...and this is the second story we know of where a relationship started off since college, and after nearly ten years, ends in marriage. The first being 'Nic and LiL. This time it's beween Puddy and her beau Eddy - knew each other since school days, started going steady in college when he offered her a ride, and now, ten years later, have tied the knot.
Ok, so for 'Nic it probably wasn't ten years. But close enough.
It's a rather small world when at the dinner reception we were grabbed by the elbow to face to of our college classmates, and somehow we stopped ourself from blurting, "Eh why are you here?" We chatted a bit and found out that they were friends of the groom (as we were the bride's) either since Taylor's or while at Imperial. So at this dinner we had friends from college, our pharmacy coursemates and the Taman Tun-ites as well.
We wonder what kind of wedding dinner it would be if we had the bloggers, the Taman Tun-iutes, the Klangites, college friends, and pharmacy coursemates in attendance. Quite likely our own wedding, if it ever happens!
One thing of note at Puddy's wedding - there weren't any reminders that this was a Chinese wedding dinner in any way by way of decor. Some handcrafted trees with wellwishes written on the paper leaves, everything in a thematic robin's egg blue, and an absence of the chinese word 'Hei' or the colour red anywhere. Otherwise, we still had a bilingual MC and the shouts of yamseng to remind us where we were.
Another thing of note. We're still not used to Puddy's and Eddy's first names.
Jon Low handled the photography and after having his name appearing at the opening and closing of the wedding shoot, we were sure to remember him (and the photos were rather good). If ever we want wedding photos done this would be another photographer to think of.
Unfortunately we couldn't stay long after the dinner was over to chat with the couple, as the Chief had work to do and it was already past 11pm, so we made our quick apologies, congratulations, took a quick couple of photos, and left.
There's still many years to go, but seeing how they've already managed these ten years, we're sure the future's no obstacle for them! Congratulations Puddy & Eddy!
So esteban sends an email to the lot of us, titled 'Inspiring Video', saying:
Hi All.... Just stumbled on this video... very meaningful and kudos to the director... Must watch soonest....
Plus a link to the video. We know esteban to be someone who would actually watch inspirational Chicken-Soup-For-The-Soul kind of videos, so for us there wasn't really any urgency to follow the link to the video immediately (that, plus the fact that the video couldn't play on our iPhone).
Then, the other Taman Tun-ites start replying to the email, and the general gist was that it wasn't so much a motivational inspiring video but a comedic one. Still, since we couldn't watch it on-the-go we pretty much forgot about it, until lad asked us about it today.
lad: hey lad: did you check out esteban's movie yet? Janvier: not yet! Janvier: cos it doesn't play on the iphone lad: oh lad: i think you'd appreciate it the most lad: takes time to load
And so, we followed the link to the video. And waited. And waited. It really was a rather long wait. And in the end, the video played... Midway watching it at the height of suspense, we were slightly puzzled and freaked out. Then we started laughing, realizing why lad said we would appreciate it the most!
And we forwarded it to the BFF, thinking that the video would be personalized to the person watching it! Sent out this email:
If you're feeling lost, or down, or just feeling uninspired, this is the best time to watch this.
For the divas, you know this video was meant to be for you.
In any case you guys should watch this ASAP!
That, and the link to the video. Only...after a while chatting on with lad we came to the realization that the link we sent to the BFF might be misinterpreted as being rather muka tebal, and so we quickly emailed them again saying it was a wrong link and that we would send them the correct one soon.
Then everyone got a personalized one, much to different reactions!
Oh well, if you've watched the video already, go have fun!
It started sometime before Chinese New Year. Eating lunch one day and we bit on what we thought was a pebble. Then a few days later we started feeling our right backmost molar getting a mite sensitive when it came to certain foodstuff and cold drinks, and especially if we actually brush there. After some probing with a finger we discovered that we had a small hole on said sensitive molar.
