Welcoming 2007

First things first, wishing all my friends a happy new year. No wait...happy new year is so yesterday. Wishing all my friends a rockin, hip-hopping, high-flying, ass-kicking 2007~!!!

Now, my new year resolutions. Mine is simple. No more point 1,2,3,4,5...and so on which I can never keep. Basically, I just want to have a great time, to make money and to be happy and healthy. Cheers!

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas y'all!!!

...and a Happy New Year

Gelatine...whoopee

Here's what I found out about gelatine, it is created via long term boiling of connective tissues including cartilage and skin of animals such as cattle. Apparently it's a protein which when cooled, is formed into some kind of gel that is semi solid. Thank you Wikipedia.

So basically, the thing that I'm chewing on right now...an apple flavoured chewable candy where part of its contents are gelatine as well as ice cream, jam, apple juice, margarine and so on which do sometimes contain gelatine. In other words, I've been chewing on cow hide for all my life. Well, you won't get anything but a soft sigh from me on this fact because although I'm Buddhist but I have occasionally gone down the beef eating path. Like last night, I just had an A&W Mozza burger. So eating this candy made from gelatine that comes from - I suspect - cows, is actually not a big problem for me. I may have sinned a little but who hasn't right?

The problem is I can't get this thought out of my head. You know what that thought is? Ok, read this on home-made items: unflavored gelatin can be made into cheaper versions of hair styling gel. The thought of what I'm eating now can actually be turned into hair gel is not exactly a pretty thought. Just imagine eating hair gel...not literally, but really...think about it. Gooey..

Why the insult?

Help me out here...I'm having trouble understanding why women are constantly put-down and insulted here and still the sources manage to turn it around and say that it is for the good of women. I'm still shocked at reading about the news on a suggestion to give polygamy awards to men who are willing to take single mothers as wives. *jaw drop* I don't understand it. Is it a joke? Single mothers don't need the pity of men and don't need to be drawn into a relationship..a marriage..which is just a sham..which is just based on rewards. That's not love. Mother nature will be fainting right now. I think for some single mothers, they are even happier being a single mum, despite financial problems. At least they are not tied down by husbands who bully them, and they have the freedom to pursue the things they like in life rather than being controlled by a man. Nevertheless, single mothers..women, have a right to choose and not to be chosen like an object - a thing. Omigosh!

And what about another thing I read recently about advice given to women that they should behave properly at work and not to neglect their families in pursuit of career success. Duh! This is not 'how to be a woman 101'. Every grown up woman knows how to think for themselves and behave accordingly. Why is it that women are told to behave themselves and not to neglect their families and men are not told to do that. Is it ok for men to neglect their children but not ok for women to do so? Every mother, every father should love their children and they can decide for themselves the best method of handling work-life balance. It is unfair that men are not told to give priority to family and women must give priority to family. Responsibility doesn't fall on women only, what happen to gender equality?! I hope we have not become the laughing-stock of the world when outsiders read these things.

The harmonica

I'm getting restless and my fingers are itching for some action besides the constant tapping of the keyboard and clicking of the mouse. I've been playing around with the thought of learning up another musical instrument. Not that I have mastered my guitar...no where near that but it's getting a little tiring carrying it around. I'm a tiny person and the guitar is overbearing. I'm interested in learning something new...something smaller, less stretching, portable...something like a harmonica! That's it! Though, I don't think it's easy to learn. I mean imagine putting that thing in your mouth and sliding it side to side and twisting and tangling your tongue just to get the right sound. But I'm really into it and have been for many years, I just never got to a point where I can independently say, hey I wanna learn it. Now I have...but I think one major obstacle I'd have to get past is the thought of covering that piece of instrument with all my saliva and drooling while learning it. Hmm..worst case scenario, I could settle for a flute..

Re-design

As you can see, I've gotten pretty bored..to a point that I was bored with the design of my blog. I've replaced my flamboyant blue and yellow with ..just plain blue. How blue it looks now...and why the hell did I even do that. Now I miss my old colours. I spent so much time customizing it last time. Well, I guess this doesn't look too bad, but it lacks something...something in the form of my identity. Crap, now it looks like any other blog of any other people who happen to choose this template. Damn it...I need to add some 'oomph' to this.

