Boring Sunday

I'm thinking deeply and thoroughly. What the heck did I even do today? Let's see...I woke up 5 minutes before 10am. Then I sat around reading the newspaper and waiting for lunch time. Oh yes, and I read that Beckham brought glory, magic, 'oomph' and Beckham-mania back into the England squad. I guess he usually triumphs at come-backs such as his come back after the 1998 world cup trauma to help MU win the treble, his come back to help Real Madrid to the top of the table, his come back to put a little edge into the England team. Without him, they are just boring.

Later in the afternoon, I was in Metrojaya and I was looking around for a vintage alarm clock. You know, those clocks with the 2 bells on top...bahh...just look at the picture and you know what I mean. I've been meaning to get this kind of clock for years now until my friend told me that Ikea sells one which looks very vintage and nice. But I didn't get a chance to visit Ikea..so too bad. Anyway I found this one, it comes in 3 colours - black, red and white. The alarm is too loud so I don't use it but I just like to look at it. It makes me sigh with joy. I know that's weird but these kind of clocks are pretty! Oh and it doesn't come with the car. Just adding a little vintage feel to it. :)

Hmm...I spent my night reading a bit of Jean Sasson's Princess and playing NHL on my computer. Something's not the same with me anymore. I could spend hours playing games last time. Now, 10 minutes into the game and I'm already fed-up and thinking of uninstalling it. My patience keeps wearing thin over the years. Well, what the hell..Monday is holiday.

Happy 1st of June

Happy 1st of June 2007!
Network problem. Due to that, I had to do some recovery. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. My posts are so laced with elements of work. It’s like my life only revolves around the same thing everyday. Yet I can’t deny that it does.
On Thursday I had a real frustrating day but come night time, I ended up being in a good mood that I forgot all the troubles at work. Ha ha! The good vibe was due to my dinner date with Peen and Lynn. We went to Sakae Sushi. Hmm..delicious sushi. The salmon sushi was cheap and yummy. Even the salmon skin temaki was cheap and good. Of course there is slightly less salmon skin but still enough to make me happy because it is like 2 or 3 times cheaper than most of the restaurants that sell this. Sushi king…eat yer hearts out!
While I was in Queensbay, I was browsing around in Borders and found this Anne Rice’s vampire collection books. 3 books in 1 which is the Interview With The Vampire, Vampire Lestat and Queen of The Damned. Interesting…I have this fetish for vampire stories but yet I don’t dare to watch vampire movies. Vampire stories tend to come in trilogies or so. I wonder why. I have the vampire trilogy by Nora Roberts. :P And I going to add this into my collection.

BlackBerry..SlackBerry..huh?

Here's something I received which had me chuckling to myself. Usually I would see "sent from Blackberry". But when I saw the below, I thought...hey..this fella is real funky, real cool!

Glitter of hope..it's Wednesday

Today, I started my day routinely as usual. Every night I will set both my alarm clocks (..yes I have 2 clocks) to ring at 6am and 6.15am respectively. Every morning, I will only get up at 6.45am. I wonder what’s the purpose of the clock when I already have a internal biological clock that automatically wakes me at 6.45. But I guess most people like me try to play it on the safe side. I wouldn’t want to wake up at see that it’s 7.30am but nevertheless if that happens on a school holiday week, no problem, it doesn’t rattle my cage because there won’t be traffic jams and I’ll reach the office in 15 minutes.
When I came to work, I received a forwarded mail from Soon Yee regarding the news about this lady who overworked herself…to death. Yup, it’s a warning. Don’t overwork yourself, leave work punctually if there are things that don’t need to be completed there and then..well, work never ends but life doesn’t wait for us. Then again, easy to say, hard to do. But of course, work is not worth losing own life over no matter how good the money is. Most importantly is the ability to decide for own self when to take a breather.
The plant in Singapore is closed for today and tomorrow due to public holiday. I wonder why I didn't take off since I’m supporting Singapore. I guess I still had to finish up my stuff and I got a phone call from people chasing me to complete something that was until now, low priority. Not long before I begun to do that task, someone else drags me into a discussion and poured a new task on me out of no where. Of course I can’t get it done for them as soon as they want. Everybody wants their things to be done first. Much to their dismay, things have to prioritized. Facts of work life that can’t be avoided. One thing I learn is being nice is not a nice thing.