Thankfully for us that the molar was rather inaccessible to most foodstuff, saliva and brushing there was awkward - so that while we had sensitive twinges from time to time we didn't have to rush straight off to the dentist in pain.
But still, an appointment with the dentist was a must. It's not as if a decayed tooth was going to get better by itself, and waiting for the problem to go away by itself would mean waiting for the troublesome tooth to fall out (which we think would cause us much pain in the process). So we headed back to our dentist, whom we haven't visited for...some five years or so. We're not very comfortable visiting the dentist, friendly and professional and gentle as he may be. The sound of the drills or his other devices always conjure up the worse.
So altogether now, we've already been to the dentist three times. In this past two months.
First for a filling on the decaying molar.
Then for scaling.
And just recently, the veneer of two particularly rough teeth plus the repairing of some fillings.
And each time, it's always the same. We come in relaxed, we get into the seat and relax, we discuss with the dentist (and let him scold us, yes), we open our mouth for him to do his work, and we occupy ourself by closing our eyes (partly due to having a bright light shining on our face) and trying to relax our hands from clenching.
It never stops. The brain may tell us, it's ok, he's not drilling although it may sound like it, it's just a pick that vibrates very fast to clean out the tartar, but our hands tell us we're afraid, clench clench.
And for our third visit, the good dentist starts off our appointment by telling us, "I'm going to give you a jab first yeah."
We would have much prefer if the jab was a GA that knocked us out. Still, what was interesting was that...while the two shots he gave us still had that slight sting, it wasn't the fire-hot stake in the gums that we always think it was. That was a bit of a plus point.
Then there was a whole amount of drilling, this and that we know not what because we chose to keep our eyes closed. There were times when he held a sort of lamp close to the fillings, and more drilling and chipping with something that caused a burning smell...seriously, the arsenal a dentist has scares us.
And at the end of it all, we survive intact! We got up from the chair to find that the LA not only numbed the gums, but the effect spread all the way to our nose! Now that was an interesting sensation. The nurse assured us that once the numbness fades off, there won't be any residual pain. Mind you, this bit is important! When we had our molars extracted previously in preparation for braces, we were bedridden for the rest of the day lethargic with pain, stuffed full of panadol and sucking on ice. We didn't want to be caught unprepared when the numbness wore off and suddenly poleaxed with pain while in public. If there was going to be pain, then we'll get the panadols and ice ready. But there was none.
Now if only the anaesthetic could numb off the shock of the dentist's bill for the anaesthetic, fillings and veneer!
While we've never really got off the habit of bookjuggling, we'll now thank BookXcess for taking it a step further. Because, just last week we browsed around and came across an audiobook CD of Making Money selling at RM24.90. With audiobook CDs normally costing well over RM100, can you say, 'spontaneous buy'?
Disregard the fact that said copy of Making Money was an abridge version instead of the unabridged version. It's our first Pratchett audiobook and we want to hear how it goes. Years of reading and rereading the Discworld series and we've a certain impression of how the characters sound (as for how the characters look, Paul Kidby has certainly got them spot-on that we cannot think of them any other way!), and we were interested to hear how the narrator would voice the characters.
We already like how the witches were portrayed in the Wryd Sisters cartoon. Not so much how they look, but how they sound.
And how Lord Vetinari was portrayed in The Colour Of Magic movie, to a certain extent.
Anyways we had the CDs converted to mp3 and synced to our iPod, and next thing you know, we're listening to the audiobook while reading another book.
It's possible, due to the fact that we've read Making Money before and was rereading an Eddings book. Familiar material. Not much attention needed to do both except to laugh to the jokes from one book or the other.
Our impression of the audiobook? Plus we're listening now to the unabridged version of Maskerade.
The narrators, as far as we hear, do a good job of narrating, with the pacing is good and the pronunciation clear and understandable. Only that most voice impressions for the main characters and inflections differ from how we would do it (but then again, they are the ones doing the reading and getting money doing it!). We understand, though, and wouldn't really expect the narrators to do an accurate impression of Granny Weatherwax or some of the others. It's good enough that we can distinguish different people, especially during conversations.
