Angel Ambush, Part 1

Soon after we revealed A.P.R.I.L.F.O.O.L. 2009, we were attacked on GChat by Hyperion. Which led to us thinking of doing this. Now it seems that one page is not enough...

Love Is Blue

Blue, blue, my world is blue
Blue is my world now I'm without you

Good grief. The last time we heard that song was when dad had this 2-cassette compilation of oldies that we'd play in the car. And the last we remember playing those tapes were on a trip up to either Camland or Frasers (there's just something about getting carsick that does wonders for the memory). Oldies when we were a kid...while nowadays Light & Easy puts us fast asleep.

So the weekend took an interesting turn and we actually wonder, "Why?" But we guess the birthday card helped answer that.

But still, celebrations are for celebrating, hopefully there's been no collateral damage leaving anyone feeling blue.

So anyways. We've decided to give a try at doing just a word that reads differently instead of the usual ambigram.

Although, yes, you could join them up and make it an ambigram.

Counting down the days till Angels & Demons!

Sporeland Jellical Ball

Jellicle Cats come out to-night
Jellicle Cats come one come all:
The Jellicle Moon is shining bright -
Jellicles come to the Jellicle Ball.

After first watching Cats on telly (TV3 we think we showing the DVD version), we thought, "Meh." Some of the songs were good, but as Cat's really was based on a children's books about cats (Old Possum's Book Of Practical Cats), there wasn't so much of story as there was about cats. So happens when we were in Esplanade for Cinderella, the Chief saw that Cats will be showing. Hence this trip to Sporeland!

Once again, the overnight train down and back - altho' this time we both killed time in multiplayer Space Invaders Extreme and Pacman Vs on the DS! Both of us were expecting to reach early, and have breakfast once again at Swensen's. Something we both looked forward to before we headed to freshen up in the gym.

To our surprise, Swensen's disappeared! And Park Hotel! In fact, the entire building's closed down! What's happened? More importantly, where are we going to have breakfast this early an hour?

Luckily, this trip we weren't as early and Paragon's lower ground food stores were already opened. We both decided to stop by The Soup Spoon for their breakfast set of Ham & Cheese sandwich and Cereal With Yoghurt.

Soup Spoon have quite an extensive selection of soups to choose from, but the soups are more to our fancy than the Chief, one of our East VS West differences. And the Chief doesn't fancy yoghurt either, and that the Chief sampled a bite before we discovered that there was honey at the bottom of the bowl to mix in didn't help.

After a shower at the gym, it was down to the Heeran for a quick looky about for clothes. NUM still doesn't do cheap clothes, and while Mook caught the Chief's eye we decided to check out other places first.

Given that we decided to make this trip a much more 'relaxed and easygoing trip', there wasn't much planned in our itinerary. But there happened to be delay in our train journey that after Heeran we'd to rush to Marina Square with only time to lunch and not shop. The reason?

The Mango Snow as featured on Hyperion's. The both of us are mad for mangos too, and since Marina Square is near the Esplanade, lunch at Xin Wang HK was the obvious choice.

We both were rather disgruntled, however, as when we asked the waitress how large the Mango Snow would be, she was vague in her answer. Thus we called our lunch, the Mango Snow, and cups of water. The Mango Snow is appropriate for THREE people - for two, you don't need to order drinks at all.

Cats was a pleasant surprise. For we were thinking we would be awake and listening to the parts we found interesting and sleeping through the rest ie. sleep through Rum Tum Tugger's and Growltiger's songs (to be honest, we did get sleepy and almost fell asleep at some point).

Okay, so we admit we didn't know just how much of a dance musical Cats turned out to be. It was very enjoyable and we respect how the dancer-singer-actors manage to do it all! Jellicle Songs For Jellicle Cats itself impressed us as how clear their singing was - when they did the bit, "'Round the cathedral, Rang Vivat! Life to the everlasting cat!" we sorely missed classical choral singing.

Still, this is one musical where we will pass buying the CD as proof that we've been there to watch it, the program book is enough. Oh and because the Chief already has the CD.

After Cats, it was down to Chinatown for a bit of walking, shopping and dinner. Oh dinner! More raw fish with porridge! Seriously, we love this dish.

The only problem with this kind if dinner is that, we're sitting outdoors in the heat and we're eating porridge. Thankfully this trip we're partly prepared and dressed light, keeping a shirt in a bag to wear during Cats only. Need to get more suitable clothes!

