Our Own Earth Hour Event

For the past week, our Chinese media has urged all Malaysians to join the world in the Earth Hour event on 29th March.

Earth Hour event was initiated by WWF, started in Sydney last year. The event was created to take a stand against the greatest threat our planet are facing. Earth Hour utilizes the simple action of turning off the lights for one hour to deliver a powerful message about the need for action on global warming. This year, 20 cities have joined this global movement.

Tonight, millions of people are joining together and turning off their lights for an hour to help make a difference and raise awareness about the issue of global warming.

We show our support by holding our own Earth Hour event, ahem, ... at home.

Hope that when the lights are back on, people will continue to conserve energy and use less power on an on-going basis. Remember, simply actions can collectively make a difference!

Vision Without Aid

My phone rang.

"Hello, Miss. I am calling from Dr. Chua's clinic, just to remind you of your appointment next week ..."

Blimey, the yearly after-care check-up on my eyes is due. Come to think of it, I have been completely free of my glasses and contact lenses for more than two years.

For almost two dacades prior to this, I have been relying on glasses and contact lenses for my vision, or was it three dacades? Oops, have to be careful here as not to reveal too much.

Then came the Refractive Eye Correction Technologies. Initially, I was a bit sceptical about it. Even though I came across a number of success stories from people whom I know. It wasn't until I kept suffering from eye infections, thanks to my contact lens, that I decided to go for it.

After attending a seminar and a series of eye examinations, I underwent the 3-in-1 treatment called PAC-IntraLasik. PAC stands for Pseudo Accommodative Cornea, whatever that means... Okay, okay, of course I know what that means, otherwise I wouldn't have gone under the mega laser machine blindly to risk being blinded!

Prior to the introduction of PAC, one could only do refractive surgery to correct either one of the eye problems, be it myopia, astigmatism or presbyopia. PAC is the latest revolutionary technology that allows corrections of all eye problems at one go.

Next comes the method of opening up the cornea. The older methods generally involved a blade where one has to rely on the precision of the eye surgeon. With the latest IntraLasik, as it is claimed to be blade-free, uses laser to create an incision.

The procedure was much easier than I had envisaged. "It was all over before I knew it" did not apply to me though, coz I was having 3 laser treatment, lasted 20 second each. When the laser was applied to the cornea to shape its curvature, it produced a horrible burning odour. Whatever it was, I did manage to pull it off and emerge unscathed.

It was truly a miracle. Awesome job, my sincere gratitude to the ophthalmologist and his team. I regained almost perfect vision overnight. I definitely have no regrets.

To those pals of mine who wondered why I can still read fine prints without reading glasses, the secret is now unveiled.

80s' Pop Extravaganza

The entertainment review in the paper dampened my mood today. There is a full two-page coverage on the Here and Now Tour 2008 - The Best of 80s Concert which was held at the Arena of Stars, Genting over the weekend.

I was offered 3 free tickets to the show on Saturday. As I was at the material time up to my wotsit with work, and coupled with the fact that it was raining miserably, I politely turned down the offer! Now, looking back, I hate myself! Argh! I want to tear my hair to pieces! How could I possibly have done such a stupid thing.

The concert brought together a line-up of evergreen 'BRITISH' artistes who include the soulful Paul Young, the trademarked duo-toned rambutan hair Limahl of Kajagoogoo, the synthesiser genius Howard Jones, the band Johnny Hates Jazz and the girl trio Bananarama.

I emphasized the word 'BRITISH' because I was brought up in England and was truly a crazy teenybopper during the 80s. I love British music, be it the New Wave, New Romantic or synthpop... I knew Paul through my manager of the Patisserie where I worked in, she was the ex of George Harrison of The Beatles. Proudly to say that I am still in possession of a collection of Paul's autographed records and photos. I used to hang out in Stringfellows with a group of 'arty' weirdos whom be-friended the gorgeous Bananarama. I can vividly remember queuing outside London HMV for an autographed album from Limahl. An enormous wave of nostalgia overcomes me.

20 years on. Will these icons of the 80s show signs of waning? Definitely not. According to the media, the concert turned into a raving ear-shattering party that went on till the wee hours of the morning.

Damn. Damn. Damn. I was left out. Utterly disappointed and morose.

Sodding workload that squandered my opportunity to revive with a repertoire of my favourite British music.

Work sucks.

A Masterpiece of Mobility?

My girl has been pestering me for God knows how long, for a pink notebook. All these while, I just turned a deaf ear. Coz to me, her notebook can be considered 'quite' new and has yet to reach its write-off date.

Lately, she was getting impatient ... as wish not granted

Finally, she resorted to giving her silver-colour notebook a new leaf.

She painstakingly stuck masking tapes all over the notebook and carefully spray painted it in baby pink. A closer look will reveal diamantes forming some sort of artwork and finished with a ribbon.