Just recently we decided to look up our school yearbook due to a curious mention by Naughty Nyukster. We're not too sure when was the last time we actually picked up our yearbook for a flip, there really isn't any reason for us to do so unless we're feeling nostalgic, but we guess it would have been over three years.
Anyways, we started flipping through the yearbook, and skimmed through the photos and names.
Imagine our shock when we realize we couldn't place names to faces or vice versa! Of course, we don't expect to remember everyone's name, and since we've not kept in touch with everyone after high school of course faces would get rusty (we're reminded of the time some three years back when we were in a lift and caught ourself staring at this fellow, he looked back and smiled in acknowledgement which left us puzzled until much later after exiting the lift when we realized he was a schoolmate, oh the shame for acting aloof).
But we do recall that we could place more names to faces the last time we looked at our yearbook! Now just looking at the various clubs and societies, there are members whose names appear in the committee but their photos aren't in the group photo, and we can't even visualize a mental image of who he was! Even a couple of times, with both name and face, it tooked a bit of looking about to see which was most likely the face belonging to the name.
The annual CNY recap. With a few changes this year.
1. Firstly, the family reunion dinner where our sis and bro-in-law didn't come back this year, which allowed us all to fit in the kitchen rather than having to split into two different table (one in the kitchen and one outside at the dining table). This also meant that we didn't need to take any days off to hang out with our sis.
Sincee we didn't take any extra leave for Chinese New Year, we started work again on Wednesday, which was really all the better because if we took the entire week off, we would have gotten a severe attack of Monday Blues once we start work again. So starting work on Wednesday actually helped us ease our way back to a regular work schedule, because as expected the entire week was rather quiet.
Oh, the joys of absolutely zero congestion at 7pm!
2. Which brings us to something about Chinese New Year. Normally we don't pay attention to the Chinese counting of days post-CNY. Add that to the fact that we associate Monday with the first day of the week (ie Tuesday = day 2, etc) and we're capable of slight confusion if we're not paying attention. And yes, we did get slightly confused on the dating system.
Because we'd gotten a text from webchitect that said that he'd be hosting the usual Klangite Chinese New Year gathering on Tuesday, day 3 of CNY.
Message pretty clear, no?
Only we'd gone and kept in mind just the 'Tuesday' bit, and confused that thinking it was Day 2 of CNY. So on Monday night we almost headed down to Klang after dinner. Thankfully we decided to check the text again, else we would have wasted a trip down...
Anyways we made a trip down on Tuesday night for the Klangite CNY gathering, and lost a fair bit when we started gambling by playing In Between. It's the first time we've ever played In Between where the pot came up to around RM400ish (then again in our younger years gambling, we'd all bet less - those were the times when angpows still jingled with the sound of RM1 coins...). The pot got that high quite fast partly due to a couple of house rules: everyone had to put RM1 into the pot each round (to increase the amount available as well as to make players more committed to betting); and if a player did bet, and the revealed card was one of the two cards he has, he had to pay double.
With those two house rules, CYNg lost a hefty sum initially because each time he gets an ace and a queen (very good odds for revealing a card between these two cards), he bets a big sum...and hits either a queen or an ace. This happened a few times. Thankfully, CYNg manage to recover back most of his losses.
3. Asides from the Klangite gathering, we'd visited Clan Chief, once at their home for games and the likes, and once more for dinner.
4. Last Thursday was a dinner gathering at lad's place! A quick fun meetup where everyone caught up with each other while enjoying lad's mum's cooking (generous pork servings in the form of ham and bacon!).
5. Mahjong meetup at Leggie's place on Friday! With an interesting twist that there was no money involved! Played all afternoon till dinnertime, where we made our way to the Daily Grind for dinner!
