People Who Need People

...have gotta be fully-charged extroverts. As for us, somehow we must have recharged our social batteries during the week (or probably due to the number of beer suppers we've been doing) because today was basically a bounceabout everywhere seeing old faces (as well as some new ones).

The Uni Union
Sweel's wedding luncheon was at Bukit Jalil Golf and Country Resort, and we were probably fated not to show up on time really. Asides from having just woke up an hour before the luncheon was due to start, our sinus decided to flare up - and we didn't have anymore meds in the drawer. So the car had this ball of tissue that kept growing larger and larger as we hazily sniffed and sneezed our way towards Sri Petaling. In our hazy state - we missed the turning and ended up heading towards Cheras. After a speedy u-turn 10 minutes later, we were back on track...and mistakened Hotel Sri Petaling for the Golf and Country Resort.

So...late and at wrong place. And forgot to bring along invitation card.

And the only person we knew who was going for the luncheon was not picking up her phone. Just lucky for us that we were told that Nyukster stayed in Sri Petaling - a quick call and when we heard the landmark, "Do you know Technology Park?" light shone through our horrible memory. And so we arrived at our destination...an hour late. Our table was (to be expected) a sort of reunion. And we arrived in time for the serving of food. :S

Interestingly our table may probably be remembered as the only table to, instead of going "YaaaaaaaaaammmSENG!", we all went, '"Cheers!" *clink*'. Damn Westernized table in a Chinese lunch, haha. But the main factor was that there were 7 girls and only 2 guys, the married couple not counting - so rather than a halfdead sounding yamseng might as well do something different, no? :)

After lunch we'd basically did a bit of a chat here and there with rest of batchmates but everyone sorta went their own way. No after-lunch yamchas for updates. Oh well, until the next wedding. :P

The Guardian Gang & The Churching Couple
As our journey back passed by Bangsar we opted to stop by a few places to say hi - mainly the Guardian branches to say hi to old friends we haven't seen in ages (oh and to get ourselves some desperately-in-need-of Fedac). Then, on an impulse, we bought ourselves a ticket for The Young KL Singers' 5th Anniversary Concert. Really rather a spur-of-the-moment thing, but it was well worth it...oh well we tell a lie, since we'd actually taken a look at the songs that they would be singing and recognized some, so we thought it worth a go.

Chorus was: Just. Frickin'. Awesome. (Note to self: Check up 525600 Minutes/Seasons Of Love when free.)

Anyways. Was leaving counter when someone grabbed our arm. Turned to look into a familiar face. Did the conversation tango for a while, our memory only turning up the fact that she teaches music. Then Leo showed up and we placed the faces - church friends (yes, it's been thaaaaat long...)!

Ok, still did a faux pas when while talking to Leo we referred to Hil as Irene pulak, please kill us.

The Gaming Group
Just before leaving BSC for dinner we dropped in to see how Squee was doing. Didn't manage to chat long but now we know he's almost completed his Bumblebee and Optimus Prime collection. :S He'd this rather cute Bumblebee keychains tho' which he showed us, heh.

Dinner was with RoB and psike (who's back for the weekend) and another feller named How? while playing Puerto Rico at Mage Cafe. psike, who's only gone for like a month has already started AP-ing during the game (and the last time we played was also together with him!). Interestingly RoB and us thought How? was leading but end count showed RoB leading all of us by 10 points (after he told Ryan that his strategy was terrible).

The Mamak Meetup
Well, dinner was early and after the performance we were thirsty. Didn't eat because we had pizza at home. Just breathing sigh of relief that no alcohol was involved. Still, a fair number of people, including our meeting a couple of singers, a teacher and a scout-actor for the first time, and a godfather after a long time.

Heh can see as the day headed on battery semakin lemah paragraph semakin pendek. So we're now plugging into notre dieu du stade de la guerre.

We're Gonna Be Rich

Oh, we're 20% richer than expected because we bought some mechanical pencil lead along with it. So that we can get our 20% discount on this RM100 hardback. Yay for Kinokuniya!

Remember To Clear Your Memory

Memory card, this time. And not once, but twice! First was during Sporty Shaun's birthday celebration just the day before, and then there was yesterday's unexpected boon in Robinsons at MidValley's just-opened The Gardens Galleria.

As Cardio Dance was cancelled yesterday, we ended up milling about, undecided with what to do (goes to show that we probably attend Group-X classes too much, that when suddenly confronted with an evening off, we were at a loss). Could have done a movie (we're curious about The Brave One), could have had a nice pasta dinner, could have gone home early and had an early night in...by the time we finally left to make our way at 7.30pm, the Federal Road was completely cleared of traffic.

Which led to our snap decision - let's go MidValley Gardens. The Dear Doctor had after all announced that it was opening and he had intentions to scout the place out, so we knew that they were open, unlike our Pavilion visit. Only we had to steel ourselves for the parking horror that gets our BP rising (it's almost a Pavlovian response actually, just say "MidValley parking!" and we shudder).

Oooh, the new parking ticket and machine by Designa - the tickets have your location entered printed on it. How it helps we have no idea as we entered at Zone A P1 (basement 1) and parked at Zone A 41 P2 (basement 2).

Now as we went to Pavilion before the actual opening the only reception we ever got was, "Take off your shoes take off your shoes!", so we can't use that to compare with the reception we got at the Gardens. Now while the place seems to follow the trend of more upper-market places like Coach or Thomas Pink, but while our initial walkabout the Gardens failed to elicit "oohs" and "aahs" (probably because we were already numbed by Pavilion, geh). As we made our way from ground floor upwards, so when we first reached the Robinsons entrance on the first floor, there was a sign saying that Robinsons was closed to cater to a 'private function from 6pm onwards'.

No problem, we thought, we're just here to scout the place after all.

And then later on we happen to reach the ground floor entrance of Robinsons...which was open and people were walking in and out. So we walked in. And walked around.

Only after walking halfway around the ground floor did we realise we were walking past perfumes and ladies shoes. We were just too busy taking in the eyecandy...and the champagne glasses they were all holding. Where were they getting the alcohol?

Finally we found it and helped ourselves. For food, there were waiters walking about with tidbits.

Yes, in the end dinner was tidbits and champagne. But it was enough to satiate hunger. :D

And then there was the modelling session on the first floor. It was then that we again regretted not clearing up the memory card in the camera (retrospect: what was the spare 16MB SD Card in our bag for? *facepalm*).

On the second floor there was this string quartet. We loves a live string quartet - the last we came about one was in Glasgow, sometime just before graduation - string quartet buskers outside Ottakars, they caught our attention because they just started playing the Canon. :D So this group of ladies were playing some recognizable melodies, and we stopped to listen. They just finished a piece when this feller asked them, "Can you play any oldies?" which led to some puzzlement as to what he wanted. Then he went on to try and explain that he wanted classicals (dear obtuse man, what do you think they were playing???) and we interjected at that point and asked the ladies if they could do us the Canon.

And so we got the Canon. :D

Eh it was tough trying to take a video when our hands were full, holding a book, our bag, and a champagne glass.

After that out of curiousity (and so that we could credit the ladies) we asked the Robinsons staff for the quartet's name. Why asked a Robinsons staff and not the ladies? We got shy. :P Also, they were playing. We were led into their Customer Service room to wait while they asked about, and was given a free Men's Folio mag to pass the time away! :D How thoughtful. Or maybe there was a hidden implication that we needed to improve our dress sense - especially since we were surrounded by fabulous men everywhere, all dressed up (we were in office attire tho', or would have felt very out of place in that near-black tie affair).

