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 *