Regardless of how often we meet the members of Clan Chief, we still feel awkward when it comes to interacting with them. Because (as usual) we cannot communicate with the rest of the family except for a measly smattering of Cantonese which we have no confidence in, we find ourself discreetly quiet around the family members or hiding in the Chief's room watching telly or DVDs.
Then the Chief tells us that we're to attend the family dinner last night. A CNY dinner celebration with all the extended family. Oh, and to wear as red as possible.
We'll say it again. STRESS.
In retrospect though we think that there might be a slight plus point in having this communication barrier. Everyone was polite and we let the Clan Chief banter with each other while we focus on whatever dish is put before us by the waitress. And that helped to relieve some of the stress (most of the stress was relieved by occasionally chatting with the Chief).
We can only suppose that if we could converse with the rest of Clan Chief there might be more awkward moments and questions...probably. Or maybe just more requests to pass over the condiments.
So there we were one night at the RHB Bank at Zaaba depositing our cheque when we saw this shop.
Caught us by surprise it did, for we never knew that a new shop had popped up in Taman Tun and was still open close to 11pm. And it was a store selling just frozen yoghurt by the looks of it. Nothing else but frozen yoghurt and canned drinks.
Ah well curiosity got the better of us and we ended up not only going into the shop for a look-see, but also ended up with a tub of frozen yoghurt of our own. How it came about? Tutti Frutti's approach to selling their yoghurt. We were looking for a menu with prices as to how much a tub would cost etc.
Instead of charging by the tub or by scoops, the store charges by the weight! It's RM7.30 per 100g, and they'll weigh your final product before charging you accordingly (interestingly we'd checked and some blogs/reviews are saying it's RM5.30 per 100g, price hike perhaps?).
So you pour out as much yoghurt as you like, mix 'em up if you want. We came across the following flavours that night: TF Original, Death By Chocolate, Verry Berry Raspberry, Strawberry Fields, Orange Cream and French Vanilla.
Our choice? Strawberry Fields and Orange Cream. Our more favoured flavours among the lot.
After pouring out the yoghurt there was the toppings to consider. And there were considerably many toppings to choose!
But since it was our first visit and we wanted to savour the yoghurt free from other tastes, not to mention we wanted to find out just how much the scant amount of yoghurt we poured costs, we passed on the toppings. On our next visit there with the Chief we will do our yoghurt with toppings (oh yes there will have to be a second visit!).
Our little cup of Strawberry Fields and Orange Cream, costing somewhere RM7.70. And it was good. It wasn't creamy, and so we thought that it wouldn't do anything to set off our lactose intolerance. However, after the yoghurt, and dinner after that, we found ourself meditating at the porcelain throne, so we need to have another go to find out if it was due to earlier dietary habits or it is actually due to the yoghurt. And Chief has yet to try the place out too, so yes we should plan a second visit, this time to really indulge.
Best bit? We thought the place just opened up the last couple of weeks, and when we casually asked the waitress we were told that they were opened for two months now!
Now this is a tad late because we had to take the time to organize and watermark our photos, unlike the recent Sibu photolog which we could immediately upload since we've done the whole thing up via the Comic Touch app.
Of course, if we were to photolog the event of our entire trip we would run well over twenty photos, and that's way too much for a photolog! When we were making the photolog we initially included all the activities, but in the end it was too much for a comfortable read.
So our trip to Sibu in the middle of last month was to attend the wedding of our old coursemate and housemate during our uni days, ymlau to his Sarikei Sweetheart. We'd already missed the wedding of our other coursemate and housemate, AnTS, and whatwith us keeping more in touch with ymlau we dare not miss this one.
And it's our first trip to East Malaysia no less! And us being a blur case at times, it was rather a good thing that we didn't get our tickets early, because a) we would have bought tickets thinking his wedding was on 12th March instead of 23rd January; and b) we would have bought tickets to Kuching instead of Sibu.