The Yings. Or so we were told by a certain Ivan from Genesis Pro Audio.

All in all, we had a spanking good time that's only hampered by the lack of company during the Robinsons party.

Lazyman's Wrapping 106

As we've got an XBox 360 game to wrap up this time, and things in these shapes tells the recipient, 'DVD case' immediately.

Presenting, the padded envelope. Similar to Lesson 102, but here you've got to make sure the envelope's big enough to fit the case. In our case we got a...7" by 12" padded envelope, although in retrospect we might as well have gotten a bigger envelope to further add ambiguity to present identification. The 7" by 12" will fit a CD case just right though.

Requires:
Padded envelope.
Wrapping paper.

Yet another mistake we did was to seal the envelope - we could have just folded the flap in. That way, recipient gets two presents: a padded envelope to use as well as the XBox 360 game. Now recipient will need to use own cellophane or Scotch tape.

Wrap envelope.

Voila. Stick on a card if you are a bit more hardworking.

Kaki Botol

Not like we aren't admitting to being one.

Maybe because it felt like another Monday - work, Jam, Combat, Polo Sport-sniffing, home for dinner, finally in front of the pc usually - that we clean forgot that we'd actually suppose to join otousan, Germ, lad and Lemon for The Bourne Ultimatum. Thankfully manage to call mum up as she was just preparing dinner, and she decided that we should just eat out instead of her keeping our dinner portion till past 11pm.

The Bourne Ultimatum is good. As good as the first one (we knows not about the second one as we haven't watched it yet). What initially impressed us was that in some bits of the show we had lad and Lemon telling us who was who (a bit like Pirates of the Caribbean, don't watch one bit won't know who's the character is), not that it mattered much though. It was only after the movie that they tell us that they'd watched both The Bourne Identity and Supremacy over the weekend in preparation for Ultimatum.

Well, at least some people did their homework. But we do remember bits and pieces from Identity, enough to go, "Ooh, deja vu!" at some points.

It was after the movie that lad asked if we were free Tuesday night for dinner with another friend. Shame that his vegetarian wife would be following, there's not going to be any bah kut teh for dinner. We couldn't join them as we have a wedding birthday dinner to attend actually.

Turns out that aside from the dinner plans they have tomorrow, lad still remembers well the Carlsberg Extra Cold ad he saw and was keen on trying it out. Mystique at Cineleisure Damansara has a Extra Cold tap, this lad found out. But instead of Tuesday night, why not tonight? After all, we were already in Cineleisure Damansara, Mystique is just around the corner...

Resistance is futile.

So the three of us (otousan and Germ headed back) ended up having Carlsberg from a tap..."sheathed in ice and uses glycol-based technology to dispense beer at -1°C". Well, cold draft beer always goes down well.

As it was the stroke of midnight when our beer arrived, we actually celebrated the day with Carlsberg mooncake.

Thing was, when lad asked the waiter about it, we were first told a glass costed RM18.80 or so. When we paid up, the receipt showed 'Carlsberg Draft' and was RM12. So we thought that he misheard our order and gave us normal Carlsberg instead.

"Aiyah, want to complain or not?"
"..."
"..."
"..."
"Down!"
"Down!"
"Down!"

And this was half a glass of Carlsberg. Only after we finished our first glass did Lemon asked the waiter about the beer we got, referring to the receipt. And we were told that it was Carlsberg Extra Cold. We basically downed the drink instead of enjoying it as we intended.

In the end each of us bought a round - 3 glasses of Carlsberg Extra Cold each. Heh. Things got a bit scary when Lemon went down to 7-11 to get Malboro Menthol Lights. It's a frickin' Monday and we're already hitting the beer (or we could think of it as the weekend's not over). Throw in cigs? Might as well not show up for work then on Tuesday. Both lad and us backed out after one stick. To round up the night, we all headed over to Jasema's for supper before finally heading home.

Our eyes actually feel sunken in today. :P

Oh, and a wedding birthday dinner tonight! More alcohol!

Edit: Sorry about the slight deception Sporty Shaun! We did thought that we nearly gave the game away and so pushed the wedding story all the way! :D

Gee, Mail!

Perhaps we're a bit quirky when it came to choosing a name for our email account - but given the number of people connected online even 10 years back we already had a tough time getting a unique email address that reflected our name without needing to put in numbers. Initials couldn't work, first and family name combinations were also taken, and seeing how we gone through life using our first name rather than our Chinese name we didn't bother trying an email address using our full Chinese name.

Under those circumstances, we thought: perhaps a rather unique name using two words from our initials. And that did the trick. Came up with a 15-letter email address. Even when we fill in forms now, there's the risk that the forms don't provide enough boxes. :P

Probably that singular email was enough. But spam mail being spam mail, somehow, just somehow, they manage to find our longish email. Sigh. But unlike our first email account (yes we did start off with a short initial-plus-numbers combination email) that got overrunned by spam, this one only saw a minute trickle of spam mail trickling in.

Pays to keep a few email account then, we thought. And so we thought up another unique email address, instead of using the same email name on different email providers. Initially we meant for the new email as a correspondence email for our uni batchmates while keeping the old one for college and school friends. Just why the segregation, we can't explain now.

Ended up with a 13-letter email name under a few email providers. Can't really say why, maybe it was because we wanted to make sure no one used that email name under a different provider. Kiasu, yes. And we delegated different duties for each email address too. One for stuff online that required registration and wasn't important, one for basic correspondence and because it's linked to a certain IM, one because we were invited and provided the most space when it first launched (heh), one for our Discworld stuff, and oh, one more for e-cards.

This is a bit of a hassle really - given just how anal we are when it comes to our contact lists. Full names where possible, nicknames/quicknames, multiple email addresses. And we're talking for four email accounts that we commonly use.

So...our point being?

Over time we've made the transition from Hotmail to GMail. Because GMail has been getting better and better. From compiling email correspondences together so that they look like a forum posting called conversations (which is very neat and user-friendly), to being able to label certain conversations for reference (webchitect told us about this, we never used that function before), that they automatically save all emails sent (something Hotmail neglected to do initially), to being able to perform a search through all emails...

List of good points just go on and on now. But it's the 'conversations' bit, still so far unique to GMail, that's the important advantage that pulled us over to GMail. Especially when it comes to planning an event, where everyone starts emailing in and it really looks like a forum board - except that if you aren't using GMail, be prepared to receive some 20+ emails if you haven't been logging on frequently.

Didn't help as topics tend to get off track from the subject on hand, heh heh. As how the boardgamecafe members would say, "Thread kena hijacked". And last week, for the first time ever, we had a GMail conversation go over 100 replies. :S

Incidentally, quite recently we came across yet another reason to switch to GMail. GMail Mobile. It's basically an application that we downloaded onto our phone to view GMail. Prior to this we were occasionally viewing our mail on a WAP format using our L'Amour that, while it allowed us to view the mail text, wasn't pretty, nor organized. But we didn't know any better until Fiesty Freddie introduced us to the GMail application he used. Now, we know. :)

Ends up we're now quite stuck on GMail, at times leaving a tab open for it. Not only we use the GTalk (and GMail even saves the conversations automatically!), but because we don't even have to refresh the page in order to be notified of any email updates. Hat's off to Google.

