Moi and more moi

Since last week Sunday, all I ate was moi if not nothing at all. The only good that could come out of this is wondering how much weight I loss.

I only lost 2kg... cheh...

Doctor didn't say what I can eat or what I cannot eat. So this means I can eat anything right? Genny says that's truth by omission. Tried to convince hubby and Genny whenever I stare at the bowl of moi in front of me. Moi, moi, moi... I'm sick of it.

Then this morning when I woke up... they bought me real food at last, McDonald's Chicken McMuffin set. Wahahaha... I'm happy. :)

Attacked by rashes

Last night's head to toe body scrub was heavenly. Had to teach hubby how to wash a girl's hair. It felt good to be clean again. :)

But at night I realized I was having an allergic reaction to something. There were red rashes spreading on my arms, legs and body. They were itchy and painful. I was so uncomfortable, I went to bed early.

At night, I kept waking up. I could feel the rashes spreading up to my face. Felt my cheeks burning like I had sunburn. And the rashes all over my body felt prickly, like the feeling you get when having pins and needles.

I'm currently covered in calamine lotion. Rashes are slowly going away. Though my butt is still itchy. Maybe there's why I can't sit still. :P Though it's making my wound bleed a little. :(

Home Sweet Home!

Today I'm feeling a little better than yesterday. Still in pain, but at least I was able to walk to the window to look at the view outside. Being in a hospital for 4 days and looking at the busy world outside made me feel so trapped inside, almost like there's this wonderful place outside which I'm not able to enter.

Doctor gave me the green light to go home. I felt happier than I felt in days. Waited for Yin How to come and pick me up. Waved goodbye to the nurses. Was wheeled in a wheelchair (which I felt was pretty cool) and when I finally got into the car to go home, I felt the world outside is so BEAUTIFUL. The sky is so blue and the leaves on the trees are so green and everything looks so bright and real.

Russell and Sparkle went crazy when they saw me. And for a while, Russell refused to let me out of his sight. He just kept staring and sticking to me. Look at him spying on me.

Also, I want to thank everybody for their well wishes. It's really nice to receive a sms when I'm depressed, in pain and alone in the ward. :) And also to Yin How who took such great care of me. And Genny who came over to look after me.

Anyway, just to share my experience of getting appendicitis. I started getting pain after having a late dinner on Saturday night. I thought it was gastric and it lasted only a while. On Sunday noon, after I had my lunch I suddenly started getting pain in my stomach again. It was quite mild at first and I was online obsessed with trying to download GPS maps into Tubey, so I ignored the pain the whole afternoon.

Towards evening, the pain started to get worst, but Yin How was bored (because I was more interested in Tubey than him) so to make it up to him I followed him to Sushi King and had dinner there. At night the pain became unbearable. And I started to suspect it wasn't normal because I was getting sharp stabs of pain on the right side of my body which doesn't happen when I get gastric.

I couldn't sleep the whole night. The pain was unbearable when sleeping on my back, so I had to sleep on my sides to lessen the pain. Towards very early morning, the pain went down to my lower abdomen which I then thought maybe it was food poisoning but I waited and waited and there was no diarrhea.

By Monday morning, the pain reduced and I was able to sleep. I slept the whole day and woke up at 5pm when Yin How came back from work. By then, there was hardly any pain, but Yin How insisted that I go to the hospital to check up. I argued with him and finally got him to fetch me to the clinic instead.

The doctor at the clinic checked my body and I found that it hurt when he pressed my lower abdomen on the right side. When he said it could be appendicitis, I was shocked. I never suspected that it was my appendix. I thought when getting appendicitis, only the right side would hurt at that one spot. I didn't think my whole body would hurt so much.

When I told Yin How I had to go to the hospital, he made me listen to his "I told you so" speech. And when I was admitted into the hospital, I was still in denial that I had to go to surgery. At first I refused to be admitted, but finally agreed to it for convenience sake.

The next day when the doctor came to check on me, I gave him a big smile and said, "I'm feeling great". He smiled back and pressed my appendix which made me yelp in pain and said, "No, you are not fine". After that told me that the blood test confirmed I had an infection, the stubborn me finally accepted that I had to go for surgery.

And the rest you know already.

