The latest craze

So the hubby's latest craze is this.

The Tesco figurines. Spend RM50 in tesco and you'll get one sticker. And you don't get to choose when you redeem it which makes obsessive people like the hubby crazy over the challenge to get the complete set.

At first it was just these two. Someone commented that the 2 looked like the hubby and me.

Mindy - Iron Man because I'm always yelling at the hubby
Hubby - Captain America, always happy to annoy me equipped with the shield to protect himself when I burst

And now the hubby is suddenly very concern about my toiletries.

Mindy, you need more shampoo
Eh, you need more period pads right?
Mindy ah, we need more toilet roll.

Yes... we need more toilet roll... 

So much that they are all over the place right now...

As long as he finds an excuse to buy ONE thing, he will drag me to tesco, take out his calculator and start walking aimlessly around tesco finding things to buy until he reaches RM50. And then there's the panic at the cashier counter when the total comes out to be slightly less then RM50 and we just grab anything we can reach from the counter.

He keeps bugging everybody for stickers. So when the sister wanted to introduce her new boyfriend, she sent her boyfriend to get 2 stickers for the hubby to make a good impression. And I think it worked. ;)

So this is the hubby's collection so far. And after annoying me enough, I've reached out to the facebook universe to seek for help to exchange those extra ones we have for ones we don't have.

Please.. please... let us get the complete set soon before I really run out of space to put toilet rolls.

The first project

We are starting to clean up around the home in preparation for our move next year (and I say we, I have to be honest and say it's the hubby).

And look what the hubby found under a pile of crap in the storeroom. 

My first project documentation! Written when I was 12 years old.  :)

The tale of two Foo Dogs

So I've been asked to blog about my trip to Beijing. If you ask me what was my most memorable experience there, I'll probably tell you are story of two Foo Dogs.

Whenever the hubby travels, the hubby must do his shopping. Because his logic is that he'll probably never go back to that country which justifies his desire to buy what he sees and likes.

There's the Buddha he bought from Bali. Security at every airport stopped us to ask us what the big round head in the security X-Ray scan was.

There was the prayer house that we brought back from Phuket (with some occupants who recently moved in). It was so fragile, that when we walked down the staircase from the plane, the hubby immediately went to the compartment where they were offloading the baggage from the plane and insisted that they pass him his little house there and then.

Cambodia wasn't too bad. The hubby settled on a relatively small stone craving of the Bayan face (will upload the photo here tomorrow)

And then there were the two Foo Dogs from Beijing. 

The dear hubby decided that he had to get them after two days shopping at the antique flea market. He bargained hard with the friendly Chinese man who suddenly disappeared immediately after he received our money leaving us to figure how to carry the two Foo dogs back. 

I picked one up and the hubby picked the other and we shared an "Oh Shit!" moment. 

It was freaking HEAVY! Duh, they are made of stone but it only occurred to us after we tried to pick it up. 

To cut a long story short, with tremendous effort, sweat and a lot of arguing along the way, we carried it back to the hotel and from the hotel to the airport using the subway which we had to interchange several times. Hubby was annoyed with me because I refused to take the taxi (I have a thing against taxis), and I was annoyed with him for buying something so ridiculously heavy. 

Miss Pessimistic me wanted to give up and throw it away because I was absolutely convinced that it was too heavy to check into our luggage. But Mr. Optimistic hubby refused to give up and stubbornly carried on like a hero in battle. He carried one on his back and dragged the other in the luggage bag...

...and then... one wheel started to come off... 

Oh mother of all crap!

Somehow out of sheer determination, we managed to arrive at the airport, weigh the foo dogs and upgrade baggage allowance online. 

What really happened at the airport: 
8.40pm - arrived at the airport, flight was 1.05am. Air Asia airport will close online baggage top up 4 hours before the flight which meant we had only 25 minutes to figure out how much we had to top up
8.45pm - Transformed into a mad woman running around the airport in panic finding a weighing machine to weigh the foo dogs. Hijacked an empty check in counter to weigh the luggage, unloaded EVERYTHING onto the floor to even out the weight of each luggage to be within the max of 32kg.
8.55pm - Practically screamed at the lady behind the counter to get the wifi password required to go online. 
9.00pm - Panicking to death. Sat on the floor, emptied all the contents of my wallet onto the floor. Couldn't find my credit card. Panic... Panic... PANIC... then realized I my credit card was with my phone.
9.03pm - Frantically keyed in all the details online knowing that if I made one mistake, I would not make it in time. Managed to successfully top up the baggage allowance.
9.05pm - Suddenly very conscious that we were the only country bumpkins who were sitting on the floor with our belongings scattered on the floor.

When we reached Penang, we couldn't move. Muscles were punishing us after the Foo Dog incident. A few days later, the hubby could no longer move his neck. He had no choice but to go to the doctor and get an injection on his bum.

