The top 5

I really have the say that the top 5 this season on American Idol has got to be the most talented top 5 ever. I can't decide who I would want to get eliminated today because they are all just so darn good. I especially love Danny to the point that I'm convinced that if I ever have a son, I would want to name him Danny. Even started practicing by calling my dog Danny instead. "Come here Danny, here Danny boy!~" Yin How doesn't like the name though... :(

I love Kris who has the smoothest voice ever and Matt who reminds me of Justin Timberlake and Allison, the 16 year old who can freaking sing her lungs out. I kind of like Adam as well because his performances just leave me speechless, not knowing what to think...

Oh.... watching the elimination now... and it's really sad to see anyone of them go....


**Update** Matt got eliminated... awwww... :(

My forced leave

I'm so glad that I was forced to take half a day off today. After QF and WY went back to work after having lunch together at Kim Gary, I was alone in QB and since it was JCard day I thought, hmmm... I'd just take a look.

And me just taking a look took me almost 3 hours. :)

The atmosphere in JJ was choatic... and I happily jumped in to all that choas hunting for cheap clothes. There were sales people sceaming on the top of their voices, "HAPPY HOUR, HAPPY HOUR, 80% OFF ON ALL LADIES BAGS... ONE HOUR ONLY... BE CAREFUL... DON'T PUSH... DON'T PUSH.. MORE STOCK IS COMING OUT". It was like a war zone and I made sure I kept my distance away... I didn't want to get killed...

Went up to the 3rd floor and it was just as chaotic with sales people screaming out discounts on the bedsheets. Started to get a headache from all the noise so went down to the 2nd floor to the Gents department to see whether I could get anything for Yin How. It was nice and calm there, no one was screaming, totally different from the ladies department... :)

Anyways, after more than 2 hours of hunting, I got these.

I bought this dress for Rm24.... RM24 for a dress.... can't believe it!~~~



The top is RM40, tube top RM8, shorts RM 23.


And for spending RM103, I received RM10 voucher. I'm soooooo happy!~~~

The is the first time in my life I shopped by myself and I have to say I really enjoyed it, not having to worry about a very bored looking hubby following me around like a lost puppy.

If all forced leaves are like this, I'm looking forward to my next forced leave. :)

Meet Looi

Meet Looi. He is a good-est guy I know.

I remember when I went on the department team building. I'm usually the weakest physically but I felt that Looi always kept an eye on me throughout activities. There was this one incident where it was raining heavily and we were running around Taiping Zoo on some treasure hunt and we had to complete a task which required us to take off our shoelaces. When the task was done, we had to quickly rush to the next station but I had trouble putting back my shoelaces because my fingernails had cracked from being wet in the rain for so long and it hurt. The whole team just stood there waiting for me, but Looi knelt down in the rain and helped me put back my shoelaces while I stood up watching him. I was so touched.

Also, there was a swimming challenge where I had to go off and swim in the sea. When I reached the beach, Looi immediately reached out and pulled me out from the water. As he pulled me out, I collasped again because I was too tired to stand and wasn't able to run off to the next station. Looi made sure there was somebody to stay with me while I recovered since he had to run off to the next station.

So to me, Looi is one of the good-est guys I know. Some guys only do things for you only if they are interested in you. But Looi is the type of guy who will take care of you even though you may not even be a close friend. He is loyal, caring, honest, humble, funny, and kids just absolutely adore him.

I could sing praises but I guess you have to get to know him to know what I'm talking about. I'm sure those who know him will say the same thing. :)

So..... hopefully one day you'll meet Looi. :)


P/S - this is a lousy cartoon of him... I drew it in a rush last night because I wanted to watch NCIS which had already started. The real Looi looks way better. ;)

My sisi wisi, Genny Wenny

Nah... the cartoon I owe you. I've corrected the eyebrows so you don't look so evil anymore.

