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We just got back from spending the weekend at Cyberview Lodge, my post-birthday treat for Eric. We enjoyed a 6 hour spa, complete with massage, body treatment, pedicure yesterday and a visit to Putrajaya’s latest mall - Alamanda. Details here!

Unfortunately, I must have eaten something bad during breakfast, cause my tummy really feels awful. I came back home feeling very listless and tired, and I’ve actually just woken up from a 2 hours nap and am still feeling rather sickly and grumpy…..=(

Work wise…well, last week was a pretty un-exciting week. Hope the coming one will prove to be better…we are expecting an announcement on our increment soon, and the staff meeting on Wednesday at Nikko Hotel will also consist of the announcement of QAT awards. QAT are Quality Action Teams. Yearly, teams are formed to improve current processes in the bank. At the end of the year, or rather, beginning of the following year, the performance of each team is judged in terms of revenue, reduction in time, etc. and top 3 teams will win a substantial amount of money, awarded by Citibank. On top of that, there are the Best Team Leader and Best Team Member awards up for grabs too…it’s a pretty ‘lucrative’ project! This year, hubby was the team leader for the Autopay QAT. The perfectionist as usual, he worked really hard on the project and the subsequent presentation for the competition…..so fingers crossed!

Oh…and we finally went to submit our bids for the car number on early Saturday morning before going to Cyberview Lodge. What a messy process…as expected of all government related stuff! We arrived at the road transport office at Wangsa Maju at about 8.30am to find that the bids for numbers starting with WMR had closed the day before. The post office was still shut so we were unable to buy the postal orders and envelopes needed to submit our bids. We hung around for awhile before deciding to wait for the post office to open. Lingering around the area were touts trying to sell car numbers at a very much higher price…! We finally got the postal orders but the envelopes were sold out. At the same time, the guy at the information desk told hubby that the bids for car numbers starting with WMS just opened this morning…lucky us! We proceeded across the road to a small magazine shop to buy envelopes…and then we realized, we didn’t buy stamps! So it was back to the post office queue. While I waited, hubby went inside the building to pay the RM10 processing fee and obtain the receipt that we needed to submit together. We then met back to write the addresses on the envelopes, complete the forms, etc. it was about 10.30am by the time hubby dropped the envelopes in the boxes! The closing date for this round is 10 March, so hopefully, we’ll be able to get the car number that we want! FYI…the process is as follows:

1. Obtain blue bidding form from the information counter next to the post office
2. Obtain postal order of at least RM200 or 10% of your bid, whichever is higher, stamps and envelopes from the post office
3. Proceed to the counter to pay the RM10 processing fee
4. Fill up the blue form, write the addresses on the envelopes (the smaller envelope is to be self-addressed with the stamp already stuck on)
5. Fill up the back of the postal order, tear off the small slip on the left before putting into envelope
6. Tear off the bottom half of the RM10 receipt and put the top half into the envelope
7. Seal everything, say a little prayer and drop it into the box!

Phew…

Wrapping:

Hiding:

Giving:

Waiting:

Cutting:

Happy Birthday and plenty of love…

(By the way…in case you readers are interested, the pressies were wrapped by William @ Paper Boutique, Midvalley, cakes by Allan & Nigel of Just Heavenly)

Day 1
Hubby dropped me off at the Mastery Academy at about 9.45am. I thought I was early enough to get a seat in the front row….to my surprise, the class was practically full!! Oh well, managed to get back the same seat I had in Module 1.

Class started with Joey going through a chart of a Hong Kong billionaire (no names given). It was basically a recap of the things we learnt in Module 1 and it got us warmed up for what’s to come. Watching Joey interpret a chart is very fascinating as interpretation is still a big blur for me….so watching how he connects this to that to draw a conclusion…wow!

We then jumped right into a recap of the five elements, Heavenly Stems, Earthly Branches and the corresponding hidden stems. Thank god I’ve managed to memorize all the 22 Chinese characters…but I still took some time to decipher the character each time he wrote it on the board. It’s really not as easy as reading ABC cause it’s not something you’ve been doing your whole life. He then went on to the Chinese classics for the 5 elements…at this level, it’s really not enough to know that fire produces earth, which produces metal, which produces water, which produces wood, which, in turn, produces fire….and the corresponding controlling cycle. He then went into death and emptiness…yes, there are death and emptiness in Bazi too, not only Feng Shui (for Feng Shui, it’s the directions N, S, E, W, etc…)!!

After lunch, he continued with a deeper study of the 10 gods….I took notes till my hand ached. And we finished off with the 10 gods family tree…by then, my head was literally spinning with information!!

Day 2
The day dawned bright and early. Joey kicked off by giving us 3 Bazi charts to interpret….some of my classmates were really good and quick! We also went through our homework from the day before, and then proceeded to standard Bazi chart structures. After lunch, we continued with the quality and the 3 types of useful gods. Before we left, Joey gave us another piece of homework…to plot a Bazi chart based on the year, month, day and time of the tsunami disaster!

Day 3
We started the class by reviewing the Bazi chart of the tsunami disaster. It was quite an eye opener as the chart showed massive amount of the water element ‘flooding’ the earth element. Plus, there was also a ‘uncivilized’ punishment in the chart…you really can’t help wonder if all these events are already ‘pre-determined’! We were also taught special chart structures and Bazi analysis for career, health and marriage/partnerships. By the time the class ended, I was really and truly mentally exhausted!!

I hope I’m able to have enough time to study up all the new things that we’ve been taught during those 3 days as I really want to attend Module 3 in may this year….=)) Bazi is a really very fascinating subject…there are so many things that you can read from your chart and I feel it’s much better to know what’s ahead than to blindly make decisions during times when your luck is not actually that good.

