junk mail

Sometimes I don't groan aloud when I get junk mail. Sometimes they even make my day. Ah the knowledge I could gain...

van persie

My hero. He has a certain sissiness to him (the way he dribbles?) that I cannot describe but a damn sharp shooter! Will he help win the cup?

retail therapy

This morning I woke up to a massive attack (only my wife Andrea would get this I suppose - since it's her favourite music) of headache again. Could be from all the merciless cold wind at Hyde Park yesterday. Or the bucket of KFC we shared at night before crashing into fitful slumber and waking up half dying from our parched throats. Their tagline here should be "it's drowsy, thirsty and finger lickin' good!" although I'll lick two fingers less because they serve baked beans here as a side rather than mashed potatoes. How can!

Anyway in my throes of headachey anguish, I lost my senses and went out to do grocery only to come home with...

BUT thank goodness I haven't lost my good senses enough to lighten my wallet with heels or stilettos or wedges that I'd probably wear once and then rear spiders at a corner of the hallway.

The pair of black trainers is so comfy I wanna rub the softness all over my face and purr. Mr Aldo I love you!

And this is my first ever pair of flats so shuddup I don't wanna hear about how bling it is and how am I going to wear it out and what with... because I also dunno.

1st anniversary

Nothing marks my one-year-in-London milestone quite historically as the London Naked Bike Ride. Last year's took place the second day I set foot in this country. I went with Bel. This year, I managed to convince Andrea, Simon (who told me about this event last year), Omar and Rafael to tag along.

Rafael stole my camera and disappeared into the crowd to take pictures with the wimmin (taking off his top as camouflage). I was quite pissed because I missed plenty of opportunities for my own pictures. One of which an interesting specimen wearing Borat's swimming costume in red. Damn.

Omar prefer his au naturel. I roll my eyes and huff but actually admire their courage to go "excuse me, can I take a picture with you?" because I secretly want to take pictures with hot naked guys too. Boo... maybe next year. I'm slowly improving ok. Last year I didn't even dare to take any frontal pictures.

All too soon, the whistle sounded and... they're off! My party followed suit. Damn cold day... poor shriveled cyclists. I'm sure their passion and dedication keep them warm, though. As well as other cyclists. And pure adrenaline.

Me no guts can only take picture of myself. Loh. Next time someone be nice and offer to shove me into the crowd for a quick snap ok?

flat white

Today I received the most beautiful two words from the Bossman for the entire month.

"Flat White?"

He was out following up on a project we have in Soho. And he remembers.

"Ok. Will have you microwave" he texted back after I "Yay"ed him.

So 6 hours later and I'm still caffeinated from the BEST coffee in London, although the receipt of said coffee was an hour later and lukewarm with a suspicious spring oniony aftertaste.

So I have reflux from shotgunning my cuppa that burns right up my throat like the damn Olympic torch but I'm still happy clappy boppy buzzy because I had Flat White!

What a fine match

What a superb match (not this guy's fluke goal, but still) it was. Now I don't have to be forced to support Holland because of someone's Dutch heritage, I do so willingly because they ARE good and deserve to win.

Goedzo, jongens!

damn sad

I have had no inspiration to blog at all. For such a long time. I wonder if working in a company called Inspirations does that to you. Or the daily 3-hour battle with the nefarious energy-sucking vampire called London Underground.

Moving forward...

Okay, first backwards a little. Summary of the past months starting from the most recent.

No. I haven't gotten this fat during my hiatus. Or pregnant. Although it's fun to scare you reader(s?) a bit.

Anyway one week after this picture was taken...

Baby Sep came into the world. He is so super mega adorable! I can't believe I have to wait until July to see/touch/pinch/bully Baby Sep. Barely a week old and he can smile like this!

I envious. I want.

(and Peter freaks out)

Other than my birthday, May was a month of strawbies. I finally fulfilled my wish of plucking strawbies in a real strawbie farm. Outside Peter's family house. Which were then turned into pie. Fruit of labour indeed!