I'm sensing that my "draw-and-color" phase is ending soon... now I'm starting to get into calorie counting, healthy diets, tummy exercises, skin care, going green, reusable bags, recycling... all after effects of watching Oprah... Googling about it a lot lately... :)

The happy Friday post

I woke up in the middle of last night and for a while, still in the confused state of being half awake and half asleep, I was wondering why my head felt so heavy and I couldn't move when I tried. Took me a while to realize that Russell was sleeping on top of my head across my pillow. The chicken dog was afraid of the thunder so he found it safer to sleep on my head. Dumb dumb dog.

Anyway, it's Friday, it's Friday, it's Friday and I'm doing my "I'm happy it's Friday" chant. Have a good weekend!~~~~ :)

Forced to take....

Which employee has to be forced to take a day off from work because the number accumulated leave is about to reach the maximum limit?

Yours truly, ME (I can hear some people saying “siao wan” and I KNOW WHO YOU ARE hehe).

For the past few weeks, I’ve been getting weekly reminders to take leave and each week I’ve been ignoring it.

Until now… because if I don’t take leave by next week, my leave is going to burn. And even knowing that my leave will burn if I don’t use it, I was still hesitating to apply for leave next week. I’m so STINGY. If I could cash out my leave like what I did before, I would. But can’t exchange leave for money now… so sad… so I’m forced to take leave. I’m weird. I know.

After considering for some time, stingy me finally applied for half day leave next week. But I’m gonna be forced to take 1 day of leave every 3 weeks to prevent it from reaching the max limit again. It’s not that I’m a workaholic who refuses to take a day off. Just that I feel that it’s such a waste to take a day off just to stay at home. And I’m too lazy to plan something else. I’m weird. I know.

Boss of course gleefully suggested that I burn off my leave since I don’t really want to take leave. Well I’m weird… not crazy… would you ask a stingy person to burn money just because that person is too stingy to spend it? No right…. so it’s the same concept. I’m weird. I know.

I think I need to take a long holiday somewhere.

My cartoony hubby

After I started drawing faces, I'm starting to notice and observe the features in a face like the shape of the face, eyes, nose, mouth. So forgive me if you catch me staring at your face a little longer then I should be especially during boring meetings. It just means I'm wondering how I would draw your face. :P

Anyway, my latest little piece, finally managed to draw Yin How's face. The one below is considered ok compared to all the horrible Yin How faces I made last weekend. :)


Then I made it more cartoony and colored it.

Mr. Bad Mood

I tried to draw Yin How's face last weekend. I can draw my own face in 15 minutes, but couldn't get his face right for hours. Even when I drew the wedding cartoon of the two of us, it took me the whole day to draw his little cartoon face.

Tried to give him a smiling mouth in this drawing but couldn't get it right, so gave up. He's always in a bad mood from Monday to Friday anyway so it suits him. And I couldn't give him a cartoony look so I abandoned this drawing. Posting it here anyway.

Dinner at Chillis

I had dinner with Mun and Shu-Yin last Friday. And we didn't take any photos. :( But since I was in my "I-need-to-draw-and-color" phase, I drew this to remember the night. :)

Based on my memory, I think this was what we were wearing that night. Was my memory correct?

For one weekend, I turned into a kid

Can you remember when you were a kid and your parents bought you those 24 or 36 color pencils set, and that would be the proudest thing to have in the class, and during art classes, you would take it out from your schoolbag and proudly display it on your desk, and when you opened it, you get that little rush of excitement looking at your new color pencils, and every time you used it, you would make sure you arrange all the color pencils back according to their color?

Thinking back, all it takes to make a kid excited is a set of new color pencils. And for 2 days, I became a kid again. :)

My coloring craze explained

There... this is why I've been coloring. Drew a little cartoon of myself, thought it looked cute so I decided to color it and make it into my blog header.

I'm liking the new blog look. :)

And Russell ate up one of my color pencil, the one where I took half an hour choosing which one to buy. Dumb dumb dog. :(

It's Friday already?

It’s Friday. I can’t believe it. It’s not that I’m not happy that it’s Friday (which crazy person is not happy that the weekend is almost here?), it’s just that I blinked and suddenly it’s Friday. Where did the whole week go? Where did the whole of last week go?