After dinner, it was back to the gym for another shower and change then it was onwards to catch our train back. Our overnight train back was rather interesting, as this time we had a group of aunties travelling along with us. They first made their impression when one of them quite loudly exclaimed, "EXCUSE ME, WHOEVER IT IS THAT IS SMOKING PLEASE GO OUT TO SMOKE. THIS IS A NON-SMOKING CARRAIGE!"

Mentally applauded her, although soon after we held that judgement in check when she went, "There's a smell from this side, someone over here farted."

Throughtout all the time we were in our bunk with the curtains drawn while playing Space Invaders Extreme with the Chief. And in both cases, the cause of smells were not from either of us.

At Woodlands we confided to the Chief that we were going to be worried that the aunties were going to be a troublesome lot later. The Chief consoled us by saying that the aunties will be likely to sleep early. This proved true, as their noisy chatter died down not long after we've all left immigration and were well on our way to KL.

Only we were effing woken up sometime 6am by a couple of aunties making small talk rather loudly in Mandarin!!!!!

We would have been happy to have slept until we were at KL Sentral, not up early in the morning being reminded that we have a full bladder and will not be using any toilet till we reach KL Sentral some 2 hours later!

Some half hour after being disturbed, we heard another voice, a foreign or Indian lady (intonation not clear), politely telling the Annoying Aunties that their conversation woke everyone up early in the morning.

It took some yanking our bunk curtains aside loud enough and staring out at the aunties with slit eyes (the kind of look when you wake up and everything's bright) for a couple of seconds before yanking the curtains shut that got the attention of one of the aunties - the politer one (to the left) who'd actually called for the unknown smoker to go smoke out of the carraige. Her voice quietened down while the other aunty (on right) could do no effing thing about how loud she spoke.

If they weren't talking in Mandarin, we would have also added in our bit of telling them to quiet down and let everyone sleep. As it was, we had a grouchy morning until we'd gotten back, dumped our stuff and gone for breakfast and a bit of shopping.

Up up up past the Russell Hotel
Up up up to the Heaviside Layer

Telly Tunes Nostalgia

Seems that while most people should recognize most of the tunes, a couple escaped notice. And we do notice or remember the tunes easier than the story sometimes! Anyways, we picked a bit of here and there (and all our ages showed with our answers...), and they were...

TV Theme 1 - Ally McBeal

But of course many would get this, with Vonda Shepard's 'Searchin' My Soul' making it oh so memorable. Plain hilarious, especially with surreal imaginative scenes (Biscuit being thrown into a garbage dumpster just as he was dumped by some girl), and one show we tried to catch every week...until the later seasons where we couldn't keep up.

TV Theme 2 - MacGyver

Good Gods he was so young!

TV Theme 3 - Mind Your Language

With the terrifying Dragon Lady!

TV Theme 4 - Dynasty

We love the music, even tho' we don't remember zip about the series (save that the brunette was an evil bitch)!

TV Theme 5 - Picket Fences

This show we found funny because of the many weird things that could happen in a small town! Also we love the piano piece played in the opening. Odd enough that we cannot find the opening scene so we've to make do with clips of the town's hilarious lawyer. Created and produced by David E. Kelly. Ayup, he who went and did Ally McBeal after this show.

TV Theme 6 - Poirot

The music caught our interest, although it never, ever did hit us that we were seeing Poirot when we first caught a bit of it on telly. And rather sadly when we did realize it was the best adaptation of Agatha Christie's Hercules Poirot (seriously, we only did suspect it when we saw David Suchet as Poirot and put two and two together some time later), we never got the opportunity to sit down and watch it!

TV Theme 7 - Star Trek: The Next Generation

Obvious the moment Patrick Steward opens his mouth with, "Space."

TV Theme 8 - I Dream Of Jeannie

Well partly because the music's catchy and the sitcom's funny. Didn't Jeannie had a sister genie?

TV Theme 9 - Airwolf

Goodness knows why we watched this show back then, heh. But catchy tune.

TV Theme 10 - Hawaii Five-0

Now this one, we don't think we ever watched, hahaha. But that tune, so danceable to.

Okeh, this wraps up Nostalgia Week!

Memorabilia Nostalgia

And we should blame Pratchett's witches for making us think of the word 'memororabililia'. S'like spelling banana and forgetting when to stop.