I want lotsa strawbies outside my house also.

(and Peter freaks out again)

April was a month of Eryn. Finally she's here. In London. And she brought me many presents, the most memorable being bedbugs. I really hope the scars would fade in time.

I actually miss having a room-mate now that she's found her own place.

snow

Just when I thought the weather is turning warmer and I look like an idiot wearing winter jacket and sweating waterfalls inside... it snowed again this morning.

So much has happened over the last month I don't know where to start.

But I have recovered from the meanest bitch of a flu of the century. Until the cough came back yesterday that is...

snow

The second day of spring, and I saw snow. For 5 minutes.

monday

Mondays are never good. Today has been a day of... complaints.

Early morning complaint from housemate about rubbish being strewn about outside the house and not properly binned. Not mine, I said. Then another complaint about why wasn't I responsible enough to find out whose those were and deal with them.

Then colleagues complained about the lack of choices for lunch-food around the office. And why Tesco has to be shut and renovated for one whole week. And Planet Organic labelled walnut bread as white bread and we had to pay extra for the walnuts.

Afternoon complaint from the boyfriend about illegible fontsize and fontcolour in our new fledgling of a blog. But I can't change the font colour, it'll clash with the whole theme of the template! No, I'm not bolding the words either. It'd be like screaming the post out. Haggle haggle. I finally settled to increasing the font size by numero uno. Now, to figure out how to actually do it...

phooey

Wow, has it been that long, my ardent blog readers? Hello? Hi? Right. My online diary for myself then. I don't know why I don't write, it's not like I'm hopelessly addicted to Facebook or anything.

I know why. My creative writing juiced have dried up. The right side of my brain is about as shriveled as a toe that's been in the sea for 12 hours. So what's been the highlight of the past month of my absence? Chinese New Year back in Malaysia, of course.

Brought the boyfriend back to help with the festive cooking preparations (proved to be a good worker too with minimal complaints and needs) and meet the clan(s). Pioneering the list of boyfriends I actually brought home, I think the reception was alright. Phew.

Met up with more high school friends that I had in previous years because two special people had birthdays that fell during CNY this year and everyone gathered to celebrate. Happy birthday Val and Eryn! And, what's up with the strange fascination the boyfriend has with my armpit? That or he's kind enough to avoid a frontal of my face with that enormous zit (welcome home present from the tropics!)...

And then we went to Phuket and the works, Phi Phi Ley, Phi Phi Don (Maya Bay), James Bond Island, Khai Island etc. This is the place we stopped for lunch at Phi Phi Don. The water made me itchy and goosebumpy like no other. Magical.

This is the skimpiest you'd ever see me in. Count it your lucky day (to not be visually polluted with other more ogressy body parts). I saw lady tourists from China (quite a huge number of them around Phuket actually) wear colourful singlets inside their one-piece swimwear. Tsk tsk. It's much cooler when you wear it outside *flashback to high school, underdeveloped years*...

*squeal* My boyfriend is sooooo S-E-X-Y!!! Aiyo and so cute... *giggle*

The next morning, we discovered that we have yet to achieve the tan we wanted to return to Europe with, so it was hardcore 2 solid hours under the sun with MP3s and my book (ah the message he wrote within makes me smile every time).

I felt totally conned (hmm didn't I use this phrase already in my last post) by the elephant ride. I was expecting an hour of National Park rainforest exploration on top of an elephant, stopping every once in a while for her (it has to be a her and don't ask me why) to nibble on leaves and/or swat at bushes. Instead we got an hour under the blistering sun (no canopy here) in a man made uphill-downhill (poor elephants) elephant track. Upsetifying!

Valentine's dinner at a French restaurant in Bangkok made up for earlier disappointments! I wished I've ordered foie gras though. I want foie gras! But the 9-course dinner was nice. Peter had veal and I had a tuna steak as mains.

Last Malaysian meal before boarding the plane. Is this why I was so gassy?

conned!