The hubby swore never to buy anything so heavy again. And now whenever I see the Foo Dogs who are happily guarding our door, I (who was so willing to throw them away along the way) will remember...

No matter how heavy things may seem, keep going until the end and never give up!

(Even if the cost comes with an injection on the bum)

A test

Want to test how well your other half knows you? Try this...

Say you have something to want to buy, like a handbag. After shopping the whole day and finding the one you really like, ask your other half to go into a the store guess which one you chose.

I asked the hubby to go into Charles and Keith to find the handbag that I picked. And so entertaining it was to see him as the only man in a crowd of women going around the store and carefully evaluating every handbag he saw.

Needless to say, he found the bag I wanted to buy. After 13 years, he better know! :)

Let's see.....

3 weeks of culture shock.
3 weeks of "oh shit, why the hell did I decide to move?"
3 weeks of waking up before then sun rises.
3 weeks of dreaming of the previous company and missing the people.

And let's not forget,
1 close meltdown, completely freaking out about the magnitude of new things to learn.

You know that situation where after you completely freak out and go into a weird trance with a million thoughts going through your head? Then suddenly.... A moment of clarity (I think because the brains goes numb after so much panic) and you realize it's just about organizing the chaos and making a plan.

Then moving forward, it's about gaining small wins everyday.

Today's small wins...

...I slept until the alarm rang
...I think I managed to earn a tiny bit of trust from a team member
...I realized that I no longer feel like I belong to my previous company

Good enough progress for one day :)

I miss you

I miss my previous grey company.

I miss the milo making machine that greeted me during those mornings of desperate need for a quick breakfast before rushing off to start the usual meeting marathons.
(Now milo making here is manual)

I miss the nice big cube which was my second home
(Cube is smaller with medium height walls, but the good thing is you don't feel so isolated from everybody else drowning in sea of grey cubicles)

I miss being a Miss Know-It-All
(I'm Miss-Know-Nothing-At-All now)

I miss being an annual leave hoarder
(But I think that's better because the only time I take a break is when the company forces me to do so which means I'll be taking more breaks now)

I miss working on the software
(Do you know how freaking complicated Manufacturing can be?)

And most of all, I miss the people, knowing everybody and having everybody know me.

But..... I don't regret leaving. Because it was just time to move on.

Back again

Someone sent me a story he wrote and a beautiful story it was. Suddenly made me miss writing so I dug out this old blog of mine and I'm determined to revive it.

Just turned 31. Hate birthdays now. Which is a good thing for the hubby since he no longer has to do his annual last minute oh-shit-I-forgot-to-buy-Mindy-a-birthday-card panic shopping (truthfully I stopped asking for a birthday card after going through a few oh-shit-I-forgot-to-buy-the-hubby-a-birthday-card which often results in an ugly card from Tesco).

I remember that I once said that if I could choose to be an age forever, I would choose being 26. I think I like 30 more now? That's when you are at the peak of your career, have some extra money to enjoy, still young but old enough to be respected. I shall miss being 30 ( despite the fact that I spent the whole year fighting battles)

I reread all the post in this blog. It started as a I'm-so-happy-and-in-love blog in my mid twenties which then turned depressing as I hit the realities of life towards my late 20's. Then it went dead and got resuscitated now and then. I guessed that when I reached my 30's, I made a conscious choice to try to fix the problems that I control, and accept the ones and can't.

So here's to you, 30's. I hope you don't give me as much crap as your predecessor. But if you do, I guess I just to to kick you in the butt, one lesson at the time.

And note self, remember to stay HUMBLE and KIND and never think you are better than anyone else because once you do, you'll stop learning and miss out on the free lessons that life has to offer.

I shall blog again!

Damn, I have not blogged for ages.

Sudden inspiration to start again was caused by this sudden addiction to a recent Korean drama. Was so freakishly obsessed with it that I was reading blogs for episode reviews and suddenly was inspired by the witty writings of the blogger. I shall not reveal what drama is in since I'm quite certain that when I look back, I'd be embarrassed of what I was obsessed with ( I took me 7 tries before I managed to spell "embarrassed" correctly, eshhh)

I miss blogging. I miss being expressive instead of hiding within a shell. Sigh, life can be a drag and pull you down so low that you think the hole you dug for yourself has now become the most perfect dark but comfy place ever. But, I think I'm over the boo-hoo now (at least I think so)... at least until the next boo-hoo comes along. Then I shall move back to da hole.

I have a feeling that this is a one time spark to inspiration to blog again. Oh well, let's see.

I'm so sleepy. From being obsessed with candy crush, to a sudden obsession with Korean drama, poor me has been spending late nights catering to these obsessions and feeling like a hung over piece of crap the next day at work.

Okay, that's all the random junk from my sleep deprived head for now.