1, 051, 2000 Minutes

Which is not technically true because we've blogged for over three years now. But since we've started the title the end of last year, we might as well just continue from there. Highlights this year!

Most importantly, we got together with the Chief.

Joined the choir, and this year turned suprisingly very busy. Firstly there's the YKLS Jazz performance, a couple of gigs, then the once-inna-lifetime Lord Of The Rings Symphony.

Bangkok trips! First with the family during Chinese New Year, then later on in the year with a big group o' bloggers.

Aidan joined the family.

First Camland trip with the Taman Tun-ites and we drove Aidan!

Team Layton's first treasure hunt takes fourth place!

Asides from Genting trips, the Chief and us went onna Penang road trip!

Attended our first costume party!

Caught more musicals - Beauty And The Beast and Avenue Q!

Managed to secretly plan the Chief's birthday parties, and had a hand in scrapbook making by making cards for the Chief.

Trip to Spain! And looking back we realize we never did blog about the rest of the days. Added bonus was a quick jaunt into Amsterdam on the way back to KL!

More weddings this year from friends of our age, missed a number of birthday parties due to compulsory rehearsals, another year celebrating Christmas with the bloggers in Malacca and tonight we'll be all counting down to the New Year!

2008 has been a great year, although unlike 2007 where we made new friends and still manage to find time for everything, this year our time was much more limited. We do think that most times when we had to miss some activity 'due to rehearsals' were because of the fact that we'd signed a contract stating that we would attend some 90% of the Lord Of The Rings Symphony rehearsals and spent nearly the 10% on our Barcelona trip and the Chief's birthday, the few other times were because we finished rehearsals late.

Still, we get to make some new friends, although we don't get to hang out as much as we used to with everyone (a sort of glimpse as to how married life will affect social life, innit?), and we'd only so rarely stepped into Mage Cafe or participated in our boardgaming sessions this year.

To everyone, here's to a awesome 2009! Yes, everyone must raise a glass of something alcoholic at this point.

Fabulous Findings

Fabulous blogs and addictions. Must say that we were flattered to be tagged as a fabulous blog, especially since when we last did a search on 'niche blog' we were sad to find so many hits on how to set up a blog to earn money without leaving your house. It's sad because we use niche here to mean special (read: weird) and not as some 'speciality market for earning moolah in what sounds like a get-rich-quick scheme'.

Anyways, we've been tagged as fabulous and now have to list down 5 addictions. Well actual addictions where there's withdrawal symptoms and the likes, maybe not so drastic as it would be chemical addiction. And we decide to take a slightly different tack on addiction.

We'll list down 5 addictions we have that would likely cause the Chief to raise hands to the sky and demand, "Why? What have I done to deserve this?" You know how - a person's hands held out in supplication and begging the sky to explain why grieviences and misery befell said person. And well, not really addictions but maybe obssessions.

We can visit iKea repeatedly even when we have nothing specific in mind to buy and we've just been there two days back.
The Chief doesn't follow us for all our excursions, much to the Chief's relief. Right now our trips there are simply to get some small item, be it minor storage/organizing materials for the office, or christmas wrappings, or even just to browse and rebrowse. When we get our Friends Card, then the damage will begin.

We can browse nonstop at Machines or the Mac Store.
Even when we know it's still not...feasible to just buy a Mac. Browse the iPod casings. Browse the Macs. Sigh ever-so-slightly comparing the new iPod Touch to our 1st-Gen iPod Touch. Checking prices. Then do it all again on our next visit to a shopping mall with a large Mac reseller store.

We needs to read a bit, play a bit on our Nintendo DS, play a bit on our PC, and synchronize our iPods every night.
Which means bedtime don't come early. And so the woes that we don't get enough sleep.

We enjoy our retail therapy too darn much.
To which the Chief has resolved to not-so-subtle hints of saving money by telling us directly, yes, our credit limit is still good and we can afford 5 iPhones with no problem, hmmm also how many cards do we still have ya?

We enjoy our drinks.
A lot. Caffeine. Alcohol. Sugared drinks. Mainly our drinks are anything save plain water. To the horror of the health-conscious Chief.

And so we've to tag five other fabulous blogs. Or so we think based on how we got this meme. And so we pass this on to:
Nut. Read the blog, then read the comments which is totally something else.
Joery. Tongue as sharp as a tattoo needle - you won't be hit once but multiple times.
Wingedman. We'd a good share of laughs here, as close as Jay's blog.
Jason. His descriptions tickles us (Bertha and Melvin in Bottom Top, the Thai masseur 'biting his chest').
Medie007. Now with more photos!