Rest of the email accounts? Still alive, still alive. After all, we still need an email for registering accounts from websites that may just end up sending us spam mail.

Taking The Dog For A Walk

Given that in the last two days we've been bringing our walking stick around, it did spark a bit of curiousity amongst them who sees us with it. After all, we harp on about going BodyJam lah, going BodyCombat lah, and here we are using a walking stick.

Well in our rush to get to Combat class in time on Tuesday we did bump our right knee while scampering up the stairs in FF Manulife...but that was a small matter. That we could still attend the class without feeling any twinges, we guess we'd be fine.

So anyways, what's up with them walking sticks? And we have two: a walking stick with the handle in the shape of a terrier's head, and a shepherd's crook.

We'd bought both of 'em while we were in Edinburgh during the Fringe Festival '02. While our batchmates were all planning a single day trip that would end with the Military Tattoo before heading back to Glasgow, we ended up heading to Edinburgh twice - the day before and the day itself with the rest of the gang. Why?

Because we wanted to catch some plays. Namely, any Discworld plays we could fit into our timetable and any others along the way. Oh wait, we've mentioned it before already. Wait a freakin' minute. Did we end up going to Edinburgh three times in three days now? Argh we need to check! When did we do the Book Fair and met the man himself, Terry Pratchett? Shall dig through our UK box of memorabilia later.

Our first trip to Edinburgh, we went alone. It was a fun trip really, walking about Old Town Edinburgh along the Royal Mile trying to find our venues and such. Now, here's the interesting bit. Somewhere along the way we came across this shop selling walking sticks. Now while we definitely eyed the shepherd's crook, we also looked for a normal walking stick at the same time. Not because of our normal gait, but because our family keeps dogs.

When we used to stay in Klang we reared strays. There used to be this stray dog that climbed into our garden box at the side of our house (the advantages of living in a corner house at a cul-de-sac) and gave birth to puppies, which the family would then adopt one and slowly find families for the others.

In general the dogs were confined to the porch, mum wouldn't allow them in the house. The dogs got their evening walks, where they would yank and choke themselves on the chain as we took them around the neighbourhood block. This job fell to us, but when we were in UK dad took over the dog-walking. So during one of the weekly email correspondence with family members we heard that dad walks the dog and brings this unsuitable piece of wood that mum uses to beat the carpet when she's airing it.

So yes, we thought we would buy a walking stick for dad to bring along during them walk-the-dog sessions. We ended up going about the Royal Mile with two sticks for half the day, until we got back to Glasgow. And if that wasn't enough, we brought it along with us again the next day for the Military Tattoo.

Why, oh why in the world did tell Jessops to print our photos in 5R?

Oh yes. We did worry for a bit checking in both sticks when we were making our way back from UK to Malaysia (heck we were carrying way to much already) but happily there weren't any incidents. In fact the walking sticks help make identifying and collecting our luggage far easier as they didn't go through the conveyor belt. :D

OKAY. All that yarping about the origins of the walking sticks and no closer to the why we bring them about.

As it is, the family now keeps toy dog breeds (current member of the family is the Wee Wog), they stay indoors nearly all the time and don't go for walkies. So our walking stick are left idle. Which is why we have to take the sticks for walks sometimes. And not just the terrier-headed one, but the shepherd's crook too.

Take me for a walk!

And so when people ask, we tell them, "We're taking the dog for a walk."

5ive

Welcome to the fifth day of the week - Friday. Well, for most people it is. Calendars nowadays aren't standardized to show if the start of the week begins on a Sunday or a Monday, but taking that Sunday was deemed the seventh day and the day of rest, we treats it as such. Also if you say it in Chinese, Monday's called pai yat or xin jie yi, which to our banana mind means Day 1.

So now instead of the prosperous number of 8ight we're suppose to share about the reluctant number of 5ive. Here we go:

5 Things In Our Bag:
Nintendo DS
iXus
Spare memory cards
Memory card reader
WHS A6 notebook

5 Things In Our Wallet:
FF Membership card
An expired (!) Domino's Millennium Gold Card
A Green Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf 'Free Drink At Steeper's Dozen' card
A Summit Climbing Gym Belayer's Card dated 22/4/2005
An old Singapore M1 sim card

5 Thing We Like Most In Our Room:
The air-conditioner
Our books
Our Sonic Gear iPod speakers
Our bed
Our pile of stuff

5 Things We'd Like To Try:
Bungee-jumping!
Skydiving!
Paragliding!
Climbing Mount Kinabalu (this is gonna be organized soon isn't it?)
Acting :P

5 Things We're Doing Now:

5 ambigrams. Will upload better sketches later.

There. First meme that we ever made into a dateline to post up by Friday! :S

Oh yes, as with all memes.

5 Victims Tagged:
Naughty Ru
3-Seconder
NJAPF
Hengky
Henry

Anywhere Is

The turn I have just taken
The turn that I was making
I might be just beginning
I might be near the end

Ever since the Naughty Nyukster said that he was told he resembled Suneo from Doraemon, it was as if he told us not to think about pink elephants - when we see him we could actually superimpose Suneo's features over his for a bit of a match. :P

Sorry yah. Cannot be helped. We actually can not think about pink elephants and the such, but Suneo over your face...

But it does make us think back to our experiences with Doraemon ourselves. :P We used to tolerate the forced falsetto Malay dubs and followed the Malay-translated mangaka for a long while (yes like said we be banana, don't understand Chinese in all its forms). Imagine our surprise when we watched a Cantonese episode for the first time: "Har? Xiao Ding Dang has such a low voice one ar?...actually, that sounds so much better." And we've never watched an original Japanese episode before so can't tell who was more faithful to the original (but think about it, would it be possible for the high pitched Malay-dubbed to be correct?).

The charm of the entire thing was, of course, in the many many different gadgets Doraemon introduced in each episode (asides from his mouse phobia and pulling out a heapful of garbage when he panics).

So here's the thing - among Doraemon's recurring objects, if you had a choice of owning one, which would it be? Ok, some limitations - the 4D pouch doesn't contain anything inside ok? Ok ok, let's say you also have a 4D pouch to keep said item of choice.

Ours would be the dokodemo-doa - the anywhere door, or the pintu suka hati. Heh.

No more worries about carrying passports around. Or missing a train/plane. Or transit times! Now imagine cross-country shopping. Bah, we don't have to rush from work to FF The Curve for the 6.20pm classes! Need some therapeutic time-off to laze? Hello, Lake Districts or Loch Lomond or Loch Ness. Scenic night view? Straight up the Eiffel Tower without needing to bloody pay to head up past third floor and for the top floor.

Oh, the possibilities are endless. We feel slightly faint. And it's a step toward environmentally friendliness, since we don't need to travel by car or such.

Alternatively, if we can't get the dokodemo-doa, perhaps if we're allowed to set up a few waypoints a la Diablo 2?

Can't Stop Caring About The Beat

Let's see, today's plans was to pay a visit to Pavilion, the next upcoming upscale plaza and apartments to perch smack right in the city.

But then again Pavilion hasn't open yet, so why the preemptive visit? Not as if we were part of some PPI (postoperative inspection) team but rather because we were visiting another batchmate who's gone on to open a shop there.

