May is one heavy month for presents, whatwith lotsa May babies and Mother's Day, and it's never an easy task coming up with present ideas. Thankfully sis thought of something for Mother's Day this year, so all we had to do was think of what to get for dear sis before she came back for her birthday dinner.
Then so happens we remembered seeing recipe cards in a craft shop in Bangsar Shopping Centre before. So when we were out with the Chief for dinner, we dropped by BSC to have a look again at the recipe cards and get a second opinion as to present suitability.
The Chief thought that it wasn't such a great present, as the cards were pretty small (about flash card size) and even if we got a basket to place the cards in it still wouldn't do. A round about the shop didn't present any other suitable presents, when the Chief suggested that we get a folder and decorate it nicely as a cookbook.
And seeing how it was already Thursday night, and sis was due back on Saturday, and this kinda craftwork takes a bit of time to do, we certainly had to rush now.
So we headed into Times BSC to get a nice 4-ring folder. And then on Friday we happily shopped at Popular and Papier for materials. Cardstock, embossed plastic inserts, ribbons, papers, whatever that happens to be cheap in Papier...Tell the truth, though, we had absolutely no idea just how we would decorate the folder, so we had to wander around the stores looking and this and that, wondering about the suitability. Ended up we had to get a few things to try later.
So Friday night we're based in front of the telly with our stuff set up and Battlestar Galactica running. Start off with the easy bit of cutting the cardstock to size to fit the folder. Even cardstock design took us ages wondering in Papier, looking for something appropriate for a cookbook.
Then we'd thought to try the corrugated cardboard as we wanted to cover the fact that it's a ring binder we were giving to her.
It's a bit tough trying to cut the corrugated cardboard to size, as it kept rolling up. But we'd manage to cut it to size.
We'd bought a metre of ribbon and a mini clip to add to the folder too. Initially instead of a clip we wanted to put a pen, but we forgot to get one. Once we'd the corrugated cardboard pasted on, we could finally put in the plastic inserts, and cards to use as dividers.
Decided to keep the front cover simple, so we just pasted the printout and stuck on photo corners for sis to put in any photo she fancied (we wanted to put in a photo of her cupcakes she made some time back, unfortunately the photo was on her camera and we didn't have a copy in our pc).
We found cheap overlays selling at Papier, about RM4 per piece instead of the normal RM10 price tag that we normally find. Rather nice design too, so we just had to add it on regardless if it meant that the coverpiece wasn't so clear.
And while initially the folder could have been used for anything other than just a folder to hold recipes, pasting thickers in addition to that 'Cookbook' cover bit ought to do the job...
And the finished piece. Then we realized that sis was gonna have a heck of a job lugging this back to Sporeland...
Just so happens that today whilst at work we sorta hit a mental brick wall, and everything comes to a complete halt and all we can do is think about taking a weeklong holiday to Sporeland.
We think it's probably either due to us recently reading Agatha Christie's Miss Marple series and the idyllic settings of an English village, or it could be our morning coffee (which, sometimes, has us feeling lightheaded after our first cuppa, but we soon recover on our second cuppa).
While a weeklong holiday to Sporeland something that we could do, we're not looking to burning our leave days like that so soon. There's the YKLS production in November, meaning we've to block of leaves for that, and if we were to take a nice long vacation, we should plan to go with the Chief.
Mind you, we're really thinking/dreaming along the lines of long, do-nothing kinda vacation where the key word would be: idleness.
Where, if we did go Sporeland, all that we would be doing would be to wake up late, go for a leisurely dip in the pool (assuming we stay with sis, of course), lounge at a Starbucks along Orchard Road, and shop. Everything indoors and air-conditioned, although it's rather unfortunate that Sporeland suffers the same hot and humid weather we're going through now and that every time we step out into the Sporeland streets we immediately break out in sweat, whether it be to walk from one mall to another or to head to the MRT stations.
Well, we're more familiar with Sporeland. It also helps that sis is around should we need accomodation. And since we're just dreaming of an idle vacation there's not gonna be any intensive travel itinerary save Orchard Road Shopping. Oh and maybe the few food places the Chief can introduce us too (like them yummy porridge with raw fish!).
Bangkok, while full of shopping possibilities, put us in mind of hot weather more than air-conditioned lounging. It just does. Must be because we're thinking of Chatuchak and the nighttime street markets than we do of Paragon and MBK.
And we call those our previous trips 'quick getaways', not leisurely vacations. Even the Hat Yai trip, while over a long weekend, was slightly stressful as it the trip involved almost all of Clan Chief and heavy shopping (although we ended up buying close to nothing).
Last time we did a leisurely Sporeland trip? Two years back.
Good grief productivity has definitely slowed down today.
And maybe we should be dreaming about a leisurely weeklong break in Glasgow or London instead, where the weathers much more to our liking all year around. Walk about Oxford Street or Sauchiehall Street or Argyle Street. Visit HMV, Virgin Megastores, lounge at Starbucks with a Strawberries and Cream frappe costing 3 quid, slow walks in the parks, mooch about Tesco for snacks. And if it's winter, we can even wear our leather jacket in comfort too.
Thankfully, we've got an AhFuckit Trip coming up soon to look forward to!
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...
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.
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
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)!
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.
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?!
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!
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).
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.
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...
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.
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!
So Friday night we're based in front of the telly with our stuff set up and Battlestar Galactica running. Start off with the easy bit of cutting the cardstock to size to fit the folder. Even cardstock design took us ages wondering in Papier, looking for something appropriate for a cookbook.
Then we'd thought to try the corrugated cardboard as we wanted to cover the fact that it's a ring binder we were giving to her.
It's a bit tough trying to cut the corrugated cardboard to size, as it kept rolling up. But we'd manage to cut it to size.
We'd bought a metre of ribbon and a mini clip to add to the folder too. Initially instead of a clip we wanted to put a pen, but we forgot to get one. Once we'd the corrugated cardboard pasted on, we could finally put in the plastic inserts, and cards to use as dividers.
Decided to keep the front cover simple, so we just pasted the printout and stuck on photo corners for sis to put in any photo she fancied (we wanted to put in a photo of her cupcakes she made some time back, unfortunately the photo was on her camera and we didn't have a copy in our pc).
We found cheap overlays selling at Papier, about RM4 per piece instead of the normal RM10 price tag that we normally find. Rather nice design too, so we just had to add it on regardless if it meant that the coverpiece wasn't so clear.
And while initially the folder could have been used for anything other than just a folder to hold recipes, pasting thickers in addition to that 'Cookbook' cover bit ought to do the job...
And the finished piece. Then we realized that sis was gonna have a heck of a job lugging this back to Sporeland...
