sooyindotcom

In no particular order:

…Sudu…

…Porky party + the crazy woman returns with one boy and 3 sperms…

…Re-org…

…Apartment hunting…

…The couple upstairs are having a really really good time in bed…

In the last two days, I acquired…:

1. 1 pair of green striped pants
2. 1 pair of pink pants
3. 1 long sleeved pink office shirt
4. 1 long sleeved pink shirt with lime green ‘fake’ vest
5. 2 short sleeved white tops
6. 1 short sleeved red top
7. 1 sleeveless black top
8. 1 short sleeved pink top
9. 1 green and white striped skirt
10 .1 long sleeved wooly white sweater

…I also received my credit card bill….

…and I have the following people to belanja (treat) in view of my promotion and increment…

1. My parents
2. Hubby
3. Office colleagues (Lunch at Lobsterman tomorrow. Am now thanking god that I’m splitting the bill with another colleague *grin*)

…and worse of all…my salary this month was only…RM200. YES, I’M NOT KIDDING. A huge chunk of it went to tax…apparently I wasn’t taxed enough on my performance bonus, so they decided to take out more from this month’s salary. On the bright side…at least I didn’t have to pay the bank back for letting me work for them! What happened was that same time last year, after we received our performance bonus, we got our salary slip for February. Again, we weren’t taxed enough on our bonus so more money had to be deducted from our monthly salary. A couple of us had opted for the maximum amount for our stock option, and what was left wasn’t enough to cover the additional tax…so we actually had to fork out money from our own pockets to pay our employer. How ironic is that?!?!? Of course, we refused to pay until HR showed us exactly how they arrived at that figure. We were all hoping it was a huge screw-up…unfortunately, it wasn’t…*grrr*

Had a really good dinner at Oriental Cravings in 1 Utama (new wing) with hubby and my parents. We had been there once when the restaurant just opened, but the menu was pretty limited. It had the best sour plum lime juice I’ve ever tasted though…very kau (thick)! Anyways, the restaurant just got a good review in the papers today, so we decided to give it another go. We ordered prawns fried with oatmeal, caramel stewed pork ribs (deboned), chicken fried with salted fish and chinese sausage, Hong Kong vege and fish paste soup. The portions were huge…but extremely tasty. All 5 dishes were really good…the fried prawns were similar to butter prawns, but not as oily….and they were extremely generous with the fried oatmeal, which is usually the tastiest part of the dish (all salty and yummy). Best of all, the prawns were already shelled!! The caramel pork ribs was nice and sweet and the soup was pretty special. Hubby and I ordered the sour plum lime juice….oooo…still as good! I was so full that I couldn’t finish mine, so I now have a cup waiting for me in the fridge (together with a slice of frozen orange cheesecake)…mmm…=)

Will work it all off tomorrow at yoga….*grin*….

Saw the cutest tiny little rabbit at Pets Wonderland while wandering around after dinner. He/she was eating and his/her nose was twitching away…so utterly adorable. Pets Wonderland was selling a starter kit (together with the rabbit!) for RM135…damn, was I tempted…until hubby came up behind me and whispered, “Think of how often you have to clean the cage”. Darn. But I feel that I’m really ‘pets-deprived’. Though, to be fair, I don’t have much time to devote to any pet right now…but i still feel a very strong yearning for a pet…especially a dog (beagle!) or another cat. Even though it’s been about 9 months since we gave away Max, our Persian kitten, I still miss him very much and sometimes when I see a golden coloured kitten in the pet shop, I can really feel my heart ache and I sometimes really really regret giving him away. I still remembered the day the new owner came to pick him up….while we were waiting, I had Max on my lap and he was so obedient, just lying there contentedly while I was scratching his back. And he’s really really shy around strangers so when I tried to hand him over, he was scrabbling up my shoulder, trying to get away. After they had left, hubby had to comfort me while I cried. It was a horrible experience. But I suppose it was all for the best. I didn’t have enough time to spend with Max, and most of the day, he would be alone in the study room. By the time I came back from work, I’d be too tired to play with him. So I really hope that he’s happy and well in his new home…

The highs (in no particular order…):

#1: Hubby won the Best QAT Team Leader award…a whopping RM6,000! I was super proud when his name was announced and when he walked up to the stage to get his prize! The rest of our colleagues were clapping for him…I really felt so proud of him!

#2: Hubby’s QAT team placed 1st in the QAT Country Award…RM12,000 to be shared out among the 7 team members!!