Initially Joe texted to invite us on the 20th, during their opening. But as otousan and Ms My couldn't make it tomorrow we decided to pop by today. We were puzzled really because from the outside even things don't look as if they were ready for launch. And when we actually walked into the place, it really was still in the works. :S

Construction was still going on for some stores and we had security going around blowing whistles and tell us to take off our shoes. On the day we decided to bring our walking stick along for a walk, they tells us to take off our shoes. Sigh. Crumpler slung on the shoulders, shoes in one hand, stick in the other. Good thing we left our book behind, we had no more spare hands to carry it (our Crumpler was full already). Probably didn't want people to scratch the tiles before the necessary VVIPs and such graced their presence we guess, whatwith the 'no shoes' thing.

Found Joe at her store no problems, with otousan and Ms My's flowers being the only one there (sent a day early we suppose). Store was busy with staff from the other branches helping out and things look set for business!

Taking a stroll about Pavilion afterwards we were shocked to see the new concept of certain boutiques - Mont Blanc, Coach on two floors? The centre court was ready with people rehersing for the launch, but we decided to skip exploring there because we rather see what other atas kind of boutiques were gonna be available rather than the 3 floors of Giordano (Concept, Ladies and Children). Then came a blaring announcement to cease all construction work, leave and resume at 1am. We left then.

Rested up at Starbucks opposite enjoying the sights and cooling off before heading back home.

As it was Wednesday we decided to go cheap and catch Hairspray in the evening, seeing how many already have. Was wondering just what the hoo-ha was all about really.

So happens that we had some spare time to kill before we got to see Zac Efron (gah avoid brainwashing) Michelle Pfeiffer and John Travolta in drag. Came across lad's mum while we were wandering about on our way from Pay Less to MPH, and found out from her that Pavilion was actually having a launch today for the VVIPs (which explained why construction could only resume at 1am), and another one for peeps with invites tomorrow. Not sure what invites were needed if we were just gonna drop by Joe's shop tomorrow, actually...

Oh, small note...rental on the fifth floor is like, over RM35 per square feet?

Anyways. Left lad's mum for Hairspray, and what can we say about the movie? Reminiscence of Beauty And The Beast, the Disney Days (we did not watch either High School Musicals) and Moulin Rouge! Only...less emphasis on memorable songs and more on dancing beats. These songs not gonna make it onto our karaoke playlists, but probably our dance playlist (if ever we find the choreo for them!).

The more memorable songs? Good Morning Baltimore (and we thought he was such a well-dressed gentleman), Legend Of Miss Baltimore Crabs (shocking lyrics from Catwoman!), I Can Hear The Bells and You're Timeless To Me. Memorable because of the scenes mainly lah. Although nothing as memorable as 'Something There' from Beauty And The Beast, because the telly kept playing the trailer showing that scene so many years back...and Queen Latifah's 'When You're Good To Mama' in Chicago...sorry, sorry, shouldn't be distracting attention from a good show.

Oh well, good show, impressive dance choreo to keep our attention, John Travolta really really cheesy but funny! Go watch once. Then go back and watch Beauty And The Beast, Moulin Rouge! and Chicago.

Bloody Koyaked

While breakfast yesterday turned out well, it wasn't really breakfast after all. It became brunch instead.

Because we had to run down to the National Blood Centre, we decided to leave for lunch late instead of heading out during normal lunch hours. And being the natural procrastinator that we are, when we started our way we had scarcely enough time for a sit-down lunch before needing to be at the NBC.

So we decided to drop by Just Heavenly's lovely little shop to pick up something to munch instead because it was on the way. We could make use of the cafeteria area at the NBC to eat, see. We had an inkling for their butterscotch but that gave way to other treats. Instead we found these:

This was lunch.

Just Heavenly's Chocolate Durian (with an almond on top)!

So tea at the NBC turned out to be Just Heavenly's Triple Espresso Brownie With Walnuts along with sardine sandwichs and Milo courtesy of the NBC. Why so generous of the NBC? Because while we be at the NBC we took the opportunity to donate blood too. And after donating blood donors are supposed to eat and drink something.

It's in our generous selves (hah blow our own horn pulak, we're actually quite the skinflint) to donate since we're an universal donor. But honestly we have no motive for donating really. It's not because we feel it's a noble cause. It's not because we know anyone who suffering from thalassaemia or haemophilia or is anaemic. It's not because we had a blood infusion before and wanted to repay the favour. It's not because we're setting ourselves up for some good karma or for free government treatment.

But just because we can. And there's always the need for donated blood, because you never know who will need it. And just because we happen to be there. :D

Nurse told us to squeeze and pump on the tube.

While blood donation drives have been going on everywhere, we have a certain approach to these things. When it's held in public places like in shopping malls and the likes, we won't approach to donate because it's so frickin' out in the open that people can see what you're up to. And when we were younger we worried about sterility and contamination (we didn't know that the bags and such all came in sealed bags mah then) not to mention being in view of the public eye.

The only time we knew there was a blood donation drive in Taylor's during our college years, so happen we haven't eaten anything and weren't allowed to donate.

The time 1U had a blood donation drive going on sometime last year and we were finally brave enough to donate (probably because it was hidden in the old wing where Marks and Sparks were), we so happen to have popped an antihistamine the night before and weren't allowed to donate.

Only when we were in uni did we start donating blood when the blood drive came around. It did get good response as there were many students who donated. Only during one particular time did the donation drive seemed like a farce, because it was during the IMU Cup and there was points awarded for blood donating. All for the wrong reasons we feel, although it did benefit the blood drive because loads did donate.

The needle's a size 16G. With a filter to filter out WBC! A LA was given prior to jabbing our arm with that!

Anyways, if there's one thing we ought to learn about donating blood - it's that we should either do it earlier in the day or else not on a day when we're due for gym. It was bad enough for us to need to skip out of class between some tracks during BodyJam already, and we could only survive 3 tracks in BodyCombat, we were that koyaked.

Have to make up for Combat today...hopefully we've recovered!

-Requiescat in Pace-

First, Pavarotti. Then on Sunday, Colin McRae and Robert Jordan. And there's that airplane crash in Thailand.

Rice And Potatoes...

...depends on the dish. Really.

Firstly, we are a meat person - there must be meat in our daily meals or we will just not have the energy to see the day through. And so the kind of dish really decides if it's rice or pototoes - after all while we aren't too picky about food we aren't really that indiscriminate about what we eat, please.

So if we happen to be eating sausages or loins it's more likely to be potatoes, while local dishes of kung pow chicken and Hong Kong baby kai lan, or even tofu, pak zham kai and meatballs are best enjoyed with rice. So you see, it depends on the dishes what we choose for our carbs. Cannot simply mix and match one, after all chicken rice where it's roast chicken, char siew and boiled seasoned potatoes isn't chicken rice anymore.

And while we aren't desperately hungry - we still need to eat else starve. So happened that we forgot to pack along breakfast that mum made for us, otak-otak croissants, and so we were rather starving at work. And we were thinking of hash browns. So, breakfast was going to be potatoes.

The last time we ordered for McDonald's Delivery, it was at lad's place. So this time when we called up we had to make sure they changed the address else not only starve but have probably-annoyed lad's mum wondering why we're bringing our breakfast over to the lad residence and charging them for it too.