I usually update my blog a few times a week but this week passed too fast. Partly because I’m learning up some new freaking alien stuff at work and partly also because I’ve suddenly got this crazy urge to do something which I’ve hated ever since school. This sudden inspiration caused me to drag Yin How yesterday to Tesco, spent 10 minutes at Popular, then 15 minutes at Tesco, then went back to Popular for another 5 minutes just to compare color pencils. Yin How of course was in a sulky mood because it was almost 8pm and he was hungry and tired and couldn't understand why I needed half an hour to choose color pencils. :P

I was at the dining table happily coloring with my new color pencils until I missed American Idol. Genny says I’m having one of those “mid-life” crisis where I’m going backwards in time. I actually can’t wait to go home later to continue my coloring but I have a dinner later to go to. :(

Don’t worry, I’m not crazy, even though it does sound crazy. :)

Why this sudden urge? Let’s just say I find my work colorless so I’ve been fascinated by anything colorful lately. If I was talented, I would rather be a graphic designer. Or a psychiatrist because I find the human mind interesting. I still love coding though, so my dream job would definitely be to work in Google (who wouldn’t want to work in Google?) or any web-based company where things make sense to me.

Well, it's just a dream. :)

My temporary vain phase

There are a lot of things I know I should be doing to be healthy, like being nagged to eat more vegetables all my life, but I don't really care. But for some reason, after I watch Dr. Oz's show for just 1 hour, I was determine to eat more vegetables.

I'm not a vain person. I go to the hairsaloon once a year when I can't stand my hair anymore. And I hardly use any makeup and don't bother to buy beauty products. I know I'm suppose to wear sunscreen to protect my skin, but I've always been too lazy. And I think my freckles are cute. Until one day all those little cute freckles decided to join up and form one mama freckle, it doesn't look so cute anymore. Dr. Oz calls them age spots, and after I watched his show, I got paranoid and went out to buy sunscreen lotion that same week.

Anyway, while I'm still in my vain mode (which I'm sure will die down soon), I'm thinking of getting a hair cut. If you know me well, I hardly ever change my hairstyle. I'm just too much of a chicken for any drastric changes (thanks to Mun Yi who screamed at me at the one time I changed my hairstyle).

So I went online, uploaded my photo and tried out all the different celebrity hairstyles out there (see whether you can recognize any of those hairstyles).

I started with short hair, but I personally don't think I look good in short hair.

Then I went on to long hair styles.


So, so, so... long or short? Let me know which one looks the best. :)

And since I was already doing this, I did a makeover as well. Photo the left is with me without any makeup. Photo on the right is after the makeover I did online. Makeup really does change a person's appearance huh?

Yin How thinks I have nothing better do to... And he's right, I've got nothing better to do on a Sunday afternoon. So what? A girl should be allowed to be vain once in a while right? :P

Anyway, if you have nothing better to do and wanna try this out yourself, go to instyle. It's fun. ;)

Done

Finally declared my income tax. And I overpaid my tax which means the government owes me money. Yay!~

The mad morning rush to work

It was raining the whole night so I kinda expected a lot of places were flooded. Yin How received a text message saying the road to Dell in front of Jabil was flooded so we had to take the back way instead of the coastal highway. I was sulking in the morning because Yin How broke our agreement of he driving to work in the morning and I driving back home. He quickly jumped in the passenger seat leaving me no choice but to get into the driver seat.

We took the Bukit Jambul way and traffic was ridiculously bad. It didn’t seem to make any difference whether the traffic light was green or red because cars were hardly moving. And I was already tensed because I had to drop Yin How at work first and rush for a 8am meeting. Got frustrated being stuck at the junction so I turned back to Intel to head to the coastal highway. And the road to Intel was FLOODED.

After bypassing a few cars which had broken down in the flood, praying that my own car won't break down, the traffic on the coastal highway was worst! And to make me even more tensed, Yin How decided that he had to get the worst stomachache ever. And he kept groaning in pain, going “Oooo…. Arghhhhhh…..don’t talk to me… don’t break too hard… I’m going to shit in the car soon... It's NOT funny...”, leaving me no choice but to become one of those bastards on the road who squeeze and cut queues and force their way at every single opportunity.