Last day in US

It had been a good 2 weeks here. It was something new, met new people at work, successful testing and a really fun experience. I loved every bit of it. Today is the last day in Sunnyvale and Ivy and I had nothing much to do today. In the evening, we decided to go to the Flea Market but unfortunately, we got lost twice and I pretty much drove on and on for a while and couldn't find the road we were suppose to find. In the end, well..yea it was scary also because we didn't want to get permanently lost and miss our flight back home although that flight is midnight...haha long way to go. Anyway, what supposedly was a 12 minute drive turned into more than 1 hour because of wrong road and traffic jam. In the end, we found our way back to the place near our office and just decided to fill up the tank and go to the airport.

Even the trip to the airport was long, the roads were all jammed up. We took an hour to reach there. All in all, 2 weeks finally came to an end and I loved it, I'll miss it but I definitely do not want to spend months in the US like most people do. That would have driven me nuts. 2 weeks is just fine! Perfect. Now I'm on my way back home. I already spent like 12 hours from San Fran to Taipei and 4 hours from Taipei to Singapore. I'm so looking forward to a good bath. As I'm typing this, I'm currently in Singapore and it is 11 Nov at 1.45pm and waiting for my flight back to Penang. Home sweet home!!!

Malaysians are friendly??

I don't think so. I still don't understand why people who visit Malaysia always say that Malaysians are such nice and friendly people. I don't know but it seems to me that over here in US, people are so much more friendly and polite. 9 out of 10 people that I meet were like "Hi, how are you?", "How's your day?", "Good morning, how are you doing?", "Thank you", "I appreciate that", "You're fantastic". But in Malaysia, we pass people and it would be like ...dead silence or people just look away from us or complete ignorance. I just went to the restroom and just as I was going to open the door, a lady walked out and she was like "Oh, I'm sorry" and she holds the door open for me. I was surprised and thanked her and went in. I mean in Penang, you would wish that they would do that, unfortunately they will most likely just let the door slam on my face. I definitely don't agree that Malaysians are friendly. I'm a Malaysian, I see that everyday...definitely not as friendly as what you'll get over here. Another thing was that it really is like a culture here that when someone sneezes, people will say "Bless you" to them. I mean, this I know but I didn't realise it happens all the time. Someone will sneeze and someone else sitting at the other end of the room will say bless you and the sneezer will say thank you. It's cute and it's really nice to hear that too. Not the sneezing la!Anyway, tonight is our 2nd last night in the US. Finally, for dinner, Ivy and I went to Chillis. We had the Jamaican Paradise magarita, chicken crispers and a very nice dessert called chocolate molten cake. Both of us shared all the 3 things because it's too much to finish. Very nice and the whole meal costed us $27.00. Again relatively ok if you live and work there.. :)

Day of food

Today we had a very nice lunch. A friend of ours took us to Sweet Tomatoes which was a salad bar buffet restaurant. It's just USD7++ per person for buffet. I mean it is for USD! Forget the exchange rate...if everything is compared to the exchange rate, we'll be starving here. :) It's basically a salad bar, lots of veggie. I took a full plate of those and then I went for clam chowder which was followed by potato wrapped in tin foil. Baked potato? Something like that. It was good. After work, we went to Costco (this is like Makro, just nicer) and this was followed by another visit to Fry's. Haha. I'm a sucker for Fry's. I could go bankrupt in there. I have to control myself. For dinner, my colleague's brother took us to Pho' Queen Noodle House for vietnamese food. It's along Tasman Drive which is about 10 minutes away from the hotel. After that, we stopped at Ranch 99 supermarket at Milpitas. I saw that the Haagen Daaz there is so damn cheap! For the small tub it's USD3.99 and the big tub is USD5.99. Why the hell do they get things so cheap? These are like expensive delicacies in Malaysia! *cry*

For the sake of Abercrombie :)

It's Fry's day again. Second visit to Fry's and I still like it there. This time we went there to get our Ipod Nano which was at $149. We sacrificed lunch for this. Imagine our desperation. Haha! Later that night, I built up my courage to go to Greatmall again despite what happened last time, getting lost and all. This time I printed a different map using a different route which got us there and back safe and sound. The reason I went there was to get the Abercrombie & Fitch jacket for Ding. I figured something that displays that brand name big and clear would be worth it. So Ding, this'll keep you warm in the office. Later that night, my friend took me to Castro city for dinner at a japanese shop selling ramen. I took the butter corn ramen which was simply deeeelicious. You know USD8 for a big bowl of ramen is so very cheap for the people living here. In Penang, it's like RM15 to 20 for a bowl of ramen. Sheesh..