All these, undoubtedly, were done without MY consent.

Now that my princess is so contented with her haute couture pink lapie, I am speechless.

All I can say is "Well done babe, a truly artistic embellishment!".

She sure has inherited the artistic flair from me.

Easter Temptation

Christians celebrate Easter. To Christians, Easter symbolizes victory over death, for Jesus, arose victorious from the death.

Easter means renewal and revival.

To me, Easter means a variety of colourful Easter Eggs.

This year, my favourite chocolatier, Thorntons, has come out with its sumptuous Easter Collection, which contains a host of chocolate delights to whet your appetite.

The Dark Egg

The Organic Egg

The Mad About White Chocolate Egg

The Mad About Special Toffee Egg

The Milk Egg

The White Egg

Umm ... the purest pleasure

Happy Easter to those who celebrate!

The Return of Margie Tsang

Born in the family of doctors

She was one of the famous Hong Kong actress in the 80's

Dated Tony Leung

Married to a businessman, had a son

Divorced

Now making a come back

She is Margie Tsang

Still as gorgeous and well maintained

(She is same age as me, envy!!)

Recalled clubbing with her at Hippodrome London

during those days ...

Now, can catch her on the latest

Astro-On-Demand series

D. I. E

All the best, Marg

Cool Holiday

Today is a Public Holiday.

Didn't feel like doing much, lazed around.

Kids begged me to make some ice-cream.

But I have run out of non-diary cream.

Thought of an alternative.

I used evaporated milk and coffee mate.

It took quite a while to set.

Looks good, doesn't it?

But, it tasted powdery, not that smooth.

Hmm... wonder the cat next door fancy some ice-cream.

Work Blues

Today is definitely not my day.

Despite having worked through the weekend and burnt midnight oil for two nights in order to get the chronology of the case prepared, all I have got was some harsh treatment from my client.

He literally expected me to ploughed through 3 boxes of documents and submit the claim within one week. After I explained to him in length how I have structured the claim and how I intend to analyse the delay events, blah, blah, blah...... He still insisted to have the submission delivered to him in two days time.

Anyone with a sensible mind would know that it is impossible to prepare such a submission which may be 100 pages long, within less than a week. Writing the submisison is one thing, the crucial part is actually getting the facts right. And I can't possibly get the facts right just by reading the documents, as you know people do write crap. I need to put on Sherlock Holmes' hat and carry out investigation/interrogation of his staff in order to have a clearer picture. Once I have got the facts, I will have to study the programme closely and do a delay analysis. All these are no easy task!!!

After all the firecrackers in the meeting room, I left, non-commitally. I refused to act in line with his agenda.

Sod it.

The last thing I want is for that negativity to paralyse my ability to perform.

So, take a deeeeep breath and stay calm.

Hmm... a nescafe would be nice.

Dumplings Day

I had to work over the weekend and I have brought back 15 lever arch files of documents. I thought of an easy way to take care of my kids' brunch, lunch and dinner on Sunday. Instead of cooking few dishes which inevitably would eat up my previous time, I made a whole loads of dumplings. I needed only to fry them whenever the kids were hungry.

Dumplings is forever my two babies' favourite dish. Whenever we planned to eat out, we always ended up in place like Dragon-I. Without fail, they would gobbled down 5 portions of dumplings between the two of them.

Josh loves prawn, so I used minced prawn and meat as the fillings. This was my first time making dumplings, I was a bit kelam-kabut when frying them. Here's the end product.

Comments from my kids, "Every bite is like a ray of golden sun."

Eat your heart out, Dragon-I.

Paint the World Green With Something Black

The advertisement goes, "Put on your green duds and join Dublin, New York, London, Tokyo and the rest of the world in celebrating St. Patrick's Day." Tokyo? Yeap, even the Japs parade on the street of Tokyo to celebrate this festival. Weird, wonder do they really know who St. Patrick was and what good had he done for them. But, Wth, just another excuse to get drunk.

The Irish celebrates the St. Patrick's Day on 17th March. On 15th March 2008, Guinness Draught, together with Sunrise have organized a St. Patrick's Day Festival at Plaza Mont' Kiara. Guinness was to giveaway 1000 pt of the famous premium black beer to early comers. That's why the slogan goes, "Paint the world green with something black."

By midday, we saw some of our expat neighbours were already getting ready in fancy dresses and were on their way over there. My kids happened to dress in green as well, so I suggested to them to pop over later.

Just after 5pm, it started to rain cats and dogs, and later reduced to drizzle. The sky remained gloomy, so we decided to scrap the plan. We didn't manage to paint the town green with something black, but with something grey.. I meant the gloomy sky.

The Aftermath of the Tsunami Election?

I had lunch with staff from TMB at the Sun and Surf Cafe at the Sunway Resort Hotel. Throughout the two hours, these guys were babbling on nothing but the recent General Election and the post-election issues.