As a closure to my day's post, just now I had dinner with my dad at...

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CHILIS!

New albums

MICHAEL BUBLE

This is Michael Buble's latest album and is the best so far. Coincidentally the first song on the album is called "The Best Is Yet To Come". It's a mix of old songs jazzy songs and a couple of new songs which were co-penned by Michael. I love it. My favourite songs in there are Lost, Everything (this is the song playing on the radio a lot), Call Me Irresponsible, he made a wonderful remake of the song Wonderful Tonight, Always On My Mind, Me and Mrs. Jones, Coming Home Baby (which features Boyz II Men). I am practically hooked on the new album. It still maintains his own style which is really remarkable. His voice is smooth, distinctive and easy recognisable. My favourite male singer right now!

MAROON 5

It Won't Be Soon Before Long is Maroon 5's new album. They performed one of the songs in there on last week's American Idol and that song was also recommended to me by Soon Yee. It's called "Makes Me Wonder". You are right SY! It's good! It's absolutely infectious. There are other nice songs in there such as Won't Go Home Without You, Goodnight Goodnight, Nothing Lasts Forever and...I like the cover. It looks nice huh?

Nice dinner

On Thursday I went to Jusco and bought myself some sushi and Tako Tao balls for dinner at home. The sushi was simply delicious, just thought I should share it here...of coz not the food...share my...erm...my thoughts of the sumptious sushi. Here's what I had:As for the Tako balls which was selling at RM3.90 for 3 balls. I took the Octopus ones...not that good. It looks cute and unique when the guy was making it but the taste is rather ok for the first bite. After that it just got a little gooey. No thanks. 1 is enough for me.

Blimey! It's Spidey

Yes it is...It's Spiderman 3 with three villains. Well...only one REAL villain which is Venom. The other one is a good guy blinded by the death of his father and the other, Sandman, only wants to help his daughter under any circumstance. Venom is the real baddie here and who would have known that skinny guy who plays Eric in That 70's Show can be such a convincing villain. Ooo he looks evil. I went to watch it this morning. I still don't know why GSC still has problem with tardiness. The show was supposed to start at 11.30am. We waited for 30 minutes watching stupid advertisements and it only FINALLY started at 12. Really stupid, they are never punctual.

In this third edition, Peter Parker was a jerk. He became a self-centred bloke who only focuses on himself and his own problems and doesn't let his girl talk about her problems, doesn't listen to her, too self-absorbed. It was fun to see him cry! MJ should have dumped him and gone for Harry Osborn - he's cute. Some parts of the movie were quite touching and it made me cry...just a little. The ending was ok, not too bad. I like it, it was funny to see Peter Parker dancing.

Survival of the fittest

Never mind that Chelsea was knocked out of the Champions League. I don't like Chelsea. Jose Mourinho..cute as he is, it's nice to see whatever smirk wiped off his face. And now, MU was totally outclassed by AC Milan in the semi-final match. Outclassed to the bone. The defence was so comical and full of errors. It's almost like MU were being too cautious. It cost them a golden opportunity. So who's the footballer of the year huh? I would have gone for Kaka.

Cool view

Horse-y strolling on the beach

This is cute. Take note of the smiley on the parachute.

Remember this?

Remember this song? Someday We'll Know by New Radicals. It's a couple of years old. I almost forgot about it until I heard it on the radio a few days ago and got hooked on it once again. The last time I listened to it was when I was still an MTV addict. That was in college. I just love this song much.

