sooyindotcom

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! =(