Firstly, we must comment: the hospitality we received during our entire stay in Sibu was absolutely AMAZING. A couple of days before we were to fly over, we call to check the wedding itinerary with ymlau, and he assures us that he will be there to pick us up from Sibu Airport. If he can't make it, he will have someone come and pick us up, much to our protestations. Between Zinger and ymlau, we never needed to worry about transport to anywhere, and frankly we were rather paiseh to be imposing so much...
Upon our arrival we were greeted by the grinning faces of both our old housemates, AnTS arriving much earlier in the afternoon of the same day from Bintulu. We dropped our stuff at Kingwood Hotel, and were soon on our way to celebrate ymlau's bachelor party.
One thing we learn? ymlau's beer tolerance has indeed gone up over the years. His friends there have trained him very well. Drinks like a fish. Upon his arrival at the karaoke centre he was given a glass filled with three cans of beer to down in one go. And he did!
The amount of beer available!
This brings us to a very important lesson. DO NOT HOLD YOUR BACHELOR PARTY ON THE NIGHT BEFORE YOUR WEDDING IF PLENTY OF ALCOHOL IS INVOLVED.
The bachelor party ended by 1am-ish, and we had to wake up by 4.30am to get ready for ymlau to pick up his Sarikei Sweetheart. We got to see Sarawak's first toll booths that led onto a single carraigeway 'highway', and along the way we made nine pit stops for ymlau to get rid of yesterday's alcohol, the queasy way...Poor feller, it certainly was a day for him to remember.
Along the way we got to see large expanse of fields, and at 5am-something in the morning, it was all beautiful with mists rolling about the fields... Should have tried taking a photo during one of those pit stops.
Arrived at Sarikei Sweetheart's place to be welcomed by fireworks, and we got to try the Fuzhou Red Rice Wine noodles, which reminded us of mee suah. After which the hengdai vs zhimui battle commenced. Twenty-three hengdais. Five zhimuis. All that was involved was some declaration of love before the zhimuis would allow the groom access past the staircase.
It's Sibu. Conversation for most of the part was done in Fuzhou or Mandarin.
We're used to it, after living with two Sarawakians for 3 years.
More fireworks greeted us when we arrived back at the groom's place.
After the traditional Chinese ceremony was completed the throng headed to the church to exchange their vows. After the service, ymlau's brother brought us for a heavy seafood lunch.
We'd the afternoon off to take a quick power nap from our early morning, then it was around town going all touristy taking photos.
Come evening Zinger picked us all up for the wedding dinner at the Good Happiness Restaurant. Not all coursemates were here because it so happens that another coursemate was also celebrating her wedding on the same day! Some folks thought that they were both getting married to each other!
Day after the wedding we went about the rest of the malls, and got ready to leave by evening. Short trip indeed.
To ymlau and his Sarikei Sweetheart, wishing you happiness and joy in your marriage!
As it is we were confronted by a UNICEF fellow recently while on our way to get toiletries. We're a bit more apprehensive of them as compared to credit card promoters, because with credit card promoters they are rather direct in their approach ie "Mister, credit card free for life?", while UNICEF promoters mastered the art of finding some way to compliment you before hitting up their spiel.
Well most times we manage to avoid the promoters, we even remember in one case we were crossing from The Curve to Ikano via the bridge, and when heading back to The Curve via that same bridge we heard someone comment, "Wow! You're still reading while walking!"
Of course we only heard her peripherally, and we weren't intentionally reading as we walked past the UNICEF booth, it just so happens we were reading a rather engaging book and wasn't bothered with our surroundings.
Anyways, there we were stopped by a promoter commenting on our tie and all, and with no physical objects about us to indicate that we were too busy to spare some time and us being a nice guy and incapable of brusqueness, there we were sparing two minutes of our time, or so we were told by the promoter. Even though we have heard it before...twice, on different occasions.
Perhaps we should have just told him, "No thanks," smile and quickly run off. Or, "Sorry, heard it before but no thanks." Maybe lie (but such slander would show on our face!) and say, "Oh we're already donating!"
