I had such a blast last weekend when I was back in KL.

First stop, Friday night upon arrival – CHAR KUEY TEOW at Ming Tien, Damansara. The Char Kuey Teow is so so la, I know can get better ones anywhere, but anywhere is fine since anywhere is better than Singapore’s Char Kuey Teow which is basically noodles with sugar water. Have I ever mentioned that Ming Tien has the best Hokkien noodles ar? Damn syiok. Had a plate of that also. And grilled sambal stingray with sugarcane juice.

Saturday morning woke up at 9am which to me was a miracle. But I had a mission. Went downstairs, grabbed my dad’s electric guitar and started jamming with dad and sister and 2 amps plus piano. Dad was on bass and I was the lead. Mostly strumming and humming the solos, hahahahaha. We played lots of Beatles, Maroon 5, Rod Stewart, My Chemical Romance, Scorpions, Muse and Guns N Roses. The real deal, not Guitar Hero material. Dad printed a whole stack of music with chords already, very prepared. We jammed about half a day, very enjoyable.

On piano, I have pretty much conquered Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, now trying to perfect Johannes Brahm’s Intermezzo in a Major, Op. 118 No. 2. Tough piece to play but lovely to hear. Here is the track if you are interested: http://alturl.com/x545. I’m wondering if I will ever perfect the piece. Not very confident though. Although piano had an overhaul, some lower keys couldn’t be fixed, so it was still out of tune. Most apparent one was my C# and C.

Afterwards, we drove to Ulu Yam for best Loh Mee and really best lor. It was at this old Chinese kampung area, quite hidden, in a shop that also doubles as a house. I have never ever eaten such nice Loh Mee before in my entire life, just the right portion of sourish taste and vinegar and noodles cooked perfectly, with ice guava juice. Then, we drove up to Genting in the hopes of, always, wanting to win money. First of, me and my sister played at the arcade, did some dance dance revolution, some silent hill shooting, some more crap shooting then some music games which I RULED. Sister wanted to play that Para Para dancing game but machine was not found. After about spending RM50 on arcade machines, we then went to meet my parents at the casino hall. Dad was on his usual jackpot slot machine and mum was at table. We all played on for a few more hours, we left poorer than when we arrived. So there.

On Sunday, we spent the entire afternoon lazing around, and about 6 o clock, we had BBQ to celebrate Father’s Day. Burnt some chicken wings, squids, fish, broccoli, abalone mushrooms, prawns and sweet potatoes. Mum boiled dessert too, some herbal stuff to prevent ‘heatiness’ after all the food. Later at night, went out for supper at mamak.

It was a really good weekend. I love my family. We are very close and I think nothing will ever change that. I am grateful.

Since my dad, on impulse, bought a new flat screen tv, we had to rearrange our living room furniture a bit to display that brand new thing.

So my mum and I were cleaning up some cabinets and I found my old love of my life.

Stamps

My existing 4 stamp albums. So very the old.

Ah hah! Who would have known a cool chic like me would be nerdy to collect stamps. But I did, thanks to my mum. She was the one who introduced stamps collection to me when I was 10 years old. I wonder if people still collect stamps nowadays, or is it a dying hobby?

Here are some of some of my favourite stamps, let’s start with the ones from Malaysia:

Rectangle stamp, showing the world map, on the left side focused on map of Malaysia.

The ant is cute hor? If I’m not mistaken, there was a tv commercial about this ant also.

More animal like stamps from Malaysia. Gorgeous!

Our past icons and leaders in multi-colour.

Triangle stamps! This was for National Day or Patriotic Day, not sure.

“International Literacy Year 1990”

Unique shaped stamp to celebrate…. earth satellites?

And what about Singapore?

..click here to continue reading..

Here’s one new thing I learnt about my dogs yesterday. They know how to pretend one, just like humans.

For some reason, my neighbour’s dogs and some dogs from the neighbourhood like to gather in front of my house. I suspect my dad has been feeding them. Our Terry is a female dog la, by the way and she is so cute. Maybe that’s why she’s getting a lot of attention from those bastard dogs also.

Anyways, whenever these dogs gather in front of our house, my 2 dogs would bark like there’s no tomorrow. I think it’s a territorial thing. Bark and bark and bark with full of hate. So we know they don’t like those bastards out there.

Then last night, we came back from church and we drove in slowly from the corner of our street and can see from far that those bastard dogs were gathered in front of our house. One even slept off, like almost dead, right in the middle of the street. But it was quiet. Eh, how come no barking ha? So my dad purposely drove as slow as possible and just about to park next to our house. Realizing that we were back, then my 2 dogs barked at those bastards like there’s no tomorrow. Then those bastards woke up and trotted off in dismay.

Hahahaha, that scene was so funny. It was almost like my 2 dogs knew we were back so they pretended to bark, like pretended to do their jobs and just want to ’show’ to us. When we are not around, they also slept off and don’t bother. Hahahaha. Really kanasai.

Just when I had this uber urge to blog a few days ago, Blogsome server died for a while. I couldn’t access my blog and the admin page. I got so nervous man. On one hand I thought, fuck!, I’m losing all my history and personality, my identity is gone!! On the other hand I thought, well, this may be a sign to get a new space and a new blog design.

So I lost all my train of thoughts.