So we've two boxes of memorabilia, kept under our table: a bigger one (that's actually a vacuum cleaner packaging box) which we got when we shifted to our current house, and a smaller one that used to hold goodness knows what. The bigger one doubles as a storage container for stuff other than keepsakes too, as we, as the usual story goes, have no space.

So in the Big Box, we've...our Nokia boxes, Game Boy Advance game boxes, our collection of Magic: The Gathering, BattleTech, Lord Of The Rings and various other collectible card games, and our letters.

The letters are basically greeting cards from friends during primary school, from sis when she studied abroad (pre-Internet days, these!), get-well cards, an oh-goodness-we-think-this-girl-might-be-interested-in-me-why-else-so-much-effort-in-this-letter card, and actual letters from a missing friend.. Another reminder of how the years have flown past already.

Oh look what's hidden behind the letters. A program booklet for the school's Science & Math's 1st Annual Installation. Nearly 12 years ago.

Ah, onto something from our uni days. We'd started picking up interest in the Torment set and actually asked the shop for these merchandising materials. We wanted to stick a black mana on our door, haha, but in the end didn't had the heart to waste it.

But we're not sure where's the box for our Nok7650. Our first phone that wasn't a hand-me-down.

Onto the Tour Box. Here we have assorted stuff from abroad. Good grief our Jessops photos that we've yet to scan.

Ah. Our Madame Tussauds ruler. Whacks a mean punch if used to whip others. Bought this on our first UK trip way back in Form 1.

Interestingly in terms of souvenirs from US, we remember a couple of playing cards, the Legend Of Zelda: Link's Awakening for the Game Boy, a couple of boosters for MtG, a couple of starters for BattleTech, jeans and some tees from warehouses... What's stuff like fridge magnets when you're a kid? But those that made it into the boxes were the brochures, pamphlets and maps.

And from Scotland, a lot more stuff. We're rather happy with the tickets and the likes, as the inking is still visible unlike our bills nowadays, where after a couple of years it's faded and all that's left is a blank piece of paper. There's our Haggis Tour stuff, and the Mort play as well as bits and pieces from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival...

Then there's more ticket stubs and such from London. Gives us shivers now to be reminded of how cheap tickets for musicals are near 30 quid already. Of course lah, when we were there sometimes you just couldn't convert prices for everything as there were things that were considered dollar-to-dollar...

It seems that we live the fridge magnet collecting to mum. When we get our own pad then probably we'll pick up the habit. Right now it's more to postcards. We almost got a shock to find only one pipe left, then we remembered we did use the others to try smoking some Smelly Skunk before.

Hmmm whatever do we have from Barcelona to put in here?!

Cartoon Nostalgia

There was a particular day where lad, esteban and us were at lad's swapping DS games and checking out Youtube...for the following.



It's the music that we remember, and that she's got earrings that allow her to become a holographic secret identity, and that the songs are like MTVs.

What even surprised us more was when esteban could tell us the song he liked out of that cartoon and found the Youtube of it too.

Then we moved on to something funnier.



We were shocked that the Chinese She-Ra can be so garang! Oh our stomach...

Of course, this soon led to watching all sorts...He-Man, singing along about how Captain Planet's a hero, or the initial X-Men opening sequence, Transformers, how Thunder Cats are on the loose, Spider-Woman...

Speaking of Transformers - we're glad we got the original cartoons and not this!

Telly Nostalgia

Welcome to Nostalgia Week! Well we say Nostalgia Week but we mean nostalgia for us, not in general. Admittedly we're a mildly nostalgic person, and so while hunting for the Sydney 2000 Summer Olympic 'Dare To Dream' song, we stumbled upon a site that has television themes. And we went bonkers hearing back old telly tunes, especially for them telly series that we enjoyed or haven't heard since the glory days where there was only RTM1, RTM2 and TV3.

So now it's time to guess the song!

An example would be as follows. Once listened you'll know its...



The Simpsons.

So we'd decided to put up some telly series music we enjoy (even if we may not have watched much, or remember at all, the actual telly series itself).





















Answers later on the Week!

We Are One

We were eating brunch with the Chief at a coffeeshop when we leaned forward and beckoned to whisper something into the Chief's ear...

The Chief, wondering if we wanted to tell a secret or point out surreptitiously of someone doing something ghastly like picking nose while eating using hands, leaned forward to listen...

We whispered...

"I came from the dreamtime, from the dusty red soil plains..."

...and we got slit eyes and a light scowl (you know, where you'd use the (-_-) emoticon) before the Chief continued eating.