I've been so conned. Winter in London is rain. And rain. And delayed London Underground services and buses with timetables of the KL buses - none. More rain. Black nose boogers. And more rain.

Whatever happened to snow-covered footpaths and fluffy flakes in my hair (not the dandruffy kind)?

I'm returning to Malaysia-lah!





















... for two weeks. I still love London and all she has to offer. Unless, of course, snow covers London when I'm back in Malaysia and melts when I'm back in London.

Then I shall HULKRAGE.

greetings

Happy New Year to my faithful blog readers! Yes, the three of you should know who you are. I am now back at work, and "at" is the most apt description because it denotes physical presence and not necessarily mental. The final few days of holidays I couldn't wait to get into work with renewed vigour, but now that I am at it my engines seem to have iced over in the numbing cold. Thaw, dammit, thaw. Or else the Bossman will have my skin when he's back.

My new year celebration was a nice and cosy one, surrounded by loved one(s) and fluffy pets and 3 different boardgames (intellectual innit) at Jos and Marjanne's in Heeze (a small town south of Eindhoven). The fireworks at midnight were surprisingly Chinese New Year-ish too, with neighbours all standing outside on the streets greeting each other and the smell of gunpowder in the air...

Had a very auntifying New Year's Day walking the dog in the nearby woods for 5km. My toes are still blistered. But good company always make up for physical discomfort. Come see more pictures!

What's your celebration like?

happy new year

My first out-of-town sight-seeing trip for the Christmas break - Den Bosch. Well the full name of the town is 's-Hertogenbosch but I'm sure all foreign visitors join me in rejoicing that it's better known for the humanly-pronunciable shorter name.

I haven't hung out much with twins as friends in real life. They're like unicorns. Fascinating and alien with plenty of theories and whispers of telepathy and the likes. I still stare at Jos with the intense interest of a scientist to a rare species of butterfly pinned onto a slide. Hence I try not to look at him too much. The resemblance in gait, laughter and outlook are scaaaary. Doppelganger!

My twin is well, less complex. I think. He's always happy. Click for more Den Bosch pictures while I go pack my bags to go to Jos and Marjanne's for New Year countdown and a game of Scrabble.

christmas

On Christmas Day I went to Peter's mum's for dinner with the rest of the Beerguzzlers. My earlier self-inflicted stress and worry proved to be merely self-inflicted (as always) because they were really nice people. It was a night of merry-making and introduction to a very different Christmas dinner do. Instead of stuffed roast turkey and Christmas log and brussel sprouts like what I anticipated from telly... my first ever European Christmas experience was a... gourmet.

"Christmas dinner in The Netherlands is a bit different from customs in neighbouring countries. One typical Dutch tradition is that of 'gourmet'. This is an evening long event where small groups of people sit together around a gourmet-set and use their own little frying pan to cook and season their own food in very small portions. The host has prepared finely chopped vegetables and different types of meats, fish and prawns/shrimps. Everything is accompanied by different salads, fruits and sauces. The origin of gourmet lies most likely in the former Dutch colony Indonesia." (from Wikipedia)

I'd sift through hundreds of mouth-watering foodie pics and post the best ones up but alas, as my luck with cameras would have it, the camera battery died before dinner started. Fuck. It. Lah.

Backview of the house where Peter grew up in. Was too shy to take pics of the frontal so I sneaked around the backyard, stepped in shit, and took pictures of...

... a homegrown brocolli (hopefully) plant. Much to the amusement of the family, whom I realised too late, could see my every move from the kitchen window.

The garden shed. Although, garden is very wrong a word to call the heee-yooooge piece of land around the house. And everyone's cajoling Peter to build his house on it, much to his aghast. As for me... why not? I can have the biggest mofo-ing kitchen in the world. And summers filled with strawberries around the house where I can just squat and stuff my face. And wave snails about at the faint-hearted. Fun! Let's see if I get my way in this... *rub hands in glee*

Note - Peter's family name translates into "in the beer house" in English.

tang yuen

Today is the first day of winter, according to the Chinese custom. It certainly felt like winter long ago. It doesn't make me gawp anymore watching my neighbours scrape ice off their windshields while I walk to the tube station in the mornings. I'm learning to not just look at the temperature but also wind chill factor. My ears feel like they're on fire every time I expose them outdoors. Walking itself is a chore, hobbling and slipping like a stunted penguin along ice-covered walkways. Painful lungs and steam rising from my nose/mouth with each laboured, icy breath.