QAT Best Team Leader

QAT Country Award, 1st Prize: Autopay QAT

#3: I got promoted to manager (yes!! 3 extra days of annual leave + more medical benefits!!). Two people were promoted from our team, myself and another colleague, KC. I feel pretty happy cause I felt that I have tried to give my best in the past years and this is a real validation of my efforts. And having a great team of colleagues and a very supportive boss does make it easy to come to work everyday. Although there are days when I do feel frustrated with my work, or simply plain bored, I’m thankful that the good days outweigh the bad. And the working environment is not something you can duplicate…I don’t think it’s easy to find a similar type of environment in other companies, and for me, it’s a big ‘hold-back’ factor whenever I feel frustrated and feel that I want to find another job.

#4: I also got an increment together with my promotion! This will definitely help with the car loan payments (see #5)!!

#5: I’ve booked my Honda Jazz! Unfortunately, all the 2004 VTEC models have been sold out, so I will be getting the 2005 model instead. Why unfortunately? Well, it’s a RM3,000 (at least) price increase! Since I didn’t have much of a choice, I went ahead and booked it. The car should be here by end of March…can’t wait!!

#6: My best friend, K, is back from UK for a week! I haven’t seen her for ages and ages and it was simply wonderful to meet up in person and talk! We met up for dinner at Aquavit @ Changkat Bukit Bintang. She had a yearning to eat fish and I found the restaurant listed under the 50 Best Restaurants in Klang Valley list…the place apparently specializes in fish! We (or rather, K, her other half and hubby) had 4 different types of oysters, soup and a shared main course of honey coated butterfish with spinach in wasabe mayonnaise and black cod with some super hot chilli flakes on top…=) Dinner lasted 2 and a half hours and we had a really good catch-up talk. She’s currently working in London at Bloomberg and her job really sounds interesting! Given the chance, I would really like to go back to UK to work, maybe not forever, but for a year or two. Anyways, she looked really good…all happy and glowing, and I really feel very happy for her…=) Do miss her a lot though…especially all our silly and extremely frank conversations…!

Our main course at Aqauvit…butterfish (left) and black cod (right)

K bought butter biscuits from Fortnum and Mason for me!

And the lows (definitely in order):

#1: A 4 hour to and fro drive to Teluk Intan for a ‘cousin-in-law’s’ wedding dinner. Extremely low due to disgustingly horrible karaoke singing…what is it about Chinese wedding dinners and karaoke? The mere sight of the microphone seems to cause all the bad and horrendous so-called singers to scramble up to the stage and warble a song (one, if we’re lucky!)!! There were literally times when I felt like throwing my hand phone at some of the people up on the stage!! Furthermore, the food service was slow and surprisingly, the food wasn’t very nice either! I always thought that small towns would have better food…on the contrary. And the dish that I always look forward to during wedding dinners, ie sharksfin soup, had vinegar added in before it was dished into individual portions. I DON’T TAKE VINEGAR!!! Worse of all, the last dish was somehow delayed (we could see it all ready at the kitchen, just can’t understand why it wasn’t served) and we sat around the table waiting for almost half an hour listening to the screeching on the stage. Even cats can sing better. To top it all off….(and this is ultimately the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen during a wedding)….one woman came over to our table and started selling lottery tickets…and 15 minutes later, another came to sell the Chinese evening newspaper! I truly truly thank TI for keeping me sane during half the dinner with her SMS-es….and I have a newfound love for my trusty O2 XPhoneII and the game, Jawbreaker. Reached home sweet home at 12.30 am…drank a cup of milo to fill my starving and empty stomach and just flopped onto the bed and drifted off to sleep.

#2: A very potential low….just spent 2 hours trying to make one of my favourite cakes: Bangkok Kaya. It’s basically a coffee/cocoa agar-agar (jelly) layer on top of a coconut agar-agar layer on top of a sponge cake…served chilled, it’s really heavenly. Well, I divided the sponge cake mixture too thinly between two cake tins which caused the bottom of the sponge cake to get burnt. While cutting away the burnt part, I sliced off too much and the cakes became lopsided. The cocoa agar-agar set too fast…was suppose to pour the coconut layer when the cocoa layer is just ABOUT to set so that it’ll stick together…it’s all about timing, timing, timing! Forgot to add water to the corn flour before adding it into the coconut mixture which caused it to go all lumpy. And to add insult to injury…or rather injury to insult, I burnt my finger when one dollop of scalding hot coconut agar-agar dripped onto my fourth finger. Yeuch! All in all…I think it’s gonna be a failure…but we’ll see when I take it out from the cake tin tonight.

#3: K was supposed to come over today…but the poor girl is ill. She’ll be going back to UK on tuesday….don’t know how long before I get to see her again! =(