I so need to bath right now. Waiting for hubby to come home and scrub me from head to toe. And I think I'm gonna enjoy that. ;)

Day 3 in the hospital

Still in pain. Trying to get use to my appendix-less body. It's hard
to get out of bed, hard to go to the toilet, hard to even cough out
the phelgm accumulated in my throat. This sucks. I didn't think a
minor operation would hurt so much. Can't imagine what a major
operation would be like. At least I'm allowed to drink and eat today.
I'm secretly wondering how weight I lost. :p

BORED

I'm so bored. I'm stuck at a place with no internet connection. Though
there's still a tv which i still would rather have if you ask me to
choose between the two. I haven't washed my hair for 4 days (thanks to
Yin How who forgot to bring me a towel and shampoo) and it's driving
me crazy. I can't imagine those who don't wash their hair for a month.
I'll go crazy. Sigh... babbling nonsense because I'm bored. I rather
be at work. :(

Bored on a Saturday morning

Home alone on a Saturday morning. The hubby went off to play paintball with his colleagues. He doesn't have old clothes, so he wore his favourite black shorts. I told him to change because the fluorescent yellow paint might look obvious on black, but he boast that he would come back without getting hit by a single paintball. Let's see la...

This week was a busy week. Busy at work, busy at home. Was excited about Tubey so I was surfing the net at lot about it when I was home. At work, I carried Tubey everywhere I went. At least I did that until somebody pointed out that I was flashing Tubey around and suddenly there was a group of people crowding around Tubey. So paiseh... I didn't bring Tubey along to the next meeting. :)

I'm bored... waiting for lunch...

Introducing... Tubey

Nokia 5800 Xpress Music.

3.2 megapixel camera, integrated GPS, WiFi connectivity, HTML browser supporting flash, video recording option at up to 640 x 480 pixels and up to 30 fps, handwriting recognition and a 3.2 inch touch screen. Comes with a 8GB memory card and a music headset (which looks a little like an ipod shuffle) and 1000 free song downloads.

Nokia 5800 battery life is reportedly as much as nine hours (GSM) or five hours (HSDPA), 35 hours for music playback or three hours of video. Nokia claims that the standby time is up to 17 days. (haven't had it long enough to test the battery life yet)

It's no iPhone, but it's still pretty cool and it cost less than half the price of an iPhone. :)

Handphone finally reached it's end :(

My poor handphone is finally reaching the last few days of it's life. Sparkle kicked it of the sofa and the clip that holds the battery to the handphone broke. It's been one week since my handphone looks like this.

The battery expanded in the middle so it sticks out. Sometimes when the phone rings and I pick it up, the battery falls off. Or sometimes, since my phone is the flip type, I accidentally flip the battery out instead.

It was getting too pathetic. I was even considering using sticky tape to hold it together but battery was too fat.

As stubborn as I was I finally decided to get a new handphone. And the new baby is so beau-ti-ful!~~ Shu-Yin and Mun Yi will no longer be making fun of it. :P

Only thing now is I've got no excuse for not picking up my handphone anymore.

CLK is happy and clean

I got out of bed earlier this morning because I wanted to wash my car. Yin How stared at me in disbelief as I gathered the stuff necesary to wash my car. And I looked at him shaking my head at how lazy he was for not following me down.

I went down feeling so proud of myself for actually making the effort to wash my car myself. I was already thinking, I'm going to post it in my blog that the hardworking Mindy washed her own car.

5 minutes later, I was back at home. The car wash bay has no shelter. No way am I going to wash my car in the freaking hot sun. Yin How had a great time laughing at me.

Anyway, I paid RM2 to wash my car. So worth it. CLK is pretty again. Almost as if I'm driving a newer car.

I must sound so pathetic talking about washing my car while most people are talking about their Valentine's day. Yin How and I don't have to go out for an over-priced dinner to prove our love to each other on a day which has no meaning to us. There are lots of anti-Valentine's day blogs out there so I don't need to add more to it.

Despite that, he still left an Valentine's day card in the kitchen for me to find while I was cooking which make me giggle like a teenager. :)

CLK needs a bath... badly...