Shopping again

It's Monday again. After a day at work, Ivy and I planned for a visit to Westfield Valley Fair which was about 15 minutes drive away. It was supposed to be 15 minutes drive but due to traffic jam, it turned into almost an hour. This mall has got almost the same outlets but the range they offer, I guess, is more expensive. So we went walking around but I couldn't find anything for myself except some things that I bought for my mum. One good thing was that it's easy to get there. We were suppose to check out Santana Row near there. Apparently it's quite a happening place with lots of restaurants but we forgot. :(

Hollywood and all

Today, my colleague's brother drove us around trying to find us a good spot to take a photo of the HOLLYWOOD sign on the hill. Finally we got it and we were suppose to go to Warner Bro's studio for a tour but then it was closed on Sunday so we just settled for taking photos with a Bugs Bunny statue outside. Then we went to Universal Studios. We didn't have time to enter the themepark but that's fine. The Universal City Walk was interesting enough. So many shops, so colourful..very nice and we took photos in front of the famous Universal Studio globe. GRIN. After that it was almost 4pm and started the journey back to Sunnyvale. The drive back seemed longer and very tiring too. By the time we reached Sunnyvale, it was almost 10pm so we went for BBQ steamboat till midnight. There were a group of people celebrating birthday there with nice cake and so on. They were nuts...they turned a perfectly nice, edible cake into mush. Those idiots went outside and started throwing cake at the birthday boy. Bunch of idiots. Finally, we went back and settled in for a good night's sleep. Hmm..ok I didn't sleep till almost 2am. There was a nice movie on TV. I can't help it ok!

Los Angeles

The journey to Los Angeles on the road was about 5 hours and it is warm there. Much warmer than Sunnyvale. The highways were dark and long and curvy. There were hardly any rest areas around. Not as much as what we see on the highway from Penang to KL. Over here, there's not many rest areas and not many places to stop. It's not good for the driver. My colleague's brother must have been really tired driving such a long distance without much rest along the way. Around 6am, we were near already. We stopped at McDonalds for breakfast. I had the hot cinnamon roll which was freaking sweet. Urgh..that's a diabetic nightmare! After that, we went on and somehow got lost trying to find Disneyland but finally we found it and checked in at the hotel near Disneyland. I shared a room with my colleague and we settled in, freshened up and headed straight to Disneyland. We decided to cover both the parks which cost USD83. We figured, what the hell, we should try to cover it because there may not be a next time for us to come back to USA. What are the chances right? That was probably our first and last time. We tried the California Adventure park first and took pictures with Hercules. I ran up to him and asked for a photo with him and it was great. Next we 'attacked' Pluto. He was standing there taking photos with people, hugging them and so on. Along the way, we went into the Animation Academy. I thought it was a ride but it was actually a class to teach us how to draw Donald Duck. Hmmph...When we came out, we saw Mickey Mouse bouncing along and didn't managed to catch him for a photo. Sigh...so we went for lunch and then we saw Mickey Mouse bouncing back and headed straight into the toilet. Followed by Cinderella...haha. We headed for the Tower of Terror. It was an elevator ride that plunges down and up. Oooh scary but really exciting. The next ride was Soaring. It was really nice. This was followed by a roller coaster ride California Screaming. That was damn good! It was totally exciting. We headed to Disneyland themepark in the late afternoon. By then it was 5pm and getting dark. There was so many people in Disneyland and I was quite dissapointed that the photos I took didn't turn out so well because it was dark and I couldn't use the flash because it blacks out the pictures. But without the flash, the pictures came out blurry because my hands kept shaking. Anyway, we managed to catch the parade..it was nice then we rushed off for rides on the Peter Pan ride. At 9.30pm was the start of fireworks. It was a beauty that lasted about 20 minutes then we rushed off again for as many rides as possible. Our adventure ended at 11.45pm as we headed back to the hotel and slept like pigs. What a long and exciting day! I'm really glad that I got to see Disneyland for the first time. It has been a week of first-timers. I came to US for the first time. I went to San Francisco for the first time. I wore my leather jacket for the first time. I drove on the opposite side of the road for the first time in car that is a left hand drive. It is a great experience! But I had a hard time differentiating the money. The dollar notes all look the same. And the coins were confusing. They only have 25 cents (quarter) which is the biggest coin. 5 cents is a bigger and thicker coin than 10 cents (1 dime) which gave me a hard time trying to figure it out with a long queue behind me. ;)