Christmas Project 2008

Now this year we must admit that we were a tad tight on the wallet so we decided that it was time to put our ambigram sketchings to good use for Christmas - by making personalized frames for our mates. Unfortunately, we didn't have the resources with us to make very nice frames and the likes, but thankfully we already had in mind what we wanted to do.

Then of course midway through our project lad and us were chatting and the following took place:

lad: btw i dunwant any present above RM10 from you
* i mean Xmas
Janvier: s'not like you getting Mont Blanc name card from us
lad: i remember books before.. no need so ex pls
i'm too lazy to reciprocate
Janvier: omg read that as no sex please
XS
lad: hhahaah
Janvier: haha you don't have to worry this year
calculated not ex
lad: haha
Janvier: in fact, barely RM5 per person :D
lad: yay.

Well when it comes to gift-giving there's no need for reciprocation really, and it's not as if we're giving away PS3s or something blatantly expensive that'll make a dent in our wallet. But well this time around we were thinking of carrying out this project so we would say that it was timely.

So. Christmas Project!

Bought a couple of iKea CLIPS photo frames.

Print out ambigrams, then photocopy ambigrams onto transparency (because we don't have a laser printer).

Print out photographs. It took some finding our picture archives for them. Here's lad in his Christmas garb when we were in Genting in 2005. Trim photo and cardboard frame to size to match CLIPS frame.

Now the interesting bit, where we make a frame for the photos. Well we could have just left the photo by itself, but the purpose of the frame was to make the ambigram visible and focus on just the subject of the photo. So here we line up the photo and the cardboard and mark lines to cut out.

And how it looks like once it's all fixed up.

Now for this year's wrapping. Last year was silver, with tags made out a brown letter all cut up. This year we went back to green, still using iKea wrapping paper (one roll fits all).

Interestingly we chose to go green after we bought candy canes. Initially, we'd thought since we'd gotten green candy canes we needed to go for red wrappers for the contrast, but we couldn't put down that wrapper and it fit the job perfectly.

Well we're having the Secret Santa gift exchange this year too, and assuredly our recipient is not getting the same kind of gift as detailed above. In above case, with one exception the rest of them had ambigrams along with their photo frames.

Before we finish, something that we've done for a couple of years now...

And so (this is a tad late but still) Blessed Christmas everyone!

In Dreams

Unlike our YKLS performance, this time we only did three (four, if you count the open rehearsal) shows. But each show turned out to be much more exhausting compared to our YKLS performance, even when all that we did was sit, stand, and sing.

Preparation for the performance was tight, as we only had less than four months to do so whatwith having to learn our parts, work on pronunciation (since we're singing in not only Sindarin, but also Quenya, a bit of Adunaic, Black Speech, Khuzdul and Old English), know our standing and sitting cues, work on timing, intonation, identify cues for when to prepare to sing, dress rehearsals, and then the week of the performance itself there was to be the rehearsal with the conductor and with the orchestra.

And since this is the first time we're working with an orchestra to boot, it's a whole new experience.

Obvious signs men don't use lipgloss.

For our dress code we'd the satin attire to wear, and were also required to put on coloured lip gloss so that we all don't look like pale white faces.

Forced to get a stick, after a couple of applications this is how the tip looked like.

Then we thought, ah heck it, it's not like we'll be using it much.

The orchestra conductor is indeed a very scary figure.
And there's differences between our choir conductor and the orchestra conductor. For the main thing, the orchestra conductor actually pays more attention to the orchestra members compared to the choir, or, focuses on different music parts at different sections. We watched as he kept shifting focus from directing trumpets to give a more militaristic feel to getting the timpani to beat in five strong BOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOM rather than a gradually louder boomBoomBoomBOOMBOOM to getting the flutist to play more playfully or the strings to really play out of tune to...sigh.

So we learns that the conductor does more than keep the tempo for a piece, he also gives the piece direction and flow. This meant that even though the tempo for a section is marked as fast, he'd slow down here and there to give the piece stronger emphasis.

Why scary? Because when it's not to his liking, the conductor will give a very very black look.

It also didn't help that we didn't understand the way he conducted tempo initially - and was generally out of sync quite a fair bit during our rehearsal.

There's probably never many rehearsals for/with the orchestra.
Because as professional paid musicians they are able to sight-read. All it may take is just a couple of go-throughs to get the feel of the entire symphony while the rest of us not-musically-trained people have to make do with listening to the soundtrack or the symphony recording. And all this while our rehearsals were done with piano reduction (we'd Tracy play, what would require an entire orchestra, on piano).