I need to wash my car. It's unbearable dirty, dirtier than it's usual dirtyness, dirty at it's dirtiest. Friends take one look at my car and turn to me with a sour face, "Mindy, your car is dirty".

Usually I'll wait for the rain to wash my car but it's been so long since it last rained, so imagine how bad my no-longer-cute little kelisa looks like now. And it doesn't help that birds like to target blue kelisas to drop down their goodies.

I was gonna wash my car before CNY but they increased the price of the car wash from RM4 to RM5. Why should I pay an extra dollar just because it's CNY? It's not about the money but I just hate it when people take advantage of festivals as an excuse to increase prices.

Anyway, I'm going to wash my kelisa tomorrow. AND I'm gonna wash it myself. At least I like to think that I will. I hope I will. I believe I will.

On second thought, maybe I won't.

One of those bad hair days

Ever woke in the morning feeling crappy after not completely recovering from the massive headache from the night before? The radio alarm is playing but you’re in denial because it still seems dark and you continue to drift in and out of sleep while the Fly FM morning crew goes on with their regular morning news. And when the sun starts to come up and you know you’re gonna be late for work, you somehow drag yourself out of bed and into the toilet.

And there you are, looking at the horrible reflection of yourself in the mirror thinking, crap, I’m having a bad hair day. You stare in horror at your hair, puffed up and curling in and out at every direction possible. You try to dampen your hair and combing it so that it looks better, but your hair decides to rebel against you to punish you for being lazy enough to sleep with damp hair the night before.

Then you find that you have a sore throat which you suspect is caused by a fish bone. And at the same time your wisdom tooth decides to grow a teeny bit more causing your gums to painfully swell up. And gee, since you are already in discomfort, why not add an ulcer under your tongue as well.

Since you feel like crap and look like crap, when standing in front of your closet, you decide, must and well choose a crappy blouse to go along with the crap theme of the morning. So you put on your crumpled blouse on, try your best to smooth out the creases in denial that it doesn’t look that bad because you’re too lazy to iron it. And off to work you go, praying that the rest of the day won’t be so bad.

Yup, I’m having one of those days which start with bad hair.

25 Random Things

I first heard of this 25 Random Thingys in Google Reader. Knew it was just a matter time before it reached here. I think I prefer to do mine here. I've added too many people in facebook, a lot whom I don't know or can't remember, some whom I don't want to add but can't block.

Anyways,

1. I love dogs. I know almost everybody knows this but doggies must be mentioned here


2. My tongue has a little split in the middle. Maybe that's why I sometimes cannot pronounce words properly


3. I spent the 1st year of my life in Kelantan, then the next 5 years in England. I started my first year of school there.


4. I'm named Mindy because people in England couldn't pronounce my Chinese name so I was given a English name later. My mum was either going to name me Ruby or Mindy. (I'm glad she chose Mindy)


5. I used to be a very talkative kid. My primary school teacher changed my seating in class three times because I talked too much and I ended up sitting in the corner by myself.


6. Later in life I became an introvert. I prefer to keep to myself than to join a large group. I don't care whether that makes me look like I'm stuck up or anti-social. It's just who I am.


7. I can't speak Chinese. Maybe it's because I grew up in England. Maybe it's because my parents converse only in English. But I think it's because I suck big time in any language subjects. Throughout school I only scored A once in BM, during PMR. I rather study anything except BM. I stucked in BM.... and Geography.


8. I love Oprah. And I love Dr. Oz. He's the reason I'm starting to eat vegetables and exercising regularly


9. I would rather spend my money on my home which I spend most of my time then to spend it on a 1 week vacation in another country. Of course if I were rich, I would spend it on both and a lot of other stuff... like an iPhone.
   
10. Because of #9, my passport is absolutely clean. The last time I flew out of Malaysia was when I was 13, still using my mum's passport


11. Since I was 13, I always had long hair (except for once when I cut it shorter and Mun Yi screamed her head off when she saw it). I used to have ugly short hair when I was young because I wasn't allowed to keep long hair. I'm not brave enough to go back to having short hair


12. I don't believe in following traditions just because it's a tradition. I need to understand why I have to do something if I have to do it. If it's illogical, then I won't do it.