See, we've all been practising for KLPac's Australia Month, where we're singing with the KLPac Sinfonietta (or now known as the KLPac Orchestra) for In The Style Of Down Under! When we first got our scores and listened to the song, it soon became rather evident that we all were more patriotic as Australian than Bolehlanders. For one, the Australian Medley comprising of 'I Am Australian' and 'I Still Call Australia Home' are definitely much more tuneful and catchier. Watch the Qantas ad that made it popular, we're singing something similar.





So we're working once more with a conductor, and this time the KLPac Orchestra's conductor is a total opposite of our LotR Symphony conductor. A very friendly fellow, and easy to follow his conducting (admittedly we think all conductors have to sorta do some mental brake, and switch gears to make sure they gesticulate enough for us all to understand too).

As for the KLPac Orchestra, well, it's always a pleasure to be able to listen to an orchestra up close, and more than once. Up close like our seats behind the orchestra, those are good - you get to really hear each section not only as they play the melody, but also as they accompany the melody. And you get to listen to it every day, so you can (if you like) focus on the horns on one day, the strings on another...it's a great experience.

So of course we all had dress codes. The orchestra members are all donned in coats and all, while us choir members made do with all black - with a touch of satin.

Of course, even though it's just a scarf/sash, the possibilities to dress up with it is endless...

One question we get asked normally by friends is, "Eh, you all got get paid or not?" For this event? We do get dinner every day before our performance at night (although why they get us chillified fried rice or spicy noodles together with fried chicken to kill our throats we have no idea), and all of us were given a couple of tickets for the Gala Night Opening to give to others. We do hope that there's programme books and other whatnots too but that's probably on the last day itself. We also had payment on our Gala Night!

Pale ale...

...and white wine courtesy of the Australian High Commision.

Picture Profile

Just as we're about to do this when we got stumped. See, we'd gotten tagged by Yin2 via Facebook and so we thought this meme was for the Facebook profile pic. And just as we're beginning to do this we wondered if it could mean the profile pic for Blogger.

So we decided to use our Facebook profile pic.

Oh. First, the rules:

1. Post your profile pic.
2. Tell us a story behind it.
3. Why do you choose that pic?
4. Tag 5 more bloggers!

Right. The Facebook profile pic. Here's the original pic, taken during our trip to Sporeland a couple of years back where we decided to meet up with psike while he was working there. Regardless of what people may have thought about two flers camwhoring in coats, hilarious tho' that misunderstanding may have been, the resulting photos made sure it wasn't all for nothing.

Then there's this application for the iPod Touch called Comic Touch, which is a nifty little program that does text boxes and speech bubbles like a comic strip, and it is only now after a year plus when we first noticed the app that we found a free Lite version to play with.

And so the profile pic was a result of playing about.

Why that pic? Because that is us? Although we must say we like what Froggie chose for us as a picture link too, although that one is much to risky for innocent us to post up. Heh.

Who shall we tag? Oh goodness. With the League of Anonymous Bloggers around it's not easy looking for profile pictures to elicit a story, but we'll try...dammit, a bit susah since we've a rough idea behind the story of a number of the profile pics...

Deeperanddeeper!
Jase!
Fable Frog!
Booker!
NJAPF!

OK a quick story about our Blogger profile picture - we were in the pharmacy office, got ourself a disposable mask, cut out a photo of large lips from a magazine, and tried it on for size. Didn't dare serve customers while wearing said mask in the end.

Taxing Taxes

For our income tax of 2008. Never have we a year where we could fill in our forms and get it right first go. Probably it'll take us a few more years of doing our taxes before we can just pop in all the numbers without fretting. This year also sees a departure from our usual of doing it last minute, by doing it now while it's still somewhere in the middle of the month rather than leaving it till the last week (or better yet, last day).

Last year, the major headache that had us wailing to all and sundry that we had to pay a hefty sum and that it couldn't be right, as all our years previous we'd never needed to pay a single sen (then again, previously we'd only been working part time...), until we realized that we didn't key in our PCB. Then the values cleared up plenty and we'd only to pay a minor sum.

This year, we'd left out our KWSP bit. Although the end result wasn't as drastic as last year, there was only a couple of hundred to pay probably but still, being a poor fellow making our way in this world we know we're not one who is supposed to be paying for taxes. Ahem. A quick check through our EA form and referring back to our printout of last years submission meant we traced the omission quickly.