I think I really want a new blog design cos I’m pretty bored with this one. I’ll pick a dark, sombre mood this time. Not this nice, pinky, sunshine mood.

These few days have been hard for me. I think I had a pretty rough year so far, and so far, it’s only February. That kinda sucks. Been coughing for 2 weeks, but slowly getting better. Things at work are… really bad. I won’t tell much here. But honest to God, nothing can be worst than what I’m facing right now. Think of the worst times you ever had in your working life, and multiply that by 83084237. Sometimes I wonder if it’s even worth hanging on. Maybe I should just give up and go away. What’s the point? I really don’t know. I’m unable to concentrate on anything else. I don’t even know who to trust anymore. For instance, other offices requested me for a simple information. In any other normal days before this, I’d obliged. I wouldn’t think twice . But these days, I have to ask first. It doesn’t really matter if I sound stupid.

The only thing that is keeping me sane right now is my Cibet. Cibet is my Pet Society pet. I wake up, I think about her. I login to Facebook just to play with her. I know it sounds really weird, but it’s true. Small little things like getting 500 coins, then gambling it away and getting really good unique items in Mystery Boxes and even having dirty and unhappy pets at the Cafe, makes me so happy. I am just drowned into the world of Pet Society.

When newspapers and TVs were announcing that times are bad, the economy is bad, this is going to be terrible crisis worse than 97, bla bla bla… I was like ya ya, it’s the end of the world, who cares? Boy was I naive. It didn’t strike me as to how bad the situation was, until a few friends of mine got retrenched, offices are closing down and the scariest part was, even my company was not spared and has fired a few. That hit me, like a huge fucking brick on my face. So it does affect me after all. So I’m not that invincible after all. So life really sucks after all, because of a few greedy asswipes.

That means, I have to be careful of spending, because you just won’t know what will happen. Seriously. One day you are happy you have a job, the next day your company will take it away just like that. I’m not afraid of being retrenched actually. I’m just afraid of being controlled how I live my life because of money, or the lack of it afterwards.

But what difference does it make anyway? Even now, I am already controlling my lifestyle because I know I need to be careful of spending. Just grocery shopping the other day, I’ve become somewhat like an ‘aunty’. I have started to compare prices, find the cheapest but still fulfill its duty. Like handwash soap for example, I’d usually go for the good looking brands with nice colourful bottled ones because that is just how I shop. An impulsive shopper, he said. That day, I went for a house brand, the cheapest. Gawd awful looking bottle and probably smell like apple even when it states it’s lemon. Between this and the branded one, the price difference was only less than a dollar. Still I went for the house brand because it was cheaper.

That said, I think my family doesn’t realize that the economic crisis is really bad. Because I came home today and I saw a brand new flat screen HDTV in our living room, my dad has a brand new phone, my brother has a brand new phone and my mum is planning for a holiday in either Bangkok or Hong Kong next month. Either that or they are filthy rich and pretending to be poor in front of me.

It is Lent season now. This I only know when it was announced on the radio. I told everyone "it’s Lent season now". They asked me, what is Lent? I said it’s when us Catholics would sacrifice doing our favourite things or eating our favourite food or basically just be sad all the way till Easter. I think it’s not very hard to do based on current circumstances. I’d have definitely booked a place in heaven.

I just watched Slumdog Millionaire yesterday. No wonder this movie is such a huge buzz right now. I fully agree it deserves the Oscar for Best Movie. It’s even better than that overhyped American Beauty. Just in case you are still wondering, it’s not a Bollywood movie. In fact, it has educated me a lot about the slums in India. Overall, it is actually a sad movie. But it will be a movie you will never ever forget after watching it. I’m not sure though, if the movie truly depicts the real situation in Mumbai and the slums, if it was exaggerated or made up. I should google more about it.

The usual tradition of Christmas would be lunch over at my house with close relatives and friends. This year we decided not to organize any lunch cos we don’t want any work. So with that laziness, my parents booked us a table at Eurodeli’s for lunch and meat feasting session. Eurodeli is famous for its turkeys and meat. Yum yum.

These were the meals prepared for the day, the Special Christmas menu and we had all three:

 

I woke up at 5pm, had Fisher Cheese Balls and Angus O’Neil’s Root Beer for breakfast while watching Season 1 of The Office. I love my life.

Great advice from blogger here:

I would like to call upon all Malaysians to do these:

1. Remain calm

2. Do not do anything rash

3. Do not take to the street

4. Do not be instigated by people to demonstrate

5. Just voice it out in your blog, your comments to the blogs, and inform your friends and relatives about the situation

6. Call your Aduns or MPs and voice out your objection about these arrests and urge your representatives to voice out

7. Members of political parties, sms your leaders to pressure them to voice out

We shall object to these draconian acts by using civility and do not fall into the traps of giving the big brother a chance to declare emergency rule……

http://hsudarren.wordpress.com/2008/09/12/be-calm-and-follow-these-steps/

This is following the arrest of RPK, Teresa Kok and the Sin Chew reporter, Tan Hoon Cheng; all arrested under ISA. Lawrence called me this morning just to break this news to me. Thanks Lawrence.

Just got one thing to say.

WHO THE HELL VOTED FOR BN DURING THE LAST GENERAL ELECTION? THIS IS ALL YOUR BLOODY FAULT.