Don't get me wrong, the general coldness is crisp and refreshing, as long as there's no wind. And no, I have yet to see snow.

Thank God for some familiarity on chilly days of dry flaky skin. Kong Kia is my very own Santa came early. I love you long time! I love tang-yuen with black sesame filling! (I cooked these, by the way. Me me me!)

autumn

This post is kicked into being by Sonia of Meta4our. I am very much pleased to know that I now have the grand total of two (maybe more, we'll have to see who shows him/herself by leaving a comment) constant readers. But my determination to learn as much as I can at work, coupled with the lovely London Underground service on Piccadilly Line that makes the normal 3-hour work commute drag into an unbearable 4... leaves me with precious little time to cook dinner, catch a glimpse of my downloads, talk to my bloke online, do laundry etc. Gradually decreasing sporadic bursts to write properly are cleanly absorbed by Facebook and emails. So, no blogging for long long time.

But it's time to turn over a new leaf. Because it's autumn and all old leaves fall down. Disregarding the merciless chilly wind and general coldness of London, I'm quite excited being smack in the middle of my virgin-autumn. Soon it'll be my virgin-winter, and boy-o-boy I'm gonna see/touch/lick me some real snow!

Can you blame me for subconsciously humming California Dreaming whenever I get outdoors?

It's so cold I'm wearing this indoors. And it's not winter yet. Dammit.

busy

Work busy.
House internet died.
Confirmed Berlin for Christmas break.
Confirmed flight back to Malaysia for Chinese New Year.
Going to the park at Eindhoven later.
Still alive.

perdido street station

China Miéville is a genius. When Bossman told me enthusiastically how Perdido Street Station is his favourite book of all time, all I could picture mentally was the cover of the Tom Hanks DVD which sounds eerily similar to the title.

It's not an easy book to read at all. I almost gave up at the second chapter because of the complexity of characters, setting with no explanation or flashbacks whatsoever. Who is who, where is where, what is what... my sleepy morning one-hour tube rides and exhausted evening ones didn't take well to the story. But like a soldier that I am, I trudged slowly through; word by word, sentence by sentence. I began to doubt if I share the same taste as Bossman in books after all. Which, should be the case because I've enjoyed six of his recommended books tremendously.

Then something shifted and I got sucked into New Crobuzon, smelling the pollutant-rich air (ok ok it could be London's public transport), walking among khepris, garudas, Remades, vodyanois, cactus people and sharing their ripe dark fear of the slake moths and nightmares, plotting together and against each other to survive.

I subject myself to two delicious hours of new words, new beings and new dimensions of existence every day... and now that I'm at the final quarter of the book, every paragraph is painstakingly precious. I don't want it to end! But I'm also dying to know the final outcome. Ah, this is what a beautiful book does to you. An empty sense of loss (and longing) and few minutes of displacement when you disengage mind from story.

I challenge you to read Perdido Street Station and not fall in love with it.

brussels

Scold me. Cane me. Unfriend me on Facebook. I'm sorry for the absence. Thanks Gab for bombarding me to come back here from my affair with Facebook. Dammit the fluff-pet thing there is addictive. I'll friend anyone who pets my pet! Come pet come pet.

Back to blogging. I'm back from a weekend in Brussels! I'm recovering from my first cold contracted in cold-and-getting-colder London! I'm gonna continue watching Supernatural Season 2 to make space for the 5 seasons of Futurama that Peter downloaded! Be a good boy/girl and see my Brussels pictures and leave me to faster watch and faster delete my drama series ok?