So we'll say that we haven't got our fill of listening to the orchestra play the entire symphony - even though we got to listen to them play five times, while others could only come for the show once.

This is The Lord Of The Rings Symphony, not Soundtrack.
Which everyone will of course compare to because 'it sounds exactly the same as the soundtrack!'. There's a certain difference in emphasis or emotions here - for The Seduction Of The Ring the conductor tells the Children's Choir to feel very sad, or the ladies that, "From this point you have found your 'Elberethgheel', and then from this point you must sing sad, for you have lost your 'Elberethgheel'."

Many Meetings - The Passing Of The Elves

The entire phrase for that bit actually goes "A Elbereth Gilthoniel".

Soloist parts were suppose to sing it as it is printed on the score, and not follow the soundtrack version. Only once we understood that the conductor controls the overall pulse of the piece and that the tempo does not strictly follow the score, then we understood why it's important for the soloist to follow what's written on the score and not improvise.

Also, the symphony doesn't have all the instruments (and musicians skilled enough to use them) that was used for the movie soundtrack. Minor changes were required, and thus we had a taste of a slightly different version from what we know.

When you sing loud, the orchestra plays louder.
And from the beginning of rehearsals we were told this already. Then we'll have to sing louder. Then they play louder. Or so we were told.

Thankfully in our case the symphony was made so that for most of the choir parts the orchestra was muted.

Durin's Song & The Balrog

And when it came for the men to shine in Movement II, the orchestra made us give more volume and energy then when we sounded in rehearsals. That, and the conductor glared and told us, "Men...the orcs have bitten your heads off, and I am the orcs."

Orchestra music never sounded so clear.
One thing is because we were sitting behind the trumpets section. But we could hear each section much more clearly than from the soundtrack. From the timpani banging out a strong beat, to the percussionist giving a continual crescendo-decrescendo beat in Gollum's Song to the celeste beating a playful tune in Regarding Hobbits, to the trumpets playing out of tune for when Isengard sieges Helm's Deep in The Hornburg...to our favourite - listening to the strings play in Into The West.

Which brings us to the final point...

We had the best seat during the whole performances.
Oh yes. Our only complain about our seat is that we couldn't see the screen overhead showing scenes of Alan Lee's sketches throughout the performances.

And we can still hear the music in our head. We're definitely glad to have been part of this.

Into The West

And so we've done an open rehearsal and the first evening for The Lord Of The Ring Symphony. And it doesn't fail that, each time we come to near the end we gets a tad touched.

It's somewhat like how l'agneau orange puts it (more cut-paste again here!):

l'agneau orange: so we watches lotr AGAIN over the weekend
3 and 2
with commentary this time (yes our nerdiness is overwhelming)
pippin n merry were funny as expected
wat we din expect was theoden being funny
Janvier: oh we hasn't done commentry for 3 yet
and we still hasn't own 2
l'agneau orange: we does em backwards
if we does 3 last it;ll be too sad
so in 3
there were close up shots of legolas riding
Janvier: too sad???
l'agneau orange: and pippin was like "whos that? hes beautiful"
Janvier: hahaha
l'agneau orange: merry agress
then shot to aragorn
"ahhhh and hes beautiful too"
Janvier: hahahaha
l'agneau orange: "but in a scary way"
haha
Janvier: lol
l'agneau orange: and miranda otto was just gushing abt vigo mortensen :P
she was like "theres me looking at a blue screen here....theres nothing out there so i wanst looking at gorgeous aragorn"
and saying how the muddier he is the better he looks :P
oh oh and there was this part when theoden and aragorn were really close together talking
and theoden says for one shot viggo kisses the tip of his nose
lol
theoden aka bernard hill says
the next day a make up girlpasses him a note and asks him to pass that to viggo
the note says "if you kiss me on the nose i'll be yours forever"
hahhahahah

Well we don't watch the trilogy backwards but we started finding the music for the Grey Haven bits to be a bit touching now. Partly 'cos we hum along to the music where elves leave Middle-Earth to sail to the west (and there's the feeling that things are coming to an end). Speaking of things coming to an end, when we do reach the final bit where the soloist sings 'Into The West', it does capture that sense that, it's now finally at the end of the journey, you can rest (the guitar and violin strumming greatly set the mood)...

And yes, after every exhausting two and a half hours, the prospect of rest is very enticing...