13. I can be a stubborn ass when I want to be.


14. I never used to swear, even saying "shit" was too vulgar... until I met Yin How.


15. I'm a little scared of the dark. Yin How likes to switch off the light while I bathe to make me scream.


16. I love The Simpsons.


17. I hate frying fish. I'm terrified of hot oil. I usually wait for Yin How to do it. I'm terrified of fire, I do not dare to light a match or a lighter. I'm scared of bees as well. And also cockroaches.


18. I value old friendships. I would rather have 1 good childhood friend than to have 100 friends I'm not close with


19. I call my sister Lulu Gen and she calls me Lulu Min. We started it after watching Breakfast At Tiffany's.


20. When I'm PMS-ing, I get very emotional. Even an advertisement can make me want to cry.


21. I'm not good in hiding my feelings. If I don't it like, chances are I'll show it


22. I usually only buy shoes from Vincci, Nose or Voir.


23. I sat in a push chair until I was 5. My dad wheeled me in a push chair to kindergarden


24. I love my TV, I love dark chocolate, I love tomyam, I love The Gilmore Girls, I love the color brown, I love Marley and Me.


25. I hate crowds. I won't go out on Valentine's day, or Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve just because everyone is doing it. I rather spend a quiet evening at home with the people I love.

I have to say that writing 25 random things about myself was harder than I thought.

Check out your facts before gossiping

Try to imagine that you are at work one day and your colleague suddenly asks you, "Eh, I heard your wife/girlfriend is pregnant. Is that true?" First of all, you'll probably be shocked where that person heard that news. Then you'll be annoyed why it's anybody's business to know. Then you'll probably be amazed how false rumours can spread like this.

Apparently somebody is telling people I look pregnant and the person he told happened to be my hubby's colleague who asked him whether it's true.

If you want to gossip about something that's a fact, then fine, go ahead if you want. But if you don't know whether it's true, please don't start rumours.

I'm damn annoyed that people expect a woman to get pregnant immediately after she marries. As if it's a woman's sole responsibility to get pregnant. I can understand why the older generation expect that. But coming from people from my generation is just sad.

It's almost like people have nothing better to do than to look for any indication that a newly married woman may be pregnant. And if it's a bit of weight gain, then she just has to pregnant and it's time to gossip. Why? Because she's just got married ma... so must be a baby la.

It's just plain annoying.

My morning addition

The beverage making machine is not working. SOB! For a while I panic a little. How was I supposed to function in the morning without my cup of Milo? Then I thought, silly girl, there are other beverage making machines in the building. I needed my cup of Milo and I needed it bad. If I were hungry enough, I would even walk to the 3rd building to get my Milo.

Took my cup to the second floor to get my Milo. Felt strange though, as if I was stealing Milo from another department. I found myself hurrying away with my “stolen” Milo back to the first floor. I got my cup of Milo, I’m happy.

Hopefully they’ll fix the machine soon. Or not I’ll be going up to the 2nd floor every morning “stealing” Milo. 0.o

He calls himself the Legend

As requested, Yin How's interview, the one where he made me read again and again :P


By APJ Corporate Communications

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Yin How Tan has been working with Dell’s customer care for 4 years and 8 months and has recently moved into a new role of standardizing processes for the region. He joined Dell as a call center agent working with ANZ customers before gradually getting involved in coaching agents on customer care as well as training new hirers with the right skills before they go on board. He has been leading the team supporting both ANZ pre- and post- calls and was the escalation contact point for the team in instances where customers want to speak to someone higher up within the Care organization.

An expert in all things to do with ensuring the customers get their orders on time, he was awarded the Customer Experience (CE) Legend award for December 2008. Here, he shares his thoughts on CE and why drives him on a daily basis.

What is the most challenging aspect of your job? What keeps you going?

The most challenging aspect of my job would be dealing with demanding customers, as well as making sure I keep all my customers happy at all times. I have come to realize continuous passion and patience are keys to delivering good CE. Receiving recognition from both internal and external customers fuels my passion and keeps me going.

What are some of the things you do to ensure your customers have a positive customer experience?

Walk the talk, and focus on building a long-term relationship instead of short term one with your customers. Remember to go the extra mile as this is very important in the service industry to cultivate the trust and confidence of our customers. Customers should be able to believe Dell is providing the best quality services and products to them, all the time, every time.