It is Friday! Later on at 3am, my colleague's brother and family will be taking us to LA. But before that, today we visited the famous Fry's electronics store..gigantic store. It has everything. I believe my dad will go crazy in there. It has EVERYTHING electronic and I mean everything. It's like an electronic heaven in there. Even I was captivated. Fry's is very near our office. Just less than 5 minutes drive away and we spent about 2 hours there and had dinner at Coco's. This restaurant is nearby too and they serve a lot of sandwiches. Ivy and I shared a sandwich and we can't even finish it. It's begin a burger/sandwich week for us. We keep seeing burgers everywhere. On TV, along the road, shopping malls..everywhere. So sick of it. But the food at Coco's is quite nice just that it's too much. Everything served in US is too much and too big. But prices of food are really reasonable. It's an average of USD8 for a meal of burger or sandwich or italian food and so on. As long as I don't think of the exchange rate, then it's really cheap here. Dinner done, hunger reduced..we went back to the hotel and waited for 3am to come along.

Journey to Gilroy

Our adventure streak is starting again. This time it's further away but apparently much easier to reach because it's just one straight road along the highway/freeway/parkway...whatever they call it. I don't know the difference. In Malaysia, we just call it highway, simple as that. Over here, they have freeways, parkways, expressways. Argh! Anyway, today the 2 of us headed off to Gilroy Premium Outlets which is situated in Gilroy, of course. I guess it's like a town or city. Premium Outlets is a huge open air area with lots of outlets/retail outlets such as Guess, Nike, Coach, Timberland and so on.

Places such as Greatmall and Gilroy offer cheaper prices. So, to get to Gilroy is like a 30 mile drive (30 minutes drive) but we got there..yes we got there with nothing but a car, a map and my handphone with a dead battery. There were about 4 huge blocks of buildings, we managed to cover 3 as it was too late to cover the last one because all shops close at 9pm. When we got to Gilroy it was almost 7pm. All in all, it was interesting and a different style of shopping center. Even the drive back to the hotel was smooth except that at one point, I turned into the wrong side of the road and I saw cars coming slowly towards me. I panicked, stopped and made turn to get back on the right direction. *Sheepish grin* That was scary. Our dinner tonight was Carl's Junior take-away and lights off to bed, ZZZzzz.

Dinner at Fish Market

Tonight, we had a group dinner at Fish Market which was along El Camino Real. That's like just 5 minutes away from the office. The place was packed. I tried the red snapper dish which wasn't really that good. In fact, it was quite tasteless. I guess the Fish and Chips looked better. Nothing much going on today except that.

Greatmall : Part 2

Today, after work, we decided to venture of into the unknown by ourselves with nothing but a car, a map and a whole truck load of gut. Ok, it's Greatmall again but the difference this time is my colleague and I are going by ourselves. The journey there was somewhat smooth. We got there, we found the place..yippee. Shop shop and shop then got ready to get back to the hotel.WE GOT LOST! Somewhere along the way, we saw Lawrence Expressway. That's good, means we are near. So I took the turn but as I drove on...I didn't see anymore signs which says Lawrence Expressway. We started to see Mountain View, El Camino Real and some other street names and finally, we knew we were lost. Oh god..panic started to kick in. We stopped at a Baskin outlet to ask for directions but they didn't know where it was and I thought "Shit, are we so far that they don't even know how to get there??!!" Uh oh. Finally we stopped at a mini market and I went down to ask this guy how to get back. He was like "Lawrence Expressway?? You are very far from there!" I looked at him, dazed. Fortunately, he said the magic words, he was quite well-versed with the directions, which was good for us. Thanks to him, we found our way back and whew..that was close shave from ending up in nowhere land. Yippee!