Lay down
Your sweet and weary head
Night is falling
You have come to journey’s end
Sleep now
Dream—of the ones who came before
They are calling
From across a distant shore...

Starbuck's 10th

We've first got the heads up about Starbuck's 2009 planner from 3-Seconder, which had us heading straight down to get ours. That accomplished we saw that they had a tumbler up for grabs at RM10 too.

Call us a sucker for Starbucks, but at nice Starbucks tumbler at RM10? We've bought their tumblers on occasions as birthday presents, and never had one for ourself. 'Course, considering that we did get some sorta thermos tumbler from them to use throughout our IMU days and we'd also got the Bodum cafetiere from them...

Only while the leather planner promo is for the entire December, the tumbler promo only goes on the 17th December. Because today, the 17th, is their 10th anniversary.

Ok so today it's really a shameless plug for Starbucks, and it's not as if we're getting any extra freebies asides from the free coffee that they're giving out today. But free coffee we did get, and since the coffee was free and we wanted the tumbler, we'd brought down our City Mug too to get a Hazelnut Black (which sadly can not compare to a Hazelnut Latte but given that we somehow gotten lactose intolerant since we came back from Glasgow...).

So now we got the tumbler, snagged ourselves yet another grande/venti-sized plastic cup, took their 4-cup tray (you know, the one that looks like an egg tray), hassled the cashier who forgot to give us our discount for bringing our own mug (who also might have neglected to charge us extra for the Hazelnut shot)...it's a good thing we had our colleague follow us, 'cos we couldn't have made it back to the office on our own.

Now more fodder to decorate the office with!

Stanford Storytelling

We've no time to really blog for now because rehearsals are on every day this week as LORD OF THE RINGS SYMPHONY PERFORMS THIS FRIDAY!!!!! Goodness it's almost time! We've still got to make sure our score has all the required notes like reminders to stand/sit at which bars, breathing points etc. So, for now we shall cut-paste material. What kind of material? Let's give you a sample.

Janvier: his hands running through hair and exposed skin on back
smooth fingers causing electric jolts and he finds g-spot after g-spot
simple, light touches
tongues on his nipples now
his breathes are short
the undie strap is adjusted slightly
to allow...

Yes. We shall cut-paste chats from our GTalk of when we were chatting with Stanford and somehow it reaches a point where we hijack the conversation into some daytime erotica. Now since Stanford swings for the other team, we had to skew our conversations to keep him interested. Now the chat is rather PG-rated in some ways, we don't just use the words you find in Mills And Boons or the likes.

Janvier: why bitchfight when can threesome
esp threesome at our table
then prolly the girls will have better luck getting his shirt off
Stanford: i don't wanna watch str8 porn
Janvier: edit out the girls lah
Stanford: ink on the white cloth
Janvier: just a drop hor?
hmm if we write the screenplay
let's see
threesome
they get his shirt off
heck cares the state of clothings on the girls
prolly one of the girl's straps are already undone
now his jeans are unbuttoned
Stanford: oh oh... there's this type of porn, whereby all the females are clothed and the guy is naked
Janvier: showing off that white undies he was wearing
Stanford: shit!
white wet undies
Janvier: it's slightly moist
Stanford: precum?
Janvier: near the strap
Stanford: outline of a hard rod?
Janvier: a finger travels from sternum to belly button...
don't think there's a treasure trail on that boy
Stanford: damn
strip him!
Janvier: now, a knee slowly treading the crotch
a tongue running down the side of his cheek
to just below the ear
down the side of the neck
Stanford: do u have to be explicit here.....
gosh
Janvier: another blows into the other ear
akakakakakkaa
our mental filters are still workign fine you know
your keyboard sticky lliao kah
Stanford: wet tongue on the neck
nolah.... it's just that i'm glad i'm not wearing jeans
Janvier: :s
why?
Stanford: i need space now
:P
Janvier: wakakakaka
ish
Stanford: ish? u write so explicit!
Janvier: so? pakai filter sikit lah! :D
you want us to continue?
Stanford: cannot! it's natural response!
i wanna have lunch already!
need some cooling down time
Janvier: so you see, threesome even got girls, you dah naik
Stanford: u r talking what's happening on the hot guy
Janvier: hmmm
after blowing into his ear
a nose breathes down the back of the neck
he arches slightly
Stanford: lalalalalallalalala
Janvier: his hands running through hair and exposed skin on back
smooth fingers causing electric jolts and he finds g-spot after g-spot
simple, light touches
tongues on his nipples now
his breathes are short
the undie strap is adjusted slightly
to allow...
ok tahap maksima dah
consider this 3-star material
cannot write too explicit about ppl's friends
Stanford: wakakakaka

Y'know, this cut-paste business isn't as easy as it looks as we have to search through hundreds of chat history just for the couple of stories!

