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Haven’t been buying books for quite some time…so I’ve been indulging in a book buying spree in the last two weeks. I’ve acquired:

The Favoured Child and Meridon (after a long search in all major bookstores, I found this at Borders, Berjaya Times Square! Yahoo!) - the 2nd and 3rd book respectively of the Lacey trilogy by Philippa Gregory. The story started off in the 1st book entitled Wideacre about Beatrice Lacey and her quest to own the land called Wideacre. The Favoured Child then followed with her daughter, Julia, and her son, Richard’s story and Meridon ended the saga with Sarah Lacey, Beatrice’s grand-daughter. All in all, a good read…especially for fans of Virginia Andrews as this trilogy does have some similarities to her stories..

Wideacre actually left me with a really bad feeling…Beatrice’s determination to own Wideacre was frightening and quite disturbing at times. However, it was my favourite book out of all three. I liked the first half of Meridon, but the second half found me skipping pages and speed reading to finish the whole story. However, in my opinion, none of these books could’ve held a candle against The Other Boleyn Girl, another book written by the same author.

Flowers In The Attic and Petals In The Wind - I was in secondary school when I first started reading Virginia Andrew’s books. Always coming in sets of 5, the 5th book is usually the prequel to the 1st. I stopped reading her books a long long time ago, but I chanced upon some in MPH two weeks ago and I just couldn’t resist it…just had to read the story again! After all, Flowers In The Attic is practically vintage Virginia Andrews…*grin*

Also bought a copy of P.S. I Love You and The Time Traveller’s Wife as a pressie for my boss. The Time Traveller’s Wife was also sold out in all major bookstores…but managed to find it in Borders as well…yayy! It’s a well written book with a little bit of science fiction thrown in. As the title implies, there’s some time travelling, but the story is so seamless and despite what you might except, the time travelling parts are not confusing as you may find in some stories.

The Foodsters’ Guide 2005 - This book has become my indispensable companion for food trips! Listing down 118 restaurants and 118 stalls around Klang Valley plus food trips to Ipoh, Johor and Malacca…you’ll never find yourself asking “Hmmm…what shall we eat for dinner today?” So far, the recommendations have been pretty good…a couple of my favourite eating places have been listed in there, and the ones that we’ve tried have been great too! I’m now hankering to try Checkers @ Damansara Heights…but so far, our last 2 attempt failed cause the place was fully booked! For an online guide, check out their website at friedchillies.

The Guide To Angels And Demons - You know when a book is good when there are books written about it! This book is huge and thick and jam-packed with information on the original book by Dan Brown. It has stuff about the Vatican, the Bernini statues, and some pretty funny grammatical errors that was noticed in Angels And Demons. Ironically, I bought this book one day before the pope died…so reading about how the conclave is actually carried out (as opposed to the way it was described in the book) while watching the news reports on CNN was kinda surreal.

Bazi - The Destiny Code by Joey Yap - Yes, I’ve gone for the classes, but still couldn’t resist getting this book. Teaching the basics of Bazi and jam-packed with examples, it’s a good addition to my Feng Shui/Bazi library. Buy it online here.

Books aside, I managed to get my hands on Michael Buble’s latest album, It’s Time. Quando Quando Quando , Save The Last Dance For Me and Home has quickly become firm favourites. His voice is so smooth, the songs are infectious and addictive…just makes you feel like getting up and dancing around!

Workwise…well, we’ve had some restructuring during the past month, and I’m quite worried about my new role, ie. not sure if I can actually perform well. From what I hear, I have a feeling that my personality is not very suited for this new function. We were told that we’re expected to be more aggressive…to drive the job, not just do it. Unfortunately, I feel that my character is more of a do-er…more of a “just leave me alone to do my work, don’t come bug me…” type. Parents and hubby have told me not to get so discouraged so early…give it a try. So I’m hoping that all will turn out well…I really do like the working environment and my boss and colleagues are great, so it’ll be a shame to give it up. On the flip side, we are embarking on something totally new in Malaysia and this has been implemented a few years back in the States and apparently has been very successful so we’re like the ‘pioneers’ over here. If it works, we’ll be the first ones to enjoy the success. I guess that’s looking at things positively…=)

Our country business manager, Allen Tan, has just officially retired, and a retirement party/dinner was held in Mandarin Oriental last week. It was pretty fun (though the food, as usual, sucked…)…every department prepared a slide show and a live presentation…so plenty of laughs all the way. The best slide show was definitely by the Risk folks…it was side-splitting-ly hilarious!!