Lyrics from Someday We'll Know by New Radicals:

Someday we'll know

If love can move a mountain

Someday we'll know

Why the sky is blue

Someday we'll know

Why I wasnt meant for you

Does anybody know the way to atlantis

Or what the wind says when she cries

I'm speeding by the place where I met you

For the 97th time tonight

Someday well know

Why samson loved delilah

One day I'll go

Dancing on the moon

Someday you'll know

That I was the one for you

I bought a ticket to the end of the rainbow

I watched the stars crash in the sea

If I could ask God just one question

Why arent you here with me?

But then again...

Have any of you read the articles by Mary Schneider? (I think I spelled that right...I'm too lazy to walk downstairs and grab the newspaper again) I believe her articles are published every Monday in The Star under the title "But Then Again" with a cartoonish drawing of a woman's face with short hair. Anyway, I love her stories. It's a combination of life details with a twist of wit and light sarcasm. I've been reading her stories almost every week and just today, I found out that she actually stays in Penang. That's cool...not that it changes anything, duh! It's just cool to know that someone who writes such funny and meaningful stories is living in the same island. What a small world..

Dinner at Lone Pine Hotel

Last night, I had dinner with my family at Lone Pine Hotel in Batu Ferringhi. This hotel is now owned by E&O and the surrounding area and beach front looks quite pleasant. We had dinner at the restaurant called Bungalow as shown in the photo. It is a regular hotel coffee house, not over the top and pretty casual. It has an outside terrace facing the sea where you can choose to sit there for your meals and listen to the waves or to sit inside where it's air-conditioned. The food is a mix of western and local hainanese style dishes. The satay was mouth-wateringly delicious and the meat was so tender. And I also ordered the Ground Beef Burger. Excellent..I loved it. It's not too big and taste just right although the beef looked slight burnt, but taste was nice. I loved it. We also order a very common Hainan dish..the macaroni pie as well as Inche Kabin (fried chicken) which was tasty also and fit for 2 or 3 people. Price is not as cheap as road side shops of course but not too expensive either for a hotel. Somewhere between 10s and 20s. It's not a 5-star hotel that's for sure.

Humid day and a dose of Tony Bennett

Today is such a hot day. I spend 5 days a week in the office and 2 days at home in the heat is so torturing. Sleep, I sweat. Eat, I sweat. Just sitting there under the fan, I still sweat. So humid..my gosh. I miss the californian cool breeze. Although it was just a 2-week stint there but the weather was inviting. I didn't have much planned out today. Ding is down with the red-eye and I hope he gets well soon as he's been telling me how uncomfortable the feeling is..the itchiness and the pain. I spent a couple of hours today reading a book my dad bought for me a while back entitled "Global Future.." Something about the future of Asian companies and globalization. I'm reading it real slow. There are new bombastic words in there which I would love to learn up and I keep referring to the dictionary when I come across those words..which kinda slows down my reading. I quite like some phrases they used to describe things like China being the "factory of the world" and India being "the world's back-office". Nice stuff.

Besides that, I was also listening to Tony Bennett's Duets album. It's got a jazzy, swingy and classical feel to it. Quite soothing to listen to and if I just shut out all the noise and fully focus on the melody and the voices...I think I do quite enjoy the style. It features quite a number of people such as Michael Buble, Diana Krall, Stevie Wonder, Tim McGraw and many more. Personal favourites in that album are Cold Cold Heart, Smile, For Once In My Life, I Left My Heart In San Francisco, Because of You. I haven't listened to the rest. I read from somewhere that this album was recorded live in the studio with all the band, guest artiste and stuff.

Top 10 of the quarter

Here are the Top 10 songs that I've been absolutely hooked on for the past 3 months. These are the songs that I play on my iPod or in my car..night and day, day and night. I just can't get enough of them!

In no particular order:

01. Coldplay - The Scientist. I first heard this song in the movie Wicker Park starring Diane Kruger and Josh Hartnett, a story about love, obsession, destruction, deceit and finally, truth. This song came on at the last part of the show in the scene at the airport where Diane and Josh's characters reunited...it was absolutely touching and I got so reverberating hooked on the song after that.