Obviously the whole array of nicely displayed, mouth-watering, scrumptious, international gourmet did not excite them.

For the past week, all I faced was page upon page dwelling on what went so dreadfully wrong, or screen upon screen dwelling on what went so fantastically right ...... but enough is enough. I understand one is allowed to be emotional after an initial shock. But once the hullabaloo subsides, one has to do the right thing as soon as possible to ensure the return of normalcy.

The nicely sliced salmon was waving at me, so was the lovely lemon mousse cake ... Alright guys, you can talk until you need a jug of Nin Jiom Pei Pa Koa.

I wouldn't give a damn.

Hmm.. Bon Appetite.

U-hu-hu and Hu-la-la Cheesecakes

The Loaf at the Pavilion has introduced its latest creation, the "U-hu-hu Cheesecakes", which is a collection of miniature cheesecakes. These cheesecakes, which are about the size of cupcakes, come in a variety of flavours and toppings.

According to The Loaf, the name "U-hu-hu" came from the gentle laughter that Japanese women have when they are pleased. It is a gesture of covering the mouth with the hand, muffling the laughter.

This has certainly inspired me to experiment a new flavoured cheesecake other than my usual Oreo Cheesecake or the Lemon Cheesecake. I decided to use strawberry flavoured gelatin and a digestive biscuit base. Here's my creation and I name it "Hu-la-la" coz laughters from my family isn't as gentle as the Japs. Fancy a slice?

Not The Queen's English

Extracted from an article by Nury Vittachi:

[In a fast food restaurant]

Legend :
Ffs - Fast food server (Asian speaking in bare-bones English)
C - Customer (Monolingual English American)

Ffs : Harlowelcumkaneye L.pyoo?

C : What?

Ffs : Harlowelcumkaneye L.pyoo?

C : Er, yes, I'd like one cheeseburger, please.

Ffs : Dull Swiss wit Baygon?

C : Excuse me?

Ffs : Dull Swiss wit Baygon?

C : Oh, no, I don't want a double-Swiss with baygon, I mean bacon. I just want a normal cheeseburger.

Ffs : Humbugger wit jees. Setter Al Eckart?

C : Pardon me?

Ffs : Setter Al Eckart?

C : Ah, got it. A la carte, please.

Ffs : One-for-rice wee tat?

C : Oh, yes, please, I want fries with that.

Ffs : Smormy dyumludj?

C : I'm sorry, would you mind....?

Ffs : Smormy dyumludj. U juan smor, me dyum, ludj?

C : Medium.

Ffs : Wad rink u juan?

C : Fresh orange juice, please.

Ffs : Fray soringe ad too duller. Chippa u buy set.

C : Okay, gimme a set.

Ffs : Wit set u juan?

C : Cheeseburger.

Ffs : Dull Swiss wit Baygon set?

C : Excuse me?

Ffs : You juan dull Swiss wit Baygon set?

C : No. I don't want - actually, maybe I do want Baygon. At least it would kill my appetite.

LV's Spring Collection 2008?

Catch a glimpse of the LV's Spring Collection for 2008.

Nope. These are not LV's collection, but VL's. Let's zoom into the labels.

抱著空氣

鄭嘉穎、周麗淇 - 抱著空氣 《最美麗的第七天》片尾曲

鄭嘉穎、周麗淇 - 抱著空氣

作曲: 鄧智偉
填詞: 陳詩慧
編曲: Johnny Yim

K: 談情時太美妙 但是已經告別了
痛愛每天困擾 是沒法可預料

N: 愛上你太奧妙 為甚要開這玩笑
看痛苦的破曉 伴著我的合照

* 合:曾快樂曾相戀 曾擁抱吻著你
曾吵架曾生氣 如今一一記起
如果心仍不死 容許我 掛念你
明知道迷戀你 而可惜沒法擺脫別離 抱著空氣

K: 說再見那暗示 現實要捨棄情意
N: 但是我想你知 事實我很在意

Repeat *

Procrastination

"Habitual procrastination undermines one's credibility, causes stress and prevents one from succeeding and growing both professionally and personally."

Well, well, don't I know that? But then, my "Things To Do" list seems to just get longer and longer. It is often full of unpleasant tasks I wish would just go away quietly... but of course they never do.

Some says, "Plan ahead so that one won't be able to use the excuse of "I don't have the time". But then, I have never complained about not having enough time. It is just when it comes to undesirable tasks, my energy levels and moods will immediately plunge to the bottom.

Other says, "Try eliminating those self-defeating messages and focus on the good feelings you will experience once the task is completed. " Hmm, sounds sensible, but how?

Yet another daunting task which I would rather leave it later. You get me now? I procastinate so much, it's a wonder anything ever gets done ...