The good thing is that there's no minimum order charges, so for breakfast we decided on the Big Breakfast Set because it sounded big (we were hungry!) and threw in an apple pie. It was 10.30am when we called them up and got our order through, and nearly an hour later before it arrived (delivery boy got lost somehow). The food was still good, no complaints.

And we saved our potato Hash Brown for last. :)

KayEll Kapers

You learn some details when it comes to organizing a karaoke outing - compulsory tidbit charges, reservations, ghost singers, the ever-changing rates for different branches, and well, a plus in understanding Cantonese. However, somebody's gotta do it, and that somebody ironically is us, with little experience in all matters karaoke except for the singing. It was just that them who frequented karaokes more often were unfortunately swamped with work.

Janvier: I'll like to make a reservation for this Saturday.
Receptionist: Ok. Nei ge meng hai? (Ok. Your name is?)
Janvier: [Janvier].
Receptionist: Nei ge teen war? (Your phone number?)
Janvier: Er, 01x-xxx xxxx.
Receptionist: Yao kei tor yan? (How many people?)
Janvier: There should be about...15?

And so forth. At one point we did give in and gave the poor bloke a break because he couldn't understand us at the speed we were talking in English, but it didn't fare any better when we switched to Cantonese because being the pure banana we are our vocabulary was horrendous. Settled on what makes us Malaysian really...rojaked English/Cantonese.

Luckily, there weren't many Pilots in the end (a couple of understandable cases really) releasing airplanes at the last minute and things got off without a hitch.

A particular conundrum, of course, was the matter of parking in KL. It's no problem getting into KL on a late Saturday morning , but the question arises: "Where are we going to park? How long are we staying here?" It was likely that once you're in KL, you're gonna just stay in KL for the rest of the day's activities - why waste time heading to another place if there's nothing planned?

Being the lazy bugger we were, open air parking in the heart of KL meant walking a bit, tisn't far but we were trying to keep sweating at a minimum. So we opted to just throw them questions to the wind and instead focused on another question, "Just how much can parking in Low Yat for the day cost?"

Let's see. 10 hours = RM19. Worth it though, although it's something we won't be soon repeating (hopefully).

Karaoke was cheap, really, for singing anything and everything possible in 4 hours and even BodyJamming to JT (Dang quite the malu we forgot the choreo! Us! Forgot choreo! Where can we hide our face?) in a spacious room with it's own toilet, plus set lunch thrown in, it all came up to RM17 per person.

This was then followed by the arcades at BTS - and the shocking amount of people dressed in pure la-la-ness. If ever we have kids and they start dressing up thus (a bit of an impossibility because we would have to buy the clothes for them in the first place), they shall be grounded until some sense gets into their head. But as it is with arcades, we normally seek out certain fighting games and whether there's anybody playing them. The fun is, of course, when you fight against other players - and see who trashes who. :)

Oh and there's them dancing machines. There's an EZ2Dancer! Just that the songs are English instead of the Korean ones that we grew up on, so part of the nostalgic fun is gone. And we got freaked out watching Sporty Shaun on the Para-Para when the feller followed the choreography right down pat - you could give the BodyJam class a go next time, heh.

Dinner at a queerly-named place that looked more like a family gathering really. Meeting up with Trooper 'Tater (or 'Tater Tom?). Learned a new way to spell a favourite dish of ours - Goong Bow Chicken Rice. And the mystery of the Credit Card Suck-and-Blow was finally revealed. Ezra also shared his identity crisis with the rest of us.

We had to head back to feed the Wee Wog as all members of the family were out. Also Minnen Ratta lovers wanted to meet (although the way they express their love for that Ikea stuffed toy differed). It's picking the right time that's problematic here - because heading into KL come nighttime means dealing with the jam. Heading out took only 15 minutes. Heading back in at 9.30pm took us 45 minutes. Parking wasn't a headache this time because Sg Wang charges RM4 per entry after 6pm.

Ending the day with beer pretending to be wine in wine glasses, a couple of us hunting for the Kiblat sticker in the hotel, seeing who gets stuck in the toilet, presenting the award of Most Ticklish Victim to Amiable Aix, finding out that a Suck-and-Blow version of 'Chicken/Kitchen aka Big Fish/Small Fish' won't really take off, and watching Angels Fly in the silent moments.

A Mother's Letter

We've had this letter since...secondary school. Definitely sometime then. And it never fails to cheer us up every time we read it. Just so happens that we finished dinner around 11pm and actually fell asleep at the dinner table (after soaking the plates, before we wash them up) and when we woke up, the image of this letter flashed in front of our eyes.

Let us share the contents of said letter.

Dear Son,

Just a few lines to let you know that I am still alive. I am writing this slowly because I know that you can't read fast. You won't know the house when you come home we've moved.

About your father, he has got a lovely new job! He has 500 men under him, he cuts grass at the cemetary. Your sister Mary had a baby this morning I haven't found out yet whether its a boy or a girl so I don't know if you're an aunt or an uncle.

I went to the doctors on Thursday and your father came with me. The doctor put a small tube in my mouth and told me not to talk for 10 minutes. Your father offered to buy it from him.

Your uncle Patrick drowned last week in a vat of whiskey at the Dublin brewery. Some of his workmates tried to save him but he fought them off bravely. They cremated him and it took 3 days to put the fire out.

It only rained twice this week, first for 3 days then for 4 days. We had a letter from the undertaker. He said if the last payment on your grandmother's plot wasn't paid in 7 days, up she comes.

Your loving Mother.

P.S. I was going to send you 5 pounds but I have already sealed the envelope.

Heh, this letter's hanging on the kitchen door, and we happen to notice it after all this while because our eyes landed on it first thing we woke up.

Yet Yet Yet Another Personality Test

OK. Admittedly we're a sucker for these things. But oddly enough we remember that we did do an actual Jung/Myers-Briggs test before. Only that we must have not blogged about it but rather just emailed the thing to others instead, because we can't find it anywhere. We remember we were first introduced to the test during one particular interview session, and the best bit was that the answers came out three-quarters correct - we were identified as an Extrovert iNtuitive Feeling Perceiving.

We knew straightaway that it was three-quarters correct because we're definitely not an Extrovert. Heck if we knew (although we could pretty well guess) what the other categories were but we aren't a social butterfly. After that interview we'd searched about for the test, retook it, and came up with the accurate INFP.

So anyways. Came across mypersonality via minishorts and decided to see if things changed (ah, heck we hates registering for new accounts). Nope. Still an INFP.

But goodness. Didn't know that mypersonality had links to INFP Communities and the likes too. :S

The career matches however - we aren't doing any of them jobs. Of the lot we've been only been an editor before (amateur stuff, NJAPF and FeR probably remembers how terrible we were at it). The jobs that interest us however, lesse...actor (esh tak malu), librarian, translator. For some jobs like journalist and writer, we tend to be lazy so won't be able to survive on them jobs, unfortunately. At least being librarian or translator we'll be left to work on our own away from people (unless necessary) and it's peaceful enough not to stress us out.

Hmmm...that could be said about our current work situation too, heh heh.

Oh wait, there it is: NJAPF still has the link to the test we did before! At least this one doesn't require any registration. According to that we're a 'Questor'. Think we prefer Dreamer/Visionary better - because we seem to keep our heads in the clouds perpetually.

Edit: Changed the Results Badge!

Oh, Sush!

Warning: Food post with food pictures. Do not enter on empty stomach.