Maybe not lie. We recall how a WWF promoter followed up the question with a, "Oh that's great! How much are you donating?" Honest person we are, since we are donating to WWF we could answer her without hesitation and continue on our way unmolested.
But here's the thing. Since the promoters have the thankless job of trying to get random people to sign up and commit to a donation, and face quite a fair bit of rejections, and still have to think of nice things to say to get people's attention...would it be better if we nicely rejected them before they start their spiel, or midway after giving them some attention?
So one fine day the Chief was driving us to Cineleisure (no, still not used to calling it E-At-The-Curve yet) for a movie, and we were coming from somewhere in PJ sometime in the evening...meaning there's the usual traffic snarl. Just so happens, this one time the Chief decides to use the route that we normally take head to Cineleisure, and as it was, our route was a tad jammed up too.
Not too bad by our standards, as we find that we can usually breeze past the initial clog, but what we noted was that both of us had a different route of choice at most points. In our case, it's from Federal Highway, making our way towards Jalan University and cutting across to Section 17 via the junction just before Jaya One. Coming out at the Shell station on the Sprint Highway, we then head into TTDI and up Jalan Datuk Sulaiman and into Mutiara Damansara.
Chief usually takes alternatively the Section 16 way coming out towards Eastin Hotel, heads straight all the way to the junction where Jalan Damansara meets the LDP. From there it's all the way towards 1 Utama and to Cineleisure.
For us, we prefer moving with occasional stops. At least there's a sense of movement.
The Chief prefers a more efficient time-saving route. Which meant going through the hellish bit of traffic where the Jalan Damansara meets LDP and gets congested, where one ends up waiting for at least three cycles of traffic light changes before getting past. But according to the Chief, it's smooth sailing from there on without any more traffic lights until we reach Cineleisure.
Taking our route the Chief suffered with each traffic stop while in TTDI (short tho' the stops were whatwith few cars and smart lights) and one slightly long one at Burhanuddin Helmi. And another slight wait once we reach the junction before Tesco. Each stop we were treated to a look of suffering and a reminder of the time.
And just recently we tried taking the Chief's route...and raged nonstop in the car as we crawled ever so slowly towards the traffic lights at Jalan Damansara/LDP. Even soothing music did not help calm us down as we were, well, rushing to make it to Citibank to drop our cheque before 4pm (and mind you it was already 3.45pm when we got stuck in that snarl). Impatience coupled with a bit of aggressive driving helped make sure that no stray cars decide to cut into our lane and slow us down, and by stroke of luck we managed to get to Citibank by just past 4pm and hand in our cheque to the officer who was collecting the cheques from the machine at that moment.
Since we handed it straight to the officer and were not able to slot it in the machine first, we didn't get a receipt. If we did slot it in the machine, then they would have recorded it as a late payment. Oh well better no receipt than pay late charges.
Still, somehow we don't figure the stress from all that traffic is worth it!
Oh, and probably one day both the Chief and us will put to the test which way is faster.
It's a rather small world when at the dinner reception we were grabbed by the elbow to face to of our college classmates, and somehow we stopped ourself from blurting, "Eh why are you here?" We chatted a bit and found out that they were friends of the groom (as we were the bride's) either since Taylor's or while at Imperial. So at this dinner we had friends from college, our pharmacy coursemates and the Taman Tun-ites as well.
One thing of note at Puddy's wedding - there weren't any reminders that this was a Chinese wedding dinner in any way by way of decor. Some handcrafted trees with wellwishes written on the paper leaves, everything in a thematic robin's egg blue, and an absence of the chinese word 'Hei' or the colour red anywhere. Otherwise, we still had a bilingual MC and the shouts of yamseng to remind us where we were.
Jon Low handled the photography and after having his name appearing at the opening and closing of the wedding shoot, we were sure to remember him (and the photos were rather good). If ever we want wedding photos done this would be another photographer to think of.
There's still many years to go, but seeing how they've already managed these ten years, we're sure the future's no obstacle for them! Congratulations Puddy & Eddy!