02. Carrie Underwood - I Ain't In Checotah Anymore. Carrie, no doubt the best American Idol winner in my opinion. Her debut album is two-thumbs-up, and been listening to it for the past year or so. It is still alternating between the Top 3 of the country chart for like months and months? Fantastic. Well this song, I never really liked it before but after listening to it a number of times, I got really hooked. The chorus which goes "I'm in a world so wide, it makes me feel small sometimes.." is my favourite part of the song.

03. John Mayer - Vultures. What can I say? It's the great John Mayer. Absolute genius. Loved everything about the song from the lyrics to the introduction to the chorus to the weird sounding high notes.

04. Jewel - Goodbye Alice In Wonderland. This talented singer-songwriter is one of my favourites. I have her original debut album. Not all songs in there would top the charts but each one of the songs has got some infectious uniqueness about it that makes me want to listen over and over. This song is from her latest album of the same name.

05. Chantal Kreviazuk - Feels Like Home. This song was recommended to me by a friend and I got caught in the song's smooth melodic feel from the word go. Hey Soon Yee, I think you'll like this one.

06. Mika - Relax. One heck of a catchy song. Something to bob your head to in the car. Makes a pretty good ringtone too! :)

07. Michael Buble - The Way You Look Tonight. Oh man...he makes me swoon and sigh with delight. I love this version of the song. It's very slow..very soft..very romantic. Now if I knew how to slow dance, this would be perfect. Unfortunately I feel like I've got 2 left feet.

08. John Legend - Coming Home. Nearly all the songs in my list are slow songs. That's the style of music that lives through times. This is another one that will live through good and bad times. A meaningful one. I first heard it when he performed it live on the Grammy's together with John Mayer and Corrine Bailey Rae.

09. Diana Ross - I'm Still Waiting. This is an old song. I was listening to her greatest hits collection cd which I found covered with dust in my cupboard. The lyrics tells such a sad story. One thing about these old songs, the lyrics are like storybooks unveiling the story from the start of the song to a closure at the end.

10. Justin Timberlake - What's Goes Around, Comes Around. All about karma. I guess it makes a good song. I love the beats and I can't hide the fact that I think Justin is hot ok!

Those are the Top 10 songs for the quarter. Anybody got any Top 10 songs that you are so infatuated with?

Saturday update

It's a warm, sunny Saturday morning. It was anyway..getting slightly cloudy as I'm typing this. The roads outside are starting to jam up due to the annual 'cheng beng' duties carried out to pray to our ancestors. Roads leading up to cemeteries are bumper-to-bumper. Besides that, I think the jam is also due to the fact that Monday is a holiday so it's a long weekend *whoopee* and that Gurney Plaza is having a one-day sales today. I don't comprehend the logic of a one-day sale..it's weekend for goodness sake. Make it a two-day sale at least. At least people like me who might not be able make it today can probably go shopping tomorrow.

Oh, and I would like to add that now I have officially obtained my Master Of Business Administration (MBA)...hehehe. Hey I'm not being a brag or what but I'm just happy that we finally did it! It wasn't an easy journey.

My convocation was just over 2 weeks ago and I'm kinda proud that I'm one of the youngest in the batch. Woo hoo! Hell, doing MBA was tough and torturing but it's good that I learnt a lot of new things there...things that I never learnt in I.T. And all this crap that some people say about studying and working at the same time is impossible to do. It ain't true! We are living proof that if you have the will to do it, nothing is impossible. Now I should start getting my engine up and running and start updating my resume. *blush* It's pretty outdated.