One of the things we miss about working at 1U was the fact that we never want for choice of food during our break. From the food court which we rarely go, to Mark's when we don't feel adventurous, to Charms for their carrot cake, to tapau a footlong Subway Italian BLT from the new wing, or even fast food when cravings dictate. Only sometimes we get the itch to head out of 1U to get some authentic hawker food - the nearest being in TTDI which isn't too bad. It was an option we considered a bit more often when 1U implemented their new parking rates too.

On occasions we do get this craving for cheap sushi.

Well it's a bit unfair to call it cheap sushi but that's what we think of Jusco's sushi counter. At Genki Sushi or Sushi King we'd be picking plate after plate that the bill won't be anywhere under RM20. But Jusco's sushi counter have them prepack sets that go on average about RM10, nothing spectacular but still enough to stave off the cravings, even if only for a while.

Random thought.

The good thing was that we could just buy a set, bring it back and eat in the office, the only interruption being any customers requiring assistance. Yeah during those days it was supposed to be full pharmacist coverage at all times at our branch, so if we were the only lucky pharmacist on shift we had to eat in the shop - no such thing as "Sorry, pharmacist on lunch break please come back at so-and-so." Ah well, sushi worked well for days like those. And we also learned the valuable lesson of sealing back the bloody plastic container and keeping it in the bloody fridge when we haven't the time to eat when we found a bloody cockroach playing bloody food-taster for us.

We only had like what, two pieces out of 10? And we thought of saving the salmons and crabsticks for last some more.

Imagination.

Well now we don't work in 1U anymore. But just recently in this past 2 weeks the craving for cheap sushi hit again. Hard.

Hallucination.

So we thoughts, "Nearest Jusco is MidValley. Shall go there have a look."

We utterly utterly despise parking at MidValley. It's hell.

We'd purposely headed there after typical lunch hours on Monday only to find the basement parking choke-full and we were exiled to the new parking areas meant for the upcoming Gardens. Parking itself took a good 15 minutes plus. We were sweating by the time we reached the escalators.

Delirium.

And Jusco MidValley did not have a sushi counter. Just takoyaki. WHY? Takoyaki for lunch? Not filling. Unless their sushi counter's hidden inside their supermarket, all we could find was mooncake stalls all over the place. Sushi mooncake? No, thank you. KFC, here we come.

Takoyaki's just for snacking dammit.

Desperation driven us today to head all the way back home to 1U to finally satisfy the craving. At least that's done with for now.

Thank goodness we'll never get pregnant. Who knows what cravings will come man.

BJ42 & BC33

Initial plan was to head to FF The Curve at 11am yesterday, as the quarterly launch for the new Les Mills tracks were finally here. BodyCombat was scheduled at 11.45am and BodyJam at 3.30pm. Unfortunately dad's car was on the fritz, so the parents gasaked our car to do their weekly lunch and shopping first.

Somehow the idea of missing BodyCombat 33 launch wasn't so bad - because we'll still get to do BC today. BodyJam 42 however die die must attend - because Kylie's instructing. We don't normally get Kylie or Tracy to instruct so must put extra effort for their classes...sometimes.

BJ42...still on simple choreography, good catchy songs, no shimmies but still the occasional diva-looking move. Our only problem was with the 2nd half block - there's this 1-beat spin move that, after doing it for some 10+ times our head starts spinning also. Today learn to take our options and just not spin dah. Much better. Songs are okay, but not as catchy as last quarter's BJ41 or favvies BJ35 (You See The Trouble With Me/Black Legend - Stupidisco/Junior Jack - I Like The Way You Move/BodyRockers - What A Feeling (Flashdance)/Global Deejays) and BJ38 (Self Control/Royal Gigolos - Temperature/Sean Paul - Pink & Blue/Outkast - 1, 2 Step/Ciara - Say Say Say (Waiting 4 U)/Hi-Tack).

BC33 pulak...the warmup track already really needed lots of self-control on our part, because the song was Mundian To Bach Ke/Panjabi MC! This was used in BJ39 as a Bollywood choreo track! Susah you know, trying to do forward knees without putting our hands in the air semacam buat tarian Bollywood! Other tracks weren't so bad and then came the ginga track - Fall Out Boys' This Ain't A Scene, It's An Arms Race! So many evasive side kicks, our back's gonna ache. Most of the songs have good catchy beats, thankfully - BC33 is quite fun. The final Power track before Conditioning looks to be another shouty track again...but we is resolute on keeping silent this week. Keeping voice for upcoming singsong.

OK. Wednesday for Cardio Dance and new tracks again on Friday. Gotta keep it up even though will get sien soon enough - after one week of not attending classes during the long Independance weekend, we were totally koyak during last week's classes - could not complete Jam and head was spinning during Combat. Thankfully recovered by last Friday.

Time for BodySleep soon. :D

You See, Don't Mix It, Baby!

We mixed it, which is why we can't see. Clearly, that is. Because our spectacles are missing.

Happens that the guys didnt' want to waste the weekend and so we had a boozing session at the Castle on Friday night. Our Friday night gatherings used to be a usual affair but things change over time - so when there is a suggestion for a meetup we do try to make it unless we've already made a prior engagement elsewhere.

And usually we'll have the Combo Meal when we do meetup. The Combo Meal consists of 1 Carlsberg Special Brew and 1 Carlsberg/Heineken/Skol/beer of choice - finish the Special Brew while it's cold (best in two gulps) then enjoy the other beer slowly. Don't really know since when Dunhill Menthol Lights became part of that meal - we'll like it to remain optional only.

It so happens to be one of the rare occasions where Who? could join us too. And while lad, Lemon and us were expecting Who? to bring the his own choice of booze, mana tahu the feller came with puffer fish instead - a bottle of Absolut Vanilla, a bottle of Coke and ice. A nasty silent killer Absolut Vanilla is, although we normally take it with Sprite/7-Up/Ice Cream Soda. When asked why he got Coke as mixer, Who? said he was thinking of Vanilla Coke. And it did taste like Vanilla Coke...to an extent. The bugger poured so much vodka in each cup that the mixer couldn't mask the smell!

Needless to say, with such a cocktail of drinks we ended up having to do a post-mortem on Saturday morning as to what happened:
Lemon fetched us back.
Wallet? Rushes to check. Check.
Phone? Yep.

Seems like we got everything. Only when we were about to drive that we realised that we couldn't see properly...and we can't find our specs.

Sigh.

The frameless spectacles we had lasted quite long - it lasted us from college till a couple of years back. The Liquid specs barely lasted a year before the lens coating started smearing and a bit of the frame broke. The just-lost GA Blue pair (a lovely metallic green frame) fared slightly better, lasting slightly over a year.

And so a new search for spectacles began. Frameless? Wireframe? Thick plastic frames? Half-frame? Those mixed-alloy bendable ultra-light frames (can't afford the expensive titanium alloy version)? For someone who detests keeping his spectacles on all the time, we certainly do take a lot of effort in finding a pair of specs. Comfort and narcissistic appearences matter. Brand cannot be allowed to matter, seeing our history with spectacles, not to mention our budget doens't allow us to touch Oakleys.

In the end we settled for this. A pair called Inspira. Plastic frames for comfort on the ears (the metallic one gave hell on the ears when worn too long), wireframe and small lens. A rare find, and one that didn't require us to hunt through three different opticians nor take hours of trying different specs! And our specs were ready within an hour!