And finally finally finally…after a long 1 and a half months wait…I’ll finally be getting my car next Thursday! Can’t wait! And best of all, hubby’s getting a new car too….a Volvo S40 in black! Gorgeous…just look at the pics below!

American Idol contestant, Constantine Maroulis, has just been voted off in the latest show. The three lowest scoring competitors were Vonzell Solomon, Anthony Federov and Constantine…I was rooting for either Vonzell or Anthony to be voted off as I didn’t like Vonzell, and Anthony has so far been one of the worst contestants. I was also hoping that Scott Savol might get kicked out as well….too bad my wish didn’t come true. Constantine wasn’t one of the best singer, but he has a charismatic personality, and Simon’s comment about him being a ’smouldering idol’ was downright hilarous! I’m still rooting for Bo Bice though…this guy sings in tune every week, he’s fun to watch and he has that rocker thingy going on…*swoon*…=)

Speaking of reality shows, two of my favourites just ended it’s run, namely Apprentice 2 and America’s Next Top Model 3. And Amazing Race 7 and The Contender is drawing to a close pretty soon. Sigh, hope terrestrial/extra-terrestrial TV brings in the next season soon. Other than these few, the only show, or rather the two shows that keeps me going throughout the week are CSI Las Vegas and CSI New York….great shows, but not enough to sustain my weekly need for the idiot box!

Anyways, to continue my book buying spree…I’ve just read a review on Chuck Palahniuk’s books (he’s the author of Fight Club), so will be scouring the bookshops for: Invisible Monsters, Choke, Diary and Haunted…

And I’ve been trying to hunt down that lovely song from the Revlon ad. The song, Bellissimo, was sung by a group called San Ilya. Unfortunately, none of the music stores seem to carry their CD, entitled They Died For Beauty (how apt, if you think about it), and we can’t download it from iTunes…=(( By the way, this website is really useful if you ever hear a catchy tune in an ad and want to find out what it is…go to Adtunes! That’s where I found the name of the Revlon ad’s song.

Haven’t been baking in a while…had a ‘fight’ with my oven when it burnt my chocolate cake. I swear the temperature setting is all screwed up…

Just like a certain someone I know who has been pissing me off at work lately.

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It’s been a busy week, and I can forsee it’s gonna get worse! I haven’t been updating this blog for ages…I can barely find the time to do it on weekends much less on weekdays. Since hubby changed departments and all, we resolved to go to work a little earlier, ie…to reach before 9am…not after…*grin*…which means I need to wake up about half an hour earlier. Which also makes me about twice as grumpy. And I’ve just been feeling so tired most of the time…even falling asleep on the way to work (no, not while driving…my car isn’t here yet!). And my body is now aching like crazy after a particularly strenuous yoga session today. Anyways, we managed to catch a really good show, Sepet, on Astro today. Yes, I know, most people would’ve already seen it at the cinemas….

However, if you haven’t watched it already…do catch it on Astro or buy the vcd. It’s not Oscar winning…but this simple story of two young people in love perfectly captured the Malaysian-ness of Malaysia…=) And it’s not only a boy-girl love story, but also the love of a parent for her son, and the love of a family between a husband and wife and between the parents and their daughter. Set in Ipoh, the main story of the movie touches on the inter-racial relationship between Orked and Jason…and it really had me crying at times. Sharifah Amani, who played the leading character of Orked, was perfectly cast…she has an endearing sweetness in her looks and she’s just so cute in that show. Look out for the part where Orked’s father (played by Harith Iskandar!) plays scrabble with his wife and puts down MILF as a word (clue: remember the show American Pie?)….hilarious! And when orked enters a Chinese coffeeshop and sees BBQ pork (siew yoke/char siew) being chopped up…! I have to admit that I didn’t have very high expectations for this movie even though it had gotten really good reviews…never had any faith or confidence in Malaysian made movies, sad to say. I’ve always felt that the actors/actresses, if that’s what they can be called in the first place, overact, the storyline is more often than not, borderline ridiculous and sometimes downright stupid…and that was when I watched only the trailers! So Sepet was an eye-opener and a show that I feel is truly Malaysian-ised…what with the language switching from Malay to English to Cantonese with a smattering of Hokkien thrown in…. =) The show was truly a surprise, and a sweet one at that.