Visit to Greatmall, Milpitas

Monday morning started off with a BANG! No la...I just thought it sounded nice to say that. It was actually quite cold and then we had breakfast then set off to office. AMD was just less than 5 minutes drive away. My friend took us for lunch at Tofu House along El Camino Real. Their dishes are all tofu (beancurd). It's beancurd in a claypot of different flavours served with rice. I took the seafood beanfurd pot and it was quite delicious and affordable too. Fast forward through the day, we left work and my colleague's brother took us to Greatmall at Milpitas for some good 'ol shopping! That place is full of what we in Penang would refer to as branded outlets. Guess, Levis, Abercrombie & Fitch, Nike, Timberland, Dockers and many many more. It was definitely jaw-dropping cheap in comparison to Malaysia. I mean in US, let's assume they make like USD3000 a month for their salary. They only need to spend USD20.00 for a Levi's jeans or USD40.00 for a pair of Guess jeans. We make let's say also RM3000 a month in Malaysia and we have to spend RM300.00 for a pair of Levis or Guess jeans. Absurd isn't it? The cost of living in US (for people who work and live there) is SO LOW. A BMW costs USD50000 in US and it probably cost like RM200000 and above in Malaysia. *gasp* Even vitamins are way cheaper. *snort* Well, the shops close at 9pm and we shopped till 9.01pm and left. To be continued...

San Francisco

In California, we are 16 hours behind Malaysia but somehow I didn't feel the jetlag that people always talk about. I don't know why. I kind of want to know how that feels but I didn't really feel sleepy during the day and awake during the night. It was just normal for me. Today, we went to collect our car at San Jose airport. They gave us a Hyundai Sonata which is quite a powerful car and spacious too. After that, my colleague's brother took us to San Francisco. It was about a 40 minute drive to reach there. The temperature there was much lower that Sunnyvale so we had to wear thicker jackets. One of the place that we stopped over in San Francisco was Lombard Street. It's a really beautiful, curly, curvy and steep street whereby if you look from bottom up, it's simply captivating.

After that, Ivy and I dragged our butts up to the top and to take photos from top down this time. We are just too free! The houses in SF are cute and cosy looking. It's so full of hills there that most roads go up and down..up and down. Such a beautiful view. We also went to see the Golden Gate bridge and Alcatraz from afar and took a couple of photos amidst the windy weather. During the trip, we stopped over at IHop for some light snacks. It's quite a famous pancake/waffle diner-like place. I say it's famous because it was full to the brim. Later on, we visited the Exploratorium. Not inside. We took some photos of the landscaping there and set off to Fisherman's Wharf and Pier 39. Now, that place is hip, hop and happening! So many restaurants, so many people. Very interesting place. As the time ticked away, day turned into night and we set off back to Sunnyvale and to get ready for the next day.

Off to USA

I have to catch my flight at 10.30 am to Singapore and from there to Taipei and finally to San Francisco on business class. To cut the story short, I missed all of that except the Penang-Singapore flight. Not my fault. All SIA's fault. That flight was delayed by an hour and a half. I don't even want to dwell on that matter here because it pisses me off. Anyway, we finally got a flight to San Francisco which transits at Hong Kong. We reach San Francisco at 7pm on 28 October US time of course... :) time travel huh? It's funny when I think of it. An airplane is like a freaking time machine. Well, the one bad thing about this journey is the delay and the fact that we were forced to take economy class on the alternate flight because everything was fully booked. I was so freaking pissed. I argued with shitty ground staff at Penang airport and the only thing they can say is "Oh, you'll have to work this out with the staff in Singapore and they'll arrange something for you". Arrange their ass ok! I got there and i went to the transfer counter and started proclaiming that this is all absurd and I'm not flying economy. Well nothing worked, the only thing they could do was put me on standby for business class. Crap! That's like saying no chance ok? If it's so full, and that they committed that I will get priority standby for business, why is it that another passenger who didn't even insist on getting priority standby be moved to business class when we reached Hong Kong? This is absurd. I was so pissed of at that passenger because he did nothing but stood there and took the freaking credit when I was the one arguing for my business class bookings. By the way, during the flight, I was sitting at the window seat and next to me was my colleague and next to her on the aisle seat was a freaking log. Tree trunk. Pillar...whatever you want to call it. That bitch just sits there and sleeps like a piece of wood. Doesn't budge and the whole 15 hour or so flight, never once did she get up to go to the washroom. I don't know what's going on but I think she's got a gigantic bladder. My colleague and I had to go out a couple of times to walk around and to the washroom and it's so hard waking that tree trunk up. What a bitch! I go to the washroom for a minute or so and I come back and there she is, sleeping again and didn't even have the courtesy to stand up so that I can get in easier. She's a freaking wood with the expression as if her dog just died. Screw her! All Anyway, I reached SFO finally. My friend picked us up and we checked in to the hotel. It was chilly in Sunnyvale. Quite a change but I like it. Later on, we went for supper and finally settled in around midnight. Next day, off to San Francisco for a tour!