Where we got our specs. A Look at The Curve. Funky but bulky spectacle case.

The specs is missing. Long live Inspira!

If our spectacles make a return comeback, we're going to cry. For happiness that it didn't get lost, and for sadness at the hole in our pocket. And delegate that pair as an emergency pair somewhere...maybe the office. Liquid is already our emergency pair in the car.

The Itchy And Scratchy Show

Given that we've decided to scrimp on buying sunblock for our Sg Sedim trip, we finally got the opportunity to break out the bottles of Aloe Vera that's been collecting dust on Thursday. It's interesting really, because we've been peeling dead skin off our left arm throughout the whole week with no problems.

On Thursday however, all sunburnt areas on the arms finally caved in and started peeling. We didn't realise this of course, as we were too engrossed in our Meat Dinner. All we knew was that sometime while we were savouring the spread of food our arms started itching something persistent, that attention and scratching was required.

We just got a bit worried that we were allergic to a certain dish. But heck with it, scratch away we did. Eat and scratch first, antihistamine, lotion and worries later.

Turns out we aren't allergic to any of the meat (phew!) and that the sunburnt skin is finally peeling akin to the decals on a oft-worn t-shirt. Gives us something to do (but not with sadistic glee mind) as we now flake in ways more than one. Thing is, we don't see the end of the peeling yet :S All aloe vera lotion does is just moisten the skin and relieves the itchyness, that's all. Hmm probably should start using the loofah more frequently.

Love the tingly feeling of mint or menthol shower gel on fresh skin.

Meat Dinner - Fogal's Meat Market

Warning: Food post with food pictures. Do not enter on empty stomach.

It's always hard for l'angeau orange, NaanBleu and us to meat meet for dinner somehow - our schedules doesn't allow for easy planning so there's plenty of online chatting via GMail/GTalk with the question, "When is Meat Dinner?" and checking on each other's availability.

Probably we don't make it easy when we tend to prioritize our BodyJam/BodyCombat sessions more than Meat Dinner, especially when we attend the classes because we have fun there and not because we need to jaga badan.

The next question usually would be, "Where is Meat Dinner?"

Given that we usually have our Meat Dinners at TGIF The Curve all these time it was time for a change and to give them waiters a breather from having us. The last Meat Dinner we all had was in March at Italiannies The Curve for a change (hmmm it's not actually correct to call this one a Meat Dinner really) and we still haven't heard the last from l'agneau orange and NaanBleu regarding our blindness when it comes to ethnicity or taste.

The where was easily answered. Fogals came highly recommended from two sources: NaanBleu was recommended it by her friend and we read it on Nigel's blog. As for the when, that was rather a last-minute thing but as it was, everyone was free on Thursday night and were able to head there straight after work.

Fogal's. Silly us, mistook the address 'Above Hartamas Shopping Centre' to literally be above Hartamas SC and not the plaza uphill from it.

The poor boy. The targetted waiter of us all to bear the brunt our jokes and dares, behind his back of course.
"I dare you to ask the boy which is bigger, the lamb loin (pronounced groin) or the beef loin, while staring at his loin."
"Go and ask the boy if he's legal or not."
"Take a picture of the boy and tell him it's for your blog."
"Call the boy to tell him that his sausages are too salty and shrivelled."
Well, as you can see we took up the picture dare although we claim that it was for NaanBleu's blog - after all we didn't want to scare poor boy from serving our table.

Our starter - the Bacon And Cheese Salad. L'agneau orange avoids greens thus leaving more for NaanBleu and us. We'll all fight for the pieces of bacon hiding behind the leaves tho'.

The second starter - a Full Platter consisting of 4 kebabs (2 chicken and 2 beef if we remember correctly), 4 sausages (chicken, beef, lamb and pork) and 2 steaks (medium well with no blood). The kebabs were good, the steaks absolutely lovely and juicy but the sausages didn't appease really. Came with mash potatoes. To save space we dumped the Bacon And Cheese Salad onto this dish.

The Roast Lamb Of The Day. Good but we love the steak better. The lamb doesn't smell (for them who cannot take lamb due to said smell) and it's easy to sink the teeth in. Coleslaw and wedges were fantastic.

Bill came up to RM140ish. Not bad. A bit of a shame that the place closes at 10pm. Then again, once we were done we were all itching for a bite of dessert, which in the end we all decided on Starbucks just downstairs. Quick note: the Mango Passionfruit Frap was bland, while the Raspberry Blackcurrent Frap tasted a bit like sweet cough syrup initially. Sigh. Such a letdown, coming from Starbucks.

Must go Fogal's again! Does lad still want Carl's Jr for birthday celebration?

Arabian Nights

Oh I come from a land
From a faraway place
Where the caravan camels roam

Where they cut off your ears / Where it's flat and immense
If they don't like your face / And the heat is intense
It's barbaric, but hey, it's home

Where the wind's from the east
And the sun's from the west
And the sand in the glass is right

Come on down, stop on by
Hop a carpet and fly
To another Arabian Night...

Just so happens that we walked into Times bookstore one evening with lad, and almost made it out unscathed - almost. Found a copy of the Arabian Nights (unfortunately Penguin didn't reprint it as a greenback) and thought, what the heck. We don't recall ever reading the complete Arabian Nights, although we may have read bits of it here and there (come on, surely most people would have heard of Ali Baba and the Fourty Thieves as well as Aladdin). So Arabian Nights now join our current bookjuggle.

It's certainly an entertaining read, but we were shocked at the amount of sex there is in the book. And it's not your steamy sex kinda read but rather sex is mentioned in a very off-hand manner.

'...Then he mounted her, and winding his legs around hers, as a button loop clasps a button, he tossed her to the ground and enjoyed her...'

'..."I want you to mount me and show me how nicely you can sit on my saddle..."

"...Soon he took her maidenhead and was pleased..."

WTF. It's really F indeed. We wonder just how bewildered we would have been trying to make sense of some of those sentences if we had read the Arabian Nights when we were young.

Sex aside, the book itself is good. There are stories that lead into another story, and some situations that are just plain hilarious - we could never understand how people could wring their hands for days while weeping, tearing their garments to tatters and slapping themselves when distressed...and then just yesterday we witnessed first hand Ezra indulge in some self-slapping.

As it is we're currently in the middle of Aladdin, and it's rather unfortunate that we keep having the song 'Prince Ali' play in our head. Well at least we're not picturing the Disney characters acting out the original stories. Seems that what Lil' Y said was true, "We've been Disneyfied and McDonaldized."

Ooo, just remembered that on our trip back from Sg Sedim we did singalong to the cartoon version 'A Whole New World'. Just wondering, how is it that everyone else (including Lil' Y) ends up singing Aladdin's part while we had to do Princess Jasmine? No one remembers her part kah? Never mind. Got to solo her part. We loves counterpointing.

Our 2 Million Dollar Home

If there's one thing about living with the family, it's that it's that you're staying under your parents' roof. Privacy is limited and you're subjected to their rules. Not until you've tasted the sweet air of freedom of staying out on your own (let's not get onto the difficulties of staying alone just yet) do you know just what you're missing.

Take, for example, our personal effects. As we said, personal privacy is a luxury as our letters have been 'accidentally' opened before (it didn't help that one of those letters turned out to be our credit card statement...), how tarot cards were found in our possession, goodness knows what else they've dug up. We can't just drape our books, gadgets, clothes or whatever whereever we like - not even in our room. Messiness will just get mum to harangue us to clean up or she'll throw it all out.