Should be happy, right? More money for us?

Heck no. That spare moolah's been absorbed into paying Aidan's road tax and insurance instead!

Otak-Otak Place

Food post!

The weekend saw us making a trip up to Genting where the Chief was given a free room stay (yes even Genting loves the Chief) - the Chief got an email for a complimentary stay in a Deluxe Room at First World. And the both of us had the impression that the Deluxe Room was the kind we stayed in when Team Layton participated in the Toyota Amazing Trails, and imagine our surprise when we both entered a room that was definitely much smaller and cramped compared to what we stayed in previously.

Turns out that what we used to stay in was the Deluxe View Room. And now we know.

Anyways back from Genting we stopped by 1U to get some stuff, and decided to lunch in the new wing because we'd noticed since Chinese New Year that there's quite a fair number of new restaurants that popped up in our absence. There's quite a number of new stores there (well not really new by now but still, new to us), and so after checking a few menus we decided to stop by Otak-Otak Place.

Admittedly we chose it because they were having a promotion for otak-otak at 60 sen per piece instead of their usual RM1.10. And we think 60 sen is the price you'd normally pay outside, so it was acceptable while we might have balked at paying RM1.10 per piece.

Sat outside under a sort of picnic table with brolly setup, and friendly waiters brought us the menu and such. Call us skeptical if we think the store only just opened just because the staff is very friendly and customer service is good and have not been jaded by complaining and difficult customers yet.

As we were doing lunch in the better part of 3pm, there were also tea time sets available to order. We ended up calling a couple of sets, the otak otak, an additional side meal, and waited to be served. Had a bit of difficulty choosing dishes as a fair number of them had otak-otak in them. Thankfully the decor of the place didn't try to match their theme too much - the menu was like a schoolbook (with the Rukun Negara and a multiplication table printed on the back!) and the cashier counter had bottles of sweets for sale - Ding Dang and Tora for RM2! RM2!!! We used to buy Ding Dang for what, 50 sen?

They brought us our teatime set milk tea and cracker. We also found a pack of Happy Families cards set out to keep us entertained while waiting for our food, with rules for those who've never heard of Happy Families/Old Maid/Donkey printed on the back of the tissue dispenser. The Chief likes the milk tea, but not lactose-intolerant us.

The nasi lemak set, and basically all their dishes, came in those dim sum dishes. Steaming hot meant that the Chief eats first lest we burn our tongue. This was good altho' the portion would hardly fill either of us up.

Then there's the toast and curry set. At RM5 a set both the nasi lemak and this set worked well as side dishes, heh. Not too filling and not too little. The Chief finds the curry a tad lacking, while to us the curry only served as something to drench our nasi lemak rice and the toast.

Thankfully the otak-otak came in time to add on to the toast. 60 sen a piece, with a minimal order of 5 pieces

Admittedly there's nothing special about the otak otak. Firm and not too spicy, unlike the Johor kind that we always have courtesy of our aunties.

We'd only ordered the Otak-otak Meatball Served With Thai Egg Kerabu to go with everything else, as we weren't too sure how large were the servings. The meatballs were spicier than the otak-otak, but the kerabu was good. Both of us enjoyed this.

Next time we'll give their main dishes a try - once we've visited the rest of the places there. Like New York, New York, where we'll first go to Sporeland to compare prices, heh.

Just Cruisin' Along Manulife

So yesterday we were rushing off to Fitness First Manulife for Combat, and we arrived just in the nick of time where people were just entering the class when we bumped into an friend whom we haven't seen in quite a while already. Started catching up on this and that in the locker room as we just arrived and needed to change into our gym togs for Combat while he was done for the day and was going to shower before heading off.

But it so turns out that we were so engrossed in catching up that by the time we left to head for Combat, it was already the Muay Thai track with only 3 more tracks to go, which meant we missed the entire class!

The funny thing was, when the Goth and us were catching up, there seems to be more than just sitting down and chitchatting. 'Course, we never did realize what was happening until much later.

See, the two of us were sitting in one end of the locker room, with a wall of lockers to the back of the Goth and behind us, the passageways to more lockers and the sauna and shower stalls. So all the while while the two of us are talking, we never realize that the Goth was also taking advantage of the situation.

Not until he gave us the sort of facial expression that where we thought meant, "There's someone behind you trying to get to his locker and you're blocking him," and we turned and got mooned by someone on his way to the showers.

