work again

"Ting, Ting, I can't finish my fruits, so I left them all for you."



these little small acts of kindness...

make me feel work in RM enjoyable =)

partners-in-'crime'

This is a picture of the toilet cubicle at my workplace.




why the toilet cubicle picture you may ask? Well, the story goes.....


**********

Colleague 1: Ting, Ting, now it's your turn to go toilet or walk around.

Colleague 2 (imagine the Yorkshire accent): Yeah. I've already gone just now. He's already gone for a walk. Now it's your turn.

me: ermmm....oooook (rather hestitant)

Colleague 1: Just sit outside at the bench there, hold your handphone to your head, pretending you are making a call.

Colleague 2: yeah yeah, now it's the right time coz all the managers are at their meeting (nodding head and looking at me intensely)





Finally I gave in to their persuasion and took my bottle with me (as an excuse to fill my water).

Halfway on my way to the water dispenser, I heard,

'TING!! TING!!'

I looked back and saw two of my colleagues, both with that mischievous grin on their face (y'know the kind of wide smile with teeth baring and all, yeah, you get the picture), both wide-eyed, both with their hands held up, both with their 10 fingers opened up to me.

'10 MINUTES...10 MINUTES!!!'

************

That's how I ended up in the toilet cubicle not knowing where to go.


Welcome, my friend, to the world of skiving.




PS: it's finally FRIDAY!!! I'm finally coming home tonight after being on OT for 4 consecutive nights! You know what, this week, RM was very understaffed in the night shift as a total of 24 people (!!! just night shift alone) decided to fall sick. Well, it's up to you to decide whether the sudden adversity was intentional or not. But, next Monday is a bank holiday (hint hint *wink*).

long term contract

A continuation from this post.

I received my long-term contract from RM!

I'm thinking of changing my blog appearance. I'm starting to become sick of my blog banner.

I was going through a few templates last night but in the end decided to stick with my current one till I have 'inspiration and motivation' to change the appearance.

But who knows one day I might impulsively make a major revamp on the blog.

For better or for worse. We shall see.

about book again!

I got this book as a Christmas present in 2006. A very good book I would say especially for married women. It contains insights to which a woman can do regarding her relationship with God, her husband, her personal life and her children.

Reading this book has made me learned several things and helped me understand why some things go wrong in a family.

Leading a family is like leading a ship. One end of the ship is the man and the other end is the woman. If one end doesn't sail along together with the other end, the ship will break into half. Both man and woman have responsibilities in a family but who decides the final decision in the direction of the ship?

This book has given me the answer. It's not a book which belittles the importance of a woman in a family but rather gives guidance on how to act and respond in a family. It's a book which gives woman a chance to ponder and reflect on her actions which would be unpleasing to God. Most importantly, it's a book which would empower a woman to be after God's own heart. It's worth a read =)

hint hint: daddy should get one for mummy. It's well-worth the money spent for :)

time to update!

It's Wednesday again.

In a blink of an eye, it's mid-week again.

Again in the early hours of the morning I'm writing this entry. I guess it's the best time when I have less distractions and I just got back from work. I wonder how my colleagues could sleep as soon as they got back from work. As I have to wait for about 2 hours or so before my eyes start to get watery and droopy.

I have just finished reading the book titled 'the diving bell and the butterfly'.



A rather short book I would say yet with vivid description of what the author's gone through when all he could do was blink his left eyelid to convey his message. It makes me appreciate things I have taken for granted, helped me realise how devastating it could be to be trapped in an immobilised body but with an active, still-functioning mind. This book is definitely a good read and it's now in a major motion film. But it's strange that I've never heard of the movie before. Hope to watch it someday.

Somehow this book is a bit related to another book which I'm reading now: 'When God doesn't make sense' by Dr James Dobson.


In this book it says, 'when one's expectations are reduced to zero, one really appreciates everything one does have.' How true isn't it? Isn't it better to be content with what we have than believing that life owes us a free ride and be dissatisfied with what it has to offer?

Anyway, I'm starting to enjoy cycling back from work in the early hours of the morning when the air is fresh and cooling. Last week's overtime work wasn't as daunting and dreadful as before as I was working with people I knew. Great time listening and talking to these people. But this week, I'm back with the group of people who only talk among themselves :(. Not that I bother as I find it very difficult to understand the strong Yorkshire accent they were using but talking to people makes 7.5 hours overtime feel like a breeze.

ok. time to sleep now. I'm planning to go swimming on Friday as my sisters and I managed to collect some free swimming vouchers from the frankfurters we bought. Miss swimming so much.

Ciaoz.

weather

You know there's a saying that when you have nothing to talk to an Englishman, talk about the weather.

Well, I have nothing to blog about so I shall blog about the weather!

wahahahahaha

The weather these days have been bad. It has been cloudy and rainy. Worse still, it rains when I go and come back from work.

no D200. Taken using camera phone at 5.47am on my way back home.

I couldn't be bothered bringing a spare to change my wet pants and thought no one would notice. But I didn't know that people did notice.

'Have you been cycling?' Someone asked me.

'yea.'

'I've noticed that you looked wet. Very wet.'

ooook..So someone did take notice of me being drenched.

Anyway, on another note, daylight is getting shorter now. The sky is already dark by 10pm and only gets bright at about 5am. Compared to last time when the sky was bright by 4am and dark only after 10-ish.

Oh...how I miss those days when daylight is soo long. :(

ba zhang (肉粽)

*crap mode on*

粽子 aka ba zhang aka rice dumpling is a well-known delicacy among the Chinese. It's particularly eaten during the Dragon Boat Festival on the 5th day of the 5th month on the Chinese calendar...bla bla bla

*crap mode off*

I finally had the opportunity to make ba zhang after eating the 2 attempts of my housemates in making it.

Making ba zhang is a very tedious process and also very expensive esp in the UK

The preparation alone which involves cutting the garlic and shallots into small pieces, cutting the mushrooms, dicing the pork, chinese sausage and duck egg yoke and frying all the stuff takes more than 4 hours. Poor Stephanie had to all those.



So it's no wonder before we could even start wrapping the ba zhang, her face had the grumpy look:


This is the mouse. She was supposed to smile in this pic but I dunno why she didn't. Never mind, let's make her smile

oops. I think it's overdone ;p

wahahahaha...Esther is gonna kill me for this.

After the preparation, it's time to wrap the ba zhang! Wrapping ba zhang is a skill. Some can master it immediately some cannot. My first (actually second coz the first was wrapped wrongly) correctly wrapped ba zhang was horrible!

the lower pic, the ba zhang on the left is mine. The one beside was wrapped by Esther.

this was how it looked like after a few more practices

Steph wrapping

Finally after almost 3 hours with finished wrapping over 40+ ba zhang. Cindy and Melvin joined to help us wrap. Esther was MIA halfway during the wrapping.

photo credit to Melvin

The ba zhang carefully aligned on the table from small to big.

"好好, 大家排队好, 准备去sauna" - ba zhang queing up to be steamed

me and the ba zhang. "this is all mine!!! wahahahaha"

I'm still waiting for the ba zhang to finish steaming while writing this blog entry. Others have gone to sleep. It takes 1-2 hours (ideally 2 hours) for it to cook. Heard from Steph and Melvin that the texture of the glutinous rice is much better than last time. Hope it's good.


btw, just these few days, I've been eating nothing but ba zhang. What I ate these few days is definitely more than the total amount of ba zhang I ate when I was in M'sia ;p. I can feel the waistline getting bigger.