Janvier: surely you've eaten choc off your bf's bod already
or was it the other way around?
Stanford: eyer
Janvier: apa eyer
Stanford: we eat from box one la
Janvier: chocolate sauce
Stanford: where got so unhygenic!
Janvier: warm from heating up
poured over your chest
a bit at a time, so that it doesn't harden
something warm enveloping you
well, your longkang between your pecs then
lol
then a moist tongue rolling upwards
up your neck
up your chin
chocolate facesuck

So happens today we were chatting with him again and so another story sorta pop up after we'd hijacked whatever he wanted to tell us (hijacked in a good way, of course).

Stanford: ~~~~~breathless laughters~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Janvier: so what happened?
Stanford: coz i never bothered about him at uni
then he appeared like twice in few months time
Janvier: appeared? in your dreams?
Stanford: yeah
kinda sexual
Janvier: c'mon...you can share the erotic details
you know, like how the two of you embarked on a journey of discovery...
his belt undone...the pants clasp open and his zip halfway down...
he was breathing hard and fast, after all, it's his first time 'blossoming'...
Stanford: that's your dream!
Janvier: you...you were already hard but going slow...
you didn't want to scare him...knowing how your first time it can be scary...
you trailed your finger down his chest
Stanford: 1st time is not scary la
it's fun!
Janvier: between his pecs...feeling his heaving chest
his shirt was unbuttoned and he was warm to touch
Stanford: u can be an erotic novel writer
hehehe
Janvier: down his flat, 6-pack visible but not overdefined for his lean tone...
Stanford: u know i got good imagination right?
Janvier: after your index finger slips past his belly button, you can feel the start of his bush trailing down
when you reached his boxers...he suddenly clasps both hands around both your arms just above the elbows
you can see he's panting heavily now...
so you lean over and whisper, "it's okay, let me take care of you...just close your eyes..."
Stanford: yummy
u should become a soft porn writer
or draw yaoi manga
:P
Janvier: your index finger hooks the zip and pulls it downwards slowly...
the tip of your index finger can feel his shaft
slowly hardening as you trail down the length
Stanford: ooooooooo
Janvier: the strength of which he holds your arms weaken slightly, his stance leans forwards and he rests his forehead on your shoulder...
when your hand heads back up to hook his boxers, you feel a slight wetness there
he is leaning heavily on you...
soon he's pinned you against the wall...you haven't pulled down his boxers yet...
but you're rubbing the wet area of the boxer gently...
he starts pushing his hips in a slow, rocking motion against you...
Stanford: then? :P
oh my :P~~~
Janvier: your other hand starts pulling up your own tee shirt...
but with his head still resting heavily on your shoulder, you can't take it off...
so you take one of his hands, slowly peel it off your arm and bring it towards your body...
bring his arm down to your waistline...and you guide it up underneath your t-shirt
he's exploring on his own now...
you can here him making slight "uh...uhhh..." noises
Stanford: heavenly
Janvier: you hand leaving his, you wet your fingers in your mouth...
the other hand stops rubbing his grinding wet boxers...
and pulls the boxer garters so his head can peek out
and you start rubbing your wet fingers all over his head where the foreskin is pulled back
he let's out a low cry
and gushes while he starts pushing his groin on yours
out of nowhere, he grabs your t-shirt collar with both hands and tears your tshirt apart!
Stanford: wah! ganas!
Janvier: then he bites your shoulders as he gushes out sticky fluids all over your fingers
he's pumping you hard and his muscles are twitching
you can feel your pants getting wet
from all his juice
Stanford: pumping as in?
Janvier: oh no he's not in
Stanford: ooo... frottage! nice
Janvier: pumping against your hand that you've gripped gently
made slippery with the fluids that's now a slippery lubricant
Stanford: aha... i know that feeling...
:P
Janvier: so
so so so
tell us your version now
habis kita hijack your weird dream dah XD
Stanford: hey! finsih the story!

Oh well seems that there weren't much of those kinda chats with Stanford. With the Chief now, that's different and not appearing here, heh.

Let It Snow

Christmas is around the corner, and of late we've been having thoughts of rearranging our stuff in the office because we've all of us been having iKea on the brain (click panorama and it enlarges!).

In the midst of it all we thought we'd spruce up the workspace with a bit of snow.