Theeeeen it hit us that not only we've been spending ages talking, but he's been using the opportunity to ogle the sights. And instead of a quick catch-up, it dragged on at his leisure.

We'd to go for RPM instead for our workout. Sheesh.

Distant Worlds, Distant Hope

It started of with us mentioning about Final Fantasy to the Chief. This then reminded the Chief of something, and soon we were looking at the Esplanade Diary April-June 2009, on a page that shows that Distant Worlds: Music from Final Fantasy will be playing in May.

We didn't get all excited because we weren't sure if it was the official orchestra at first, we thought that the official one was called Friends Of Final Fantasy or The Black Mages or something like that.

Only today we manage to check up on the website, and turns out that it's official, and Nobuo Uematsu himself is also attending the Singapore performance!

We started discussing logistics, as unlike the Cinderella musical that we attended, the Final Fantasy performance would be in the evening and not in the afternoon, so we wouldn't be able to pull off taking overnight trains to and fro. Began discussing travel plans and accomodations with the Chief, and just midway looking at air fares while the Chief checks ticket availability for the performance, the Chief tells us that it's all been sold out.

Well then again it was because we didn't know tickets started selling since February (they even added an extra show on Saturday afternoon after overwhelming response). And the Chief didn't know that Final Fantasy would be so popular.

So, um, yeah. Disappointed.

Oh well, there's always that hope that they will one day come to perform in KL, just like how we had the Lord Of The Rings Symphony. And hopefully, we get to sing for Final Fantasy as we want to! We mean, just look at the program set out for Distant Worlds: One-Winged Angel, Liberi Fatali, Memoro de la Stono...if they were performing The Promised Land from Advent Children as well, this would definitely be something to join.

Yeah, shall hope.

Church Chumminess

It was Palm Sunday (much to our ignorance) and we'd forgotten mum's intention to head to church, until about 6am where we were still midway watching the introduction miniseries for the reimagined Battlestar Galactica and the Wrath Of Mother descended upon us with a Didn't I Tell You That We Are Going To Church Today?

Sigh. We've lost touch with the church already. One thing about churches, is that they're all about fellowship and communion and reinforcing each other in the faith. We're not very keen on this and to make it even better we've lost touch with so many people there that, while we do remember faces, names are totally another issue.

And what more, a fair number of people still remember our name!

Well this partly due to mum, 'cos they'll go, "Hello, [Janvier], how are you?" to which we will respond, then they will follow up with a, "So where's Mummy?" to which we would point out in some general direction and then flee when they turn their heads to look.

It helps that in our society, we can still partly get away by calling the adults 'Uncle' and 'Aunty' 'tho if done in the presence of mum we would get a chiding later on to call them by their names, 'Aunty So-and-so'. Of course, if we'd knew or remembered that name there, we wouldn't just call them 'Uncle/Aunty'...

Then again, we're not so young anymore that we can get away with calling everyone older than us 'Uncle/Aunty'. So comes the Discreet Identity Elicitation Technique (DIET) to get away with it, although we think what we need to have done is run straight to the church office and grab the church member directory and run through the list of names to work our rusty memory.

What we do find interesting is that church members can still be so friendly, although we think we're getting better now that we've cut all conversations with everyone to under a couple of minute, once they've run through the 'Hi, how are you, are you here with your mum, where are you working now, it's good to see you, haven't seen you in church for a long time, hope to see you more often' formula.

Thankfully the rest of the day was spent sleeping the entire ordeal off till suppertime.

Limiting Ourself

If you ever need a reason to love Annie Lennox's music, it's this.



The music! Not the wtf music video! But then again we love the video too!

And then there's also Into The West from Lord Of The Rings.



How we love the guitar and strings for that piece too.

If you still need another reason, then this.

We'd our reservations about getting the album initially (since we'd only known two of her songs and already have them), so we, er, 'sampled' it from some kind soul online first. Ahem. Listened to it with Aidan on our drives home from the office and yep, we're definitely getting the Limited Edition. Comes with 2 CDs of songs and a DVD of some MTVs, a better buy for us since we don't own any of her previous albums.

And we were just going to limit ourself to that CD when this caught our eye.

Pet Shop Boy's new album.



PSB was something we listened to in the past but never really paid much attention to, until 'Go West'. Thankfully sis has some of their albums so we've gotten reacquainted recently. And so when we saw this we decided to pick it up too.

And it had to be a limited edition too, although the extra CD is mainly club dubs.

Must stop shopping now!