The rule of What, Who, Why, How and When

Now you might wonder..what the heck is this "The rule of What, Who, Why, How and When"? It's simple actually, it happens everyday and almost everywhere. I guess it is more so especially when people are the subordinates facing the brunt of the bosses and the customers. And bosses in turn face the brunt and grunt of the bigger bosses. When something goes wrong, the one-liner will happen. Why one-liner? Well, some people are good at getting someone do something for them with just one sentence without any explanation. What is this one-liner..well duh..it's the rule of what, who, why, how and when! Now take this for example: "I want you to explain to me what happen, who is responsible, why did this happen, how are you planning to fix it and when can you get it done?!" Does that sound familiar? Woo..all in one breath, or should I say a few taps on the keyboard. It is the echoes of everyday worklife. But to be fair, I guess almost everyone practices this, especially when we are the ones impacted. I do that when unwanted things happen to me. *GRIN*

Simply the best

I'm a John Mayer fan. That's right...He has a new album entitled Continuum and it is undeniably cool. He is one hell of a guitar genius. His Continuum album has a couple of songs which I'm particularly hooked on such as Gravity. He sang that on the Grammy's show recently and the way he played the guitar...*my heart flutters* Another song with a really nice guitar solo is "Slow Dancing In A Burning Room". It's a slow song, obviously but it's really nice. Others are "Vultures" which has an insanely infectious chorus and of course, the one I keep hearing on the radio "Waiting On The World To Change". Before I had this album, I was busy listening to his old albums notably Room For Squares and Heavier Things. Those have addicting songs such as "Neon", "Home Life", "Your Body Is A Wonderland", "No Such Thing" and many more. What I like about him besides his guitar skills, is his voice and his songs have got really good lyrics. John Mayer has a unique voice...sounds rough and sexy all at the same time. It's no wonder I'm so hooked...

Academy blooper???

I was just watching the Academy awards just a few minutes ago and I think they were giving out an award on...I don't know..screenplay or something. I missed the first part. Anyway, The Departed won it but something shocking occurred! After the winner was announced, the guy stands up and as usual they will give an introduction over the loud speaker on who he is and what he did. Shocking thing was that they said that The Departed was based on a Japanese film called Infernal Affairs. *faint* It's a Chinese film! Get it right, Oscars!!

Does Music Speak Your Soul?

I've read somewhere about some researchers who believe that music we listen to indirectly defines our personality. I don't know whether to agree or not. I listen to different genres, different styles and different types of music from different generations. Pretty much anything that I perceive is nice to my ears. In that case, does my differing taste in music define that I have multiple split personality? Wow..

I think that, to me, the music I listen to doesn't necessarily define my personality as much, but more on my moods or the going-ons in the world around me. 70% of the time the type of music that I listen to is largely influenced by my mood of the day. 30% of the time is because I'm just simply hooked on the song like vampires to blood. Today I could be listening to a Michael Buble song because I feel relaxed, tomorrow I will be bobbing my head to Semisonic's Closing Time or Nickelback. Loud music is just perfect when I'm feeling pissed off. Soft, slow, smooth music the likes of Michael Buble, Norah Jones...even Jewel settles my nerves at the end of a long uninspiring demotivating day when I'm feeling blue. It's no wonder I've been listening to these 3 fellas for the past month! And, when I'm feeling a little lonely, 80's love songs are my poison. As a closure, I don't have multiple split personality but I do have a lot of mood swings.

Let's Dance

I would like to introduce you to a brand new dance studio in town. It is the brainchild of a relative of mine, her name is Joo Nee (picture below). She's 25 and a great dancer and she is a semi-finalist of the Nescafe Kick-start Season 3 competition. Just a heads up: Nescafe Kick-start is reality TV competition for Malaysians to achieve their dream. Today I attended the grand opening of the Let's Dance studio which she had worked hard on completing in a short period of 3 weeks. It's not only just a dance class studio, it is also a dance club for all dance enthusiasts. I love the concept. I must say the opening is a success. A large crowd turned up to support her. Keep an eye out for the first episode of the Nescafe Kick-start which will begin airing on TV3 on the 24th of February 2007 at 7pm. Grand prize winners are chosen based on judges and most importantly, the support of the public via SMS VOTES. Do take the time to view it! The Let's Dance studio is located on Level 28, Northam Tower A. Visit http://www.letsdancemalaysia.com for more info!