I’m eager to start reading hubby and my parents’ charts…but first, I’ll need to tidy all my notes…*grin*

Just got back from dinner after attending a full day of Bazi class at Mastery Academy.

Dinner was at Mizu @ Bangsar Village with my parents. Was quite pleased to see that they clearly advertised Citibank’s 15% discount for ala carte items. The set dinner was a bit pricey at RM80 per set, so we decided to go for ala carte. We had: California maki, gindara teriyaki, tamago, beef teriyaki and assorted tempura. My dad and hubby went for garlic fried rice (ooo…smelly stinky breath!!!*grin*) while my mum and I had plain white rice. The gindara was tasty, but unfortunately very small, but the beef teriyaki smelled absolutely marvellous! It came in a hot plate and the teriyaki sauce was still bubbling….the smell was heavenly! Will definitely try the chicken teriyaki the next time we go there!!

My lilies are wilting…I really don’t have any luck taking care of flowers. Remember the plant I bought some time back…? Well, it died. I watered it right before leaving for Ipoh for CNY, and when we came back 2 days later, the flowers were all shriveled and dried up….=((

The past few days at work has been pretty hectic. Some big project is going on and for the past 3 days, my colleague and I have been bugged with queries on our data structure, etc by some overseas colleagues…and it’s been driving us totally nuts. Enough already….we have other work to do, y’know?!? And the worst thing was this…to lessen work disruption, our boss got them to agree to compile all their questions before emailing us, instead of emailing through piece-mail basis, and to email by 6pm in the evening, whereby we’ll reply the queries via email by noon the next day. They agreed. And obviously found a loophole. The next day, those sneaky snakes started emailing their questions (piece-mail basis!) to a colleague of theirs who was posted here in KL, and he would come over to our cubicle to ask us in person, and then go back to reply his colleague probably via email as well. Wtf?!?

Oh yes!! After my Bazi class, hubby took me to the Honda showroom to take another look at the Honda Jazz. And I got to test drive it too! The steering felt lighter than my Toyota Corolla, while the brakes were not as sensitive as the Peugeot (which was fine to me cause it feels exactly like my Corolla). I’ve also been doing some research on internet…read quite a few reviews on both cars and to my surprise, Peugeot 307 had pretty bad reviews, while I couldn’t find any bad reviews for the Honda Jazz! Here are some of the reviews that I read on the Jazz…most of it are actually UK/Australia reviews…couldn’t find much M’sian ones…:

• Webwombat
• CarSurvey
• Honest John
• Star Motoring
• Asian Auto

So it’s the Honda Jazz

vs. Peugeot 307…

Anyways, although I really like the interior of the Peugeot, the fact that there’s hardly any resale value for that car is a big turn-off for me. Coupled with the bad reviews, I really didn’t feel like buying that car anymore. I feel quite sad about it though…cause the interior and the features are really nice. Anyways, I’m pretty contented with my choice….the Honda Jazz VTEC version in silver with black leather seats and V-Kool. Gonna cost me about RM106k in total. Mum’s ‘buying’ back my Toyota for RM60k (parents are just the best….*grin*), so I’ll have to fork out, or rather, take a car loan for the remaining RM46k. Just hope I get an increment in my salary this year…it hasn’t been announced yet, so fingers crossed!!

At the same time, hubby and I are going to bid for car number plates…it costs a minimum of RM200, but for special numbers, such as single digits, etc, the minimum cost goes up to about RM1k! Of course, those who really got numbers like 1, 2, 8, etc. bid a five figure sum for the number…way out of our league! So far, the number plates in Wilayah have reached WMQ, and probably by the time we submit our bid, it’s gonna be WMR or WMS already. I personally would like WMW 8998…but it apparently takes about 2 weeks for the last letter to change, so I’ll have to wait…3 months? And I personally blame hubby for getting me all crazy about car number plates. It started out as his ‘thing’/obsession…I never really bothered about the number plates. But now….we keep on discussing which ones we want and how much to bid…yikes!! Anyways, we’ve listed down a few numbers….so hopefully, we’ll get the ones we like…=)

Hubby’s birthday is just around the corner. I’ve ordered cakes from Just Heavenly to be delivered to the office next week. Just Heavenly makes the most delicious cakes ever. Their chocolate banana is to-die-for! This time, I’ve ordered….oh dear….I actually forgot what I ordered!! But never mind, it’ll definitely be good! And for his birthday pressie, we’ll be spending a day at Cyberview Lodge the following weekend and I’m treating him (and myself!) to a 5 hour spa session. We’ve been to Cyberview about 3 times for their spa sessions, and the massage and body treatments are absolutely heavenly. This time round, we’re going for the Lost in Paradise package and it consists of a bath, body treatment (scrub and body wrap), massage, facial, hair treatment and lunch. Can’t wait!! =))

And now….it’s off to finish up my homework before Day 2 of my Bazi class tomorrow…yes, I kid you not…HOMEWORK.

About 10am this morning at work, I received a gorgeous bouquet of lilies (one of my favourite flowers…I love the scent!) from Eric. It was such a lovely and extravagant surprise, and the accompanying note - where the contents shall remain private - nearly brought me to tears.

Poor hubby was sick and resting at home, and all I could think of for the rest of the day was to get home as soon as possible to give him a big hug. At 6pm, I packed my stuff and hurried off to the car. I finally made it home by around 7pm, no thanks to the horrific traffic jam at Jalan Tun Razak….and managed to give (and get) my hug…=) Snapped a few pics of the lilies….see below….and the bouquet has now been unwrapped and the flowers are sitting pretty in a vase.

What a wonderful day….=)

Update: For more photos, go to my photo gallery.