So in the case of some of our more portable gadgets that we tend to bring around, they were strewn around the room - on our table, charging in the corner, under our pillow...until we got a wee bag (akin to like them pouches rock climbers use to store their chalk and stuff) to stuff it all in and carry it about at the same time. No more bulging pockets. Everything fitted nicely, it wasn't large nor unwieldy, and it didn't look like a manbag.

After a while that wasn't enough. We had to get our own home in the end. No choice. So during the start of this week we did a bit of hunting around the Bangsar area. Went looking around a few places for something that would catch our eye.

It took a while, especially when all the time we have to hunt about was during the lunch break. But finally we found it.

Our 2 Million Dollar Home. And we hearts it.

It's larger than our previous bag, admittedly, but it's comfy - it can even fit in a paperback! Plenty of compartments to store stuff, even our NDS and all our NDS cards as well if we wanted to. It was time we changed bags anyway - the zipper for one of the smaller compartments in the earlier bag was busted, and when we stuffed everything into the main compartment it looked rather bulky.

We'd totally forgotten about Crumpler at first. Spent our lunch going about Bangsar Village looking at Ted Baker and the likes. Fortunately everything there screamed MANBAG, and we're not ready to be seen around lugging one of those. Our Crumpler 2 Million Dollar Home is not a manbag. It's the right size, doesn't look like some sports toiletry bag nor look too formal, and is meant to look slightly out of shape.

Only, we wish that our new Crumpler had a belt strap or something rather than just the shoulder strap. Right now the only way to carry it properly is to sling it over one shoulder and hold onto the strap so it doesn't slip off.

But our Crumpler is not a manbag! If we ever was aiming for a manbag we'll take advice dah.

Not a manbag!

Sg Sedim - Forest Frolicks

After lunch the itinerary included the Flying Fox and Tree Top Walk. Yes, well, for us this be 'extras' as we've just finished with the highlight of the trip. :D

The Flying Fox basically started us up somewhere atop a scaffolding and zipping down. Questions on everyone's mind was, "Will we be strapped on or anything? Or we suppose to hold on for dear life?" As it turns out, everyone wears a harness, helmet and gloves (yes, forget about sanitation as you'll be wearing other peoples sweat not only on your head but on your hands urg). The best bit about the Flying Fox was that we werent' limit to just one time each - and so some of us had an extra go!

Last outdoor activity for the day was the Tree Top Walk - a metal platform leading us to some 26050 millimeters from forest level. The platform tended to sway and bounce a bit...and it didn't help that we bounced about as we went along. Now if only it wasn't a metal platform but some rope bridge or something. Lil' Y pointed out to us, "You're not really interested in ecology, are you?" to which we just grinned and bounced more.

During the Tree Top Walk we could actually feel our camera overheating! And then soon after the walk was over the battery died. So, not only we do not have photos of the whitewater rafting (unlike Aik Yong's trip where got guide take photos for the group), but we'd to wait till we reached civilization before any more pictures could be taken.

Dinner was stated to be a BBQ dinner at 7.30pm, but we only got to start eating at 9.30pm. Thank goodness we had Ice Age 2 on telly to keep us all company. After dinner everyone bunked in early for a couple of reasons: it was a long day; and our favourite excuse from Ivan, "There's no supper provided, so better sleep early!"

Back in Penang the following day, it was plain food food food and nighttime drinking/integorration session. Every one else also ended up buying biscuits and preserves but the amount of flies swarming the preserves just put us off. Come night it was time to intergorrate The Fiancees - from why the change of mindset from non-marraige to marraige, how he proposed, why was some bits of the proposal funny etc.

Someone quoted this line. We couldn't help but laugh.

Come Sunday, the long journey home. First stop to New World Food Court for brunch (totally awesome pai tee), then the crawl home where we all freaked Lil' Y out singing Belle (especially with Webchitect in falsetto). Ended up at the Farmland Porridge Steamboat at Jalan Pudu for dinner before being dropped home at 10.30pm.

And only to end up sleeping at 5am. Argh!

Update: Aik Yong has gotten his report up! And all in one post! We is now shy, long-winded creature that we are.

Sg Sedim - River Romp

Admittedly, we didn't pay too much attention to the details of the trip because we only remember too well that we had to FFK the previous trip at the very last moment, due to each family member having their own plans and not informing one another. This time we informed the parents months ahead and even paid up for the trip so that we couldn't back out easily. All we knew about the trip was that there was whitewater rafting involved. End of story. The other stuff like who's the driver, where will the Klang Klangites be staying, where will we be meeting the Penang Klangites, what else asides from whitewater rafting will there be...totally no idea.

We all planned to leave on Thursday night as the whitewater rafting was on Friday morning itself - and so we took the afternoon off with the intention to pack and rest up. Mana tahu we ended up at 1 Utama until nearly after work hours instead, wearing ourselves out even more. Still, managed to pack up and snooze a while before the guys arrived to pick us up and be on our way.

Must learn to skip Enya songs while we're on road trips. Everybody else seems to complain.

So us Klang Klangites ('Nic, NJH, Webchitect and Girl-Jun) and KL Klangites (guess who) were to make our way up to Penang and stay overnight at this apartment called Krystal Suites. Nice place, big rooms, but only one toilet to share between 6 people (Lil' Y arrived there first and checked in for us). Say only reach apartments we all go sleep in preparation for tomorrow...made it there sometime near 1am, checked in, and everyone proceeded to watch Kung Fu Hustle that was showing on AXN till 3am.

That night, we had our first encounter with the Nighttime Chainsaw Nightmare. Even the fact that we're a heavy sleeper and we were tired wasn't enough for us to overcome the Nightmare. Sorry yah, if we complained hell too much about you during the whole trip! Next time we won't complain, all we'll do is plug up your nostrils with tissue paper.

Our cabin in Sedim wasn't bad - it was spacious, there were lockers, 2 shower stalls and 2 toilets, fans, and best of all the 8 of us didn't have to share with strangers! Of course, we had to live with insects flittering about, a dead insect stuck inside one of the fans, dusty floors, the lack of toilet papers but those aren't really much to gripe about. Reminded us really of when we bunked down in them backpacking hostels (sans insects and dust) when we were in London.

The day at the river started off with tubing - where we all had a rubber tube akin to a car tyre (but not as heavy) to merrily float our way downstream, while being pulled left and right by currents as well as banging our butts on unseen rocks below the river surface (not fun!). The guide tells us that to be able to balance in the tube you need to work your abs. Great, you get to work those 6-packs while having fun.

As for the rafting itself - the river was a tad shallow so we ended up getting stuck rather often. We ended up scampering around the raft following the instructions of the guide more than we did rowing. The highlight was when we went down a Grade 4 fall - no rowing was needed, and the guides just had us sit facing each direction of the raft (we got to face front!) and off we went! Mini-rollercoaster that turned out to be.

We went in two teams (incidentally who sat in whose cars shared the same raft), and was in the lead at the end of the ride when our guide nicely called for all of us to lean hard left - thus capsizing the raft. The other team, observing how we capsized our raft, were wary of their own guide's instructions. It was then that Inspector Ayam lived up to his title by jumping ship and abandoning his mates before anything else could happen.

After the river sports it was lunch and then onwards to the Flying Fox.