Now we're thinking of doing more in terms of candy canes, little stockings and holly. So long as we can find the stuff free, of course (well maybe except for the candy canes). Was thinking of our own personal wee Christmas tree, by getting a Starbucks plastic Venti-sized cup, getting some pine twigs (still leafy green), and maybe a wee bit of ornamentation. Something like what minishorts had three years back.

Legion Let Loose

Was leaving the office at near 9pm last night when we cracked.

Our gym subscription this year feels like a fucked-up waste what to do there were necessary rehearsals to attend especially when production is nearing and need to rehearse for Lord Of The Rings then of course Janvier will want to have Chief time so don't see how that factors in because he should already have set aside what days to paktor and what other days to go gym okay well maybe I don't manage my time that well happy now but right now I still want to go gym to just warm up a bit there's no need to join a cardio class not to mention that by the time i get there it's gonna be past 9.30pm what cardio class is there left your pasal you ownself wanted to leave late, can? Our finance is a fucked-up joke so tell me something new who asked him to keep spending like water we've been controlling our expenditures okay what you mean by not giving in and buying an iPhone or a new console you hardly touch your Wii already that's because they keep playing the DS speaking of spending I want to go by iKea to get some things you're always going iKea well that's 'cos I'm not satisfied with my shopping yeah and he's got to wait for his iKea Friends card to arrive first oh puhleaze not as if they'll be earning lots of points so how you want to go gym or go iKea can we not do both look at the bloody time! It'll be 9.30pm when you reach home and leave what time is there left?! Hmmm iKea closes at 10pm but the gym should close later right? Then? Eat late again? Today's supposed to be a laid back day! Oh don't forget we need to go to Mage Cafe to drop off the Descent set for 'Nic don't think you'll have time today by the time you finish going iKea and gym Mage Cafe should be closed it's a Tuesday hello dammit wanted to really get home early today there's so many things piling up now get on with it you know the Chief won't know how to layan this right more likely am gonna be snappish actually would have been nice if could do dinner with Chief tonight too like this? You're in no situation you'll likely vent off and cause damage which by the way we find that we're a fucked-up jerk as a boyfriend you know you're that lousy eh hey I try ok? Yeah. 'Try'. Hey can we finish up on a few things here? Christmas wrapping paper, office redecoration, car compartmentalization, a new chair for the house later! When the iKea Friends card arrive! How about books? Saw Nation although it's hardback there's no time to head to Borders! iKea Friends card is gonna take ages to arrive you know well we don't need it that urgently and wait for the paperback please hardbacks just for Tiffany Aching series only oh and you need to find that package where the hell is it anyway didn't he put it in that bag?

And went through the night. Till we tired out. And today we're tired and snappish and fractuous and fractious and keeping things to a minimum. Maybe we should have pocketed some Zyprexa when we had the chance, although it would have long expired by now.

Weekend Chillin'

Being all in one body means that regardless of how many activities we would like to be part of, we have to choose which one to attend (and we shall bitch bitterly on this later). And we do try to make time for all our activities, and at the end of the day we need a bit of cave time for ourself before we call it a night. Thus most days we end up bedding down late.

So come the weekends we take a bit of time-out to recharge our batteries. And given that it's been a lovely long weekend (that always go by so quickly!) how do we chill?

Take Sunday.

1. Sleep till 6pm.
Well we can't say that sleep was uninterrupted. It was considered good, deep sleep as we didn't hear a couple of messages beeping on our phone but we did get a call at 1pm asking us out to lunch. Once we hung up we were back in slumberland. Then the Chief called for dinner before rehearsal, and we were rather thankful for that, as we may well just have slept till it was time for rehearsal and miss out on both lunch and dinner.

2. Pan mee dinner.
The thing about missing out on meals earlier in the day (irregardless of the fact that we've been sleeping and thus, not exerting energy) is that, once we're hungry, we tend to see most food on a menu as appetizing and thus we may overorder. Even with the Chief around, this isn't necessarily good as the Chief would like to see us eat more.

Not that we're trying to watch our waistline or anything but we would like our body to maintain proper proportions and avoid looking pregnant.

But sharing between us a Pork Creations Pan Mee, Sarawak Mee In Black Soy & Chilli Sauce, Fried Fu Chok & Curry Dip, Fried Dumplings, ABC and chrysanthemum tea? Can lah.

3. Foot reflexology.
After rehearsal (day three of screaming Movement 6, go listen to 'The Fields Of Pelennor' on the Return Of The King soundtrack to know which one we're talking about) the Chief and us headed down to lad to see if the guys had anything going on for the night.