Kudos to the director and script writer Yasmin Ahmad for a job really well done!

I really can’t believe it’s April! The first three months of 2005 has gone by like a blur…sleep, work, eat, tv, sleep, work, eat, tv….

Anyways…

Sudu: Took my parents and hubby to Sudu at the newly (well, not that new anymore) opened KL Hilton to celebrate my promotion/increment. It’s a restaurant that has a semi-buffet ie. appetizers and desserts is buffet style…while you have a choice of about 6 different meals to choose from for your main course. True to it’s name (sudu is Malay for spoon), the appetizers and desserts came in small little individual dishes…really cute to look at! And they had one of the best sun-dried tomato bread…absolutely yummy! The main course was pretty good too, but the dessert was a let-down. Nice to look at, but didn’t taste all that good, unfortunately. But that’s always the case with hotel buffet…I’ve never been to one where the dessert tasted as good as it looks. My father ended up snatching the bill from me…so it really wasn’t my treat, after all!

My main course of tiger prawns with risotto:

Hubby’s main course…lamb, as usual!:

Porky party + the crazy woman returns with one boy and 3 sperms: We were invited to a colleague’s house at Sierramas for a porky party…yup, you got it right. Roasted pork all the way!!

Honey…does my butt look big in this picture?:

The absolutely delicious roasted pig:

At the same time, an ex-colleague and fellow mischief maker, JK where we spent about half an hour taking stupid photos with the 3 toy sperms…what a night!

3 crazy girls…

…3 toy sperms and one soon-to-be corrupted donkey:

Re-org: Back at the office, we had a re-org in our department which was announced on Tuesday…all I can say is that I’m pretty excited about my new role. It looks like it’s going to be an interesting and challenging year…=)

Apartment hunting: For the past couple of weekends, hubby and I have been going to apartment launches and visiting show-houses. Anyways, most of the ones we visited were well out of our budget but if you have the time, do go see these two show-houses (they are my absolute favourites):

1. Duta Tropika @ Sri Hartamas: take a look at the master bedroom’s bathroom…it’s absolutely gorgeous!
2. Hijauan Kiara @ Mont Kiara: the interior decorator must have gone all out on this one. The apartment is beautifully decorated, and best of all, there are only 2 apartments per floor and you have your own private lobby. The master bedroom’s bathroom comes with a sunken bathtub…very spa-like!

The couple upstairs are having a really really good time in bed: At least that’s what we thought when our wind-chime started…err…chiming at 12.05 am Tuesday morning! Then our cabinet door started vibrating…followed by our bed. And seriously, you could feel the vibrations, it was that strong! We both went to the window to see what was happening…but the vibrations had already stopped and didn’t occur again. Hubby jokingly commented before we went back to bed, “Hmm…must be an earthquake”. Imagine our shock when we saw the headlines on Tuesday’s newspaper…!

Hubby has officially moved over to the Policy and Risk department. It feels abit strange not having lunch with him everyday, and meeting each other at the lobby before going home (update on my car: we can only get it mid-April *grrrr*)….but I suppose I’ll get used to it. He seems to be settling in well and he has a nice desk at a corner by the window…=)

And hot off the press….we just came back from the JPJ office….I got both my bids for the car number(s) that I wanted! Talk about creating trouble for myself! I really thought I would only get one. Now I don’t know which one to choose….so far, SMS-ing my friends have resulted in a tie of 3 against 3….so what do you think? 1881 or 8998?