varnishing and painting
7. Polishing marbles, new marble skirting
8. New tiles for the balcony
9. New curtain railings
10. New down lights and sockets
11. Laminated floor for bedrooms (PENDING!!!)

One good thing was throughout the process, after many disagreement, frustration, silent treatment and reconciliation (hugs and kisses, hahaha...), Peter and i had learned to deal with unexpected issues with open mind and even have the guts to laugh about it. For instance, Peter and I went for a check on the new paints last night, to our horror, the lime green color which we have chosen for the main corridor and wardrobe appears to be too GREEN whereby i can even see the reflection of the green color on Peter's face when he stood beside the wall. You can imagine how my heart dropped when i saw the green wardrobe as it looks like some sort of kindergarten room/prayer room (if you know what i'm saying).

To prevent Peter from turning into the incredible hulk everytime he enters the room, we decided to re paint the room, OURSELVES. The funny thing was on our way back, Peter suddenly turned to me and said " Luckily we change our mind about the theme of our house from white-red to white-green theme, imagine how the room looks like in red". And thats when we started to laugh hysterically.... oh my, not to mentioned that yesterday was the day of celebration for hungry ghost festival. No pun intended.

All in all, it was indeed a journey, i will definitely share some picture of the place once its being cleaned up. So till then, i will leave it to your imagination. ;)

Book review: 纸婚

Am reading a chinese novel-纸婚 for the past two nights. The book describes the reality of marriage life of a young couple of different background: A city girl and a village boy. It was written beautifully. Just to share with you all a passage which touched me deeply.

今天看见一个女作家写的话：爱情就像一把匕首，深深刺进我的心脏，在以后的很多年里，令我深陷于此、永志不渝。

永志不渝，这真是个美丽的词汇，在这个女作家年老的时候，回忆那场爱情的刹那，动人心扉。

她爱他，却无法和他生活在一起。
她的爱永志不渝，于是终生未嫁。

我想起，婚礼上，人们喜欢用这个词宣誓：我宣誓，无论疾病、贫困、灾难都无法将我们分开，我将深爱我的丈夫/妻子，永 志不渝。

那么多的新人，都曾用青春宣誓。可是，很多年过去，还是有很多人分开。
他们分开的时候，“永志不渝”就像一场稍纵即逝的烟火，它的美丽，只能用来嘲笑“永远”本身的短暂。所以，我想，“永志不渝”原来就是一场年轮的考验—— 这个词，这句话，本不是20岁的人可以说，并能说出味道来的。

就好像那位女作家，年轻的时候，没有人相信她所谓的“永远”。直到她老了，嘲笑她、奚落她的那些人，才相信“永远”的存在。

原来，“永志不渝”的意义，要靠时间来证实。
原来，说“永志不渝”的那个人，一定要白发苍苍。
原来，永志不渝，这不单是一个关于爱情的承诺，还是一个关于生命的承诺。