The Fields Of Pelennor - 'The Nazgul'

Poor lad had to work the entire long weekend but that didn't stop him from making time at night to hang out, so it was a rather spontaneous decision that ended up with the four of us (lad, 'Vin, Chief and us) at our nearby massage parlour for some foot-lovin' reflexology.

Initial positions was with lad hugging the pillow instead of using it as a backrest as intended, 'Vin reading a magazine, us reading blogs and the Chief on the DS playing Metal Slug 7 (which surprisingly we find no multiplayer option). After a while, though, everyone ended up eyes closed, slumped into seat, and enjoying the feet grind.

4. Music, popcorn and cards.
Ended the night by heading to 7-Eleven to get some booze before heading back to lad to wait for Esteban to show up. And to while the time, lad popped out some microwaveable popcorn and cards for chor dai di. No money involved, but sadly no alcohol involved too (hmm, single shot for losing, double shot if holding 10 - 12 cards, triple shot for full hand...but then again we'd no hard liquour).

We agree with lad that the butter flavoured microwaveable popcorn tastes good. But it tasted so much better when we actually heated up a bit of lad's salted butter to dip the popcorn in!

When Esteban finally arrived he entertained us with songs from Guitar Hero...if you would consider that everytime he made a mistake, he would restart the song (over and over again) 'entertainment'. But then he needs to practise playing Guitar Hero on Hard, and we'd already four people for chor dai di.

Come to think of it, we should have done this on Monday night in preparation for Tuesday.

Toilet Troubles

Now, one particular thing that we hold near and dear to us when it comes to the workplace is the cleanliness of the available toilets. This has been something of a sticking point at times when nature calls and we have to, as how Ivan puts it, "Bomb Hiroshima and/or Nagasaki." Much is at stake!

See, we're not keen on squatting, although in dire times we do squat (somehow we're taken back to a memory of our primary school days and we did do a squat once and goodbye wallet. Memories of what happened after the wallet fell in was blotted out, there was no way we would have rescued it from the depths of a black hole. Thankfully, at that age there wasn't much in the wallet save the spare change from buying lunch at the canteen, and probably those cartoony personalized name cards that used to go around.

Of course, nowadays, with our IC, our credit cards, our driver's licence, money, various membership cards will mean we'll take good care our wallet does not suffer such a fate. No, we didn't list down the wallet itself as being good incentive to rescue because, unlike others, we stick to using wallets we've gotten over the years as presents first (so long as those wallets have a coin compartment - very important!).

So. During our housemanship none, none, NONE of the toilets were in acceptable conditions (it's a hospital, the public is bound to use it in all ways). You have either the smell or seats with footprints to deal with. Why are there footprints on a toilet seat??? Must you deploy from such a height?!?!?! We kept to staple hospital diet and regular bowel movements so we had no emergencies where we needed to 'go' in the hospital.

Then came Guardian. Thankfully we were working in 1 Utama, and the new wing had nice clean toilets and, failing that, we could always rush back home during our break. 'Course, we were in more than just 1 Utama over our time in Guardian and we were lucky that the Tun Perak branch had their own staff toilet.

Now...now that we work in Amcorp Mall, we must say that there is much that is lacking in terms of satisfactory toilets. The male toilets for the business towers of Amcorp on each floor that has three cubicles - two seats and one squat - and two urinals. There's the obligatory hose.

There's no toilet roll dispenser. You've to get all the toilet paper you need from the large dispenser outside by the sink before you head in. Please gauge your requirements correctly and do not go in ill-prepared. And the quality of toilet paper provided is...unfortunately, not satisfactory too. It falls apart too easily and sticks to wet surfaces, we don't want to imagine it falling apart while we are wiping.

Don't understand what we mean by falling apart? Take one of them KFC serviettes and use it to wipe your hands dry after washing. This is worse.

The state of the cubicles vary. On floors where there are less male employees, it's cleaner. Otherwise...we can probably understand the need for the cleaners to use the mop to clean the toilet seat every time they go in to clean. What we don't understand is how some people don't know how to flush once their done.

Then there's the taps - either the water pressure is miserable or, at a push, it gushes out and sprays everywhere. Wet pants time.

So we've been exploring the gent's of almost every floor on our tower, to see which one is most satisfactory. We don't use the one on our floor for a reason. See, when we flush we make sure that we open the cubicle door first (yes, we're a cubicle person). Then we flush and make our hasty exit. This turns out to be a good thing because...because....be...becuh...