And Settling Down Again

And yesterday as we were heading to work we were thinking of situations. Them 'What if...?' kind of things.

After all, we needed something much more feasible and on a slightly larger scale than the Gonad Foundation.

And came up with the family relocating plan. Something not too drastic like say, an accident or something that meant hospitalization. And we included got the Chief into the act, not the least because of we wouldn't want the Chief to get sucker-punched by something that wasn't real.

So with the Chief as our accomplice, we discussed how we would run the situation, even to the point of coming up with a fake conversation (with out-of-character bits chatted in brackets) where the Chief expressed utter dismay and anger to our informing of relocating, for any use should we need to express our grief to others as to the Chief's reactions.

And so we launched the April Proposed Realism Interactive Life-Filling Outlook Operations Lab 2009.

The results are in.

Everyone were just a great bunch. The care and concern to the situation was just touching, as we had input regarding how to deal with the situation and well, the reason we would stay is not because people would ask us to stay, but because we have the Chief here and because we have all our friends here. Even tho', yes, we haven't been hanging out much with everyone already...

The Chief was also concern about cheating other people's sympathy, something the Chief dislikes...so we're sorry ya, to all if you felt offended. Lil' Prince, we're touched touched that you choose to think so highly of us!

And everyone, of course, had 1st April enough on their minds to be sharp and catch us on the 'family don't play April Fool's on each other', heh. If we were pressured more on that point we would have caved in and admit to the entire thing, but as it were we were all talking more of how to deal with the situation at hand.

As Nyukster said, "Even if it turns out to be a big april's fool thing, it would still be a great academic exercise for future scenarios." Very true! It turned out to be a great education of what to do if such a situation does arise!

Interesting enough we had this song in our head yesterday morning as we were planning this: Bee Gee's 'I Started A Joke'. And it turns out true, for today we hurt-ed the Chief with our comment where it looks as if we were blaming the Chief for the late admittance of an April Fool's joke. Our intention there was just to point out that the Chief was privy to the joke, but as the damage is done, we wanna say we're sorry, dear.

Being Uprooted

Mum dropped a whopper while we were having breakfast today: dad has gotten a permanent job transfer to New Zealand and the family's relocating.

Now, our family's not known for playing April Fool's jokes on each other, so we aren't suspecting a prank here. We're told by mum that they've both been discussing this for two weeks now and finally dad decided that they shall relocate. Good place to retire, we're told. Selling the house, we're told. You want to come along or stay, we're asked.

This reminds us really about the time when we graduated and the family came to Glasgow for the ceremony (and to tour Europe while at it). There we were, thinking, "Yes! Once we start working we'll be able to move out and stay in KL on our own!" and getting all happy about hopeful independance when sis comes up to us and asks, "Eh, pa and ma got tell you or not? They are thinking of selling the Klang house and moving to Taman Tun."

In retrospect, moving to TTDI was the better option, but well it gives you an idea of how 'fast' news gets told between us and the parents.

We're rather torn.

New Zealand's a rather lovely place, but our life is here! Honestly we're quite tied to here already...our friends are all here, things are swell with the Chief, the job's comfy. If asked to list down the pros and cons, we'd think we'd be able to list down more pros for staying (as we can't rightly say what pros there are to moving to NZ for good).

We've our friends all here. Well except for those who've gone overseas, like some Klangite and uni friends in the UK. We'll definitely have to ask FeR for information, 'cos she's the only one we knows who's in NZ now. It's not easy for us to leave everything our friends behind and start anew, it's probably easier if we were still in our college/uni years.

Jobwise, we don't think it's gonna be easy finding a job for a supervisor cleaner in NZ. And our degree is such that, we'll have to sit for extra papers and re-do our pharmacy housemanship again (gotta check with FeR) before we can work straightaway as a pharmacist. And we must say that we rather like our job now.

If we stay, we'll have to find a place of our own, but at least we'll have our independance! Free to stay on our own! Free to come and go as we like without disturbing the rest of the household! Free to hold parties at our place! Free to experiment with cooking! Free to wash our own clothes! Free to do our own ironing...um. But hey, the Chief would be able to move in with us then.

Well of course the Chief isn't happy with the news...both of us know that a long-distance relationship isn't going to work.

But, it isn't everyday that a chance to head off to, as we put it, an angmoh country.

So we're torn. Stay or go? Maybe it's a good thing we didn't rush to get an iPhone with Maxis too.