Couldn’t use the traffic light junction to turn into Phase IV because traffic was so bad, so drove like a mad person towards Motorola, skidded over huge puddles of water, cut the queue of cars to make the u-turn, and drove like crazy to Altera. I stopped the car at the 2nd floor of the carpark, dumped Yin How at the toilet, parked my car, ran to the men’s toilet, passed Yin How the car keys under the toilet door (first time I entered the men’s toilet at Altera) and ran like crazy to my meeting which I was already late for half an hour. I don’t know what happened to Yin How, but I guess he found somebody to open the exit gate at Altera and drove back to Dell.

And Ian was wondering why I didn’t send him a sms to tell him I was late…. I had a very stressful journey!

Smile :)

Because you can :)

Crying

Yin How can't understand why I cry. Yin How never cries. Throughout our nine years of relationship, I've only seen him cry not more than 5 times. Quote from my sister, he has "emotional constipation". Crying is a sign of weakness. In the cinema watching Marley and Me, I kept touching his eyes to see whether he cried but they were totally dry. His tear ducts are so under-utilized.

I, on the other hand, cry and cry and cry. To me crying is a way to release all the negative energy within me. And after a good cry, I'm able to jump and around and joke away with my eyes still swollen red and smaller than how small they already are. It's good to cry, I usually feel fresh and light and happy after that, unlike Mr. I'm-always-in-a-bad-mood-from-Mondays-to-Fridays. It's why woman live longer than men (that's what I think anyway).

So is it so wrong to cry?

Kimchi... yummy...

I woke up early this morning because I had a tummyache. If you know me well, a lot of my stories always end with me lausai-ing. I eat a lot of rubbish. And yesterday it was too much kimchi...

KFC obsession is over, now it's the kimchi phase (triggered by the korean food fair at QB and Gurney Plaza). Just talking about kimchi makes me want to eat it again... Yup, I'm going to go for another round of kimchi later... kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi...

Eat now, think later. ;)

My latest craving

Kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi, kimchi

So I bought one whole container of it. Saliva keeps coming out whenever I think of it sitting in the fridge waiting for me. Yummy nia!~~

Facebook, YouTube at Work Make Better Employees: Study

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2009/04/reuters_us_work_internet_tech_life

So, for the sake of increasing productivity, I shall do it la. ;)

Hard, harder, hardest

I’ve been quiet lately. When the boss is not around at work, my stress level goes up a little higher.

I honestly don't know how he can do it on a daily basis, sitting for meetings after meetings where all the managers from different departments attend and when everybody in the cross-functional meeting was asked to introduce themselves, everybody mentioned they had 8 - 12 years of experience, some worked so long they can't remember how many years, which made me feel tiny, tinier, then tiniest, which made me whisper a little too loudly to the person next to me, "I think I'm the youngest", which some of them heard and made them laugh, which made me say when I introduced myself, "I've been working for 4 and a half years", unconsciously hoping that adding the "half a year" would make it sound like I'm not so tiny among all the very experienced managers sitting there. ;)

Anyway, I need to state some facts about being an engineer in this gray company I work for.

Fact #1: Being an engineer is hard.
It requires a lot of brain juice to survive. I’m proud to be working with a lot of intelligent people, but there’s always the pressure to produce as much brain juice as them.

Fact #2: Being a software engineer who has to understand how the hardware works is harder.
You may be a software expert, but the software has to understand the hardware and you don't understand the hardware. So how leh? More brain juice required.

Fact #3: Being a software engineer who has to understand how the hardware works but has no passion for hardware is the hardest.
Brain juice is not the only thing needed. Without passion, it's hard to produce brain juice on a daily basis. Then eventually, the brain juice may dry up and the brain halts to a stand still.

Conclusion of all 3 facts
Boss = passion + brain juice (a lot of it).

Sooooooo....... Next time you’re enjoying your latest new cool electronic device, take just one second to think of the hundreds of engineers dried up all the brain juice, cracking their head for hours trying come out with the latest technology to make life better for you.

It's just one second of thought. :)