Probably that's why the door had some water droplets and the floor is wet.

Instead, we now take the fire escape stairs and use the toilets one floor above for the small stuff. And either head to Fitness First Axis, the Midvalley Hotels, the Chief's place, or go home when it's otherwise.

Weekend Warehouses, Choir Camwhoring & Farming Fanatics

Interestingly ever since we've introduced Chief to shoppingnsales for updates, it seems as if there's been some warehouse sale to check out every week or so! So just last weekend it was DKSH's Warehouse Stock Clearance, and the Chief saw a few things of interest from the list of things on sale, one of them being a...Morgan DVD player that can record stuff (or so it says) going for RM100. No, we don't see anything that says it's Blu-Ray compatible or has HD output.

Seeing that the Chief needed to work on Saturday morning, we volunteered to go over in the morning, take a look at the stuff and probably try to hold onto a DVD player till the Chief arrives around noon. Well it'll mean that we would need a wake up call, but once we've a wake up call we'd be heading over to check out the warehouse sale too. Judging from the list of things out for clearance, we don't think we would be buying much for ourself. Not till we start becoming a homemaker.

Come Saturday morning and we get our wake up call, and made good time to DKSH. Found the stuff, picked up a Rubbermaid tupperware for Aidan and a icepack for drinks while browsing around, then decided to just buy the DVD player because we can't reserve it. You know how it is lah: don't buy, then later everyone else buys and no more stock. Buy, then next thing you know Chief says don't want.

We decided to make things easy with a third option: Buy, if Chief doesn't want (or by the time Chief comes to buy it there's no more stock), bundle as Christmas present.

So we got the stuff from DKSH, headed back to TTDI for breakfast, headed to pick the Chief up to go back to the DKSH warehouse sale so the Chief could check out what else was there, then after that it was to iKea to walk a bit, then we sent the Chief back to the workplace and we were off home. Needed to get ready for a gig the YKLS had at the JW Marriott.

The YKLS had a gig to perform for (if we're not wrong) the French Chamber of Commerce's annual dinner, and so some 26 of us were there to perform pieces from our Breakin' It Down performance. So there we were at Marriott by 5.30pm, only to rehearse at 7ish for our performance at 10.30pm. What did we do to while away the time?

See, while Yin2 was having her hair done, she wanted before and after pictures. So she got us to go grab her camera and start snapping away. Point-and-click digicam in hand and a roomful of camwhores, we got rather out of control...

Started off with taking a photo of Yin2 while having her hair done...

Then the camwhoring began after we started taking solo shots of everyone. When it came to Adrienz, it went on to photos by the door and corner photos...then everyone started getting into the picture, us included (hey we want our bit of fun too!).

Then we went on to product placement. With us photographing using Yin2's camera, and joeRY giving artistic direction to Adrienz the model holding Datin's Gucci bag.

Then there was more dynamic takes.

Sectional group shots. Here be tenors.

Then when we were thirsty, it was out to get some drinks (once all the French guests were in the dining hall). Even then there's photos.

Well at the end of the night we had a surprise celebration for our Music Director, S4 as it was her birthday that day. Was a bit of a job trying to convince her that the organizers wanted us waiting backstage first - members had to sing songs from past productions or something to keep her entertained. When a few of us got the champagne and cupcakes ready we heard someone give a starting key, and then we'd walked in with the cupcakes and everyone burst out into the birthday song - English, Malay, Mandarin and Cantonese, but no French because no one knew the lyrics.

Come Sunday the Chief had other appointments so we decided to do lunch at Mages and meet up with members of the Agricola Association. Ever since we had our orientation meeting courtesy of psike and Ryan the Sunday before, we knew we would need to attend a few more meetings to understand the Agricola culture. Ryan told us that we were likely to lose focus halfway through Agricola, which may be quite true (unless we have time to memorize all the phases, Minor Improvements, Major Improvements, Occupations whatnot).

Our initial thoughts after our first time? It's Farming Caylus.

With three people the flow is different. Then later on Uncle Tan, Wong and his friend KeeSeong (we think) joined psike and us for one more round. And oh goodness farming was so much more difficult. Different options to take and resources were so scarce! Still needed to make food to feed the family, expand the hut for more rooms, rear sheep and other livestock, sow grain and vegetables, sprog more family members...

We'll be back for more next time we suppose!

Sunday ended with a dinner meeting at Treats Cafe before heading to 'Vin's for DVD Nite. Beer and Wanted. Farfetched but fun.