Can you share with us how the recent BPI projects you worked on help to improve CE?

In call centre environment, the most critical part would be ensuring the speed of the resolution while delivering an awesome customer experience. All my projects are based on improving these two areas.

As a start, teams must be aligned and processes, standardized, especially in terms of skills and knowledge among the care specialists. This is why I came up with a new hire training manual as part of my yellow belt project 4 years ago. Another project consolidated 10 manual excel reports onto a single automated tool to help care specialists improve their call handling time. It also strengthened backend support to the frontline, reducing the frontline’s workload and time spent on case follow ups. As a result, more time could be spent understanding and helping customers resolve issues swiftly.

Why is CE more important now when the economic climate is challenging?

I must agree that this year’s economic recession is one of the worst that I have come across in a long time but we should view it as an opportunity for Dell to grow even stronger. People are now thinking twice before spending money. If Dell continues delivering the best CE especially during this period, I am very confident that customers will appreciate this and become loyal customers for years to come. Build a stronger relationship with the customer during this period and it will pay back in a matter of time.

What advice do you have for colleagues on the topic of CE?

Continue delivering good CE and position Dell and ourselves as #1 in the PC market. Most importantly, whatever you do, it must come with passion from your heart.

The CE Legend

Yin How recently won the CE Legend award at Dell, an award to recognize the top performers across Dell worldwide who give the best customer experience.

Don’t know why he submitted that photo of himself. I think he was overexcited about getting interviewed so he rushed to take a photo for it.

For some reason, I feel he looks like a teddy bear. I’m going to call him teddy bear from now on. I’m so proud of my teddy bear. Go teddy, go teddy!~~

The Brangelina movies

I’m not a fan of Brangelina. But it just so happen that both are in really good movies this year.

The first is Changeling where Angelina Jolie portrays Christine Collins, a mother whose son went missing. The LA police during those times had a corrupted image, so to improve their image they found a boy who matched the description of the missing boy and returned him to Christine. Christine found that the boy was not her son and the story goes on to how she fought to find her real son.

Usually I don’t like movies that have bad corrupted police and the storyline didn’t seem very interesting. And I was wondering, how they could find a boy who is not her son and insist that he is? But as I watched on, I found that it was a compelling movie that it had a twist to the story. And Angelina’s acting is absolutely superb giving a powerful portrayal of a mother’s anguish. Also, this movie is based on true events giving the story more credit.

All in all, a good watch. And it’s a sad true story, which unfortunately does not have a happy ending.

In The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Brad Pitt plays Benjamin who is a person born as an old man who grows younger. Huh? Kind of silly when you think about it. But I have to say that make up and video editing really can do wonders. Using make up to make someone look older is not unusual. But to make a man in his 40s look like a teenager?

The movie moved a little too slow for me. Or maybe it was because I found myself impatiently waiting for Brad Pitt to grow younger. Brad Pitt as an old shriveled man looked terrible though I had to admire how well the makeup was done. Throughout the first half the movie I could feel myself silently screaming, “When he going get YOUNGER!!??”.

And when he finally became younger, damn…. he looked good. And when you think they can’t make him look any younger, the last few scenes showed him looking like a teenager. How the heck did they do that? I was amazed… and drooling at the same time.

This is a movie which reminds us that we will all grow older one day and we will all end up in the same place. So live life to the fullest. And if you think that growing younger is better, you’d be wrong.

Yin How fell asleep during the movie and woke up towards the end when Brad Pitt was young. Maybe you can do it if the movie bores you. Overall, I thought the movie was good. Or maybe it because I was just satisfied after the long wait to see Brad Pitt young and handsome at the end. :P

Ta-da

Brocolli with oyster sauce, fried egg, tom yam flavoured steam fish, and "old cucumber" soup.

Not bad... not bad at all... considering I came home from work and cooked it alone while waiting for the hubby to come home.

The whole fish cost me RM20, soooo sakit hati buying it.

The 8 levels of persecution

The only good thing about a Chinese 8 course reunion dinner is that you can count the dishes to know when its gonna end. And when the last dish comes it feels like the best dish ever. At the 6th dish now. 2 more to go. I can do it... I can do... :)