Arrrgggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh


I can't believe this happened to me....... I had just finished typing this nice loooooooonnnnnnggggg blog and the system kicked me out (BEFORE I SAVED IT!) sob sob. Now I have to start all over again. wahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh


Well.....

The jet setting life style.

Here I am again, in the BA lounge, updating my blog. This time I am heading for New York, the Big Apple (I wonder why they call it the Big Apple? Maybe, I'll check to see if there are any "big" apples there).

Work of course - which has been the stem of all my traveling of late. I'm going a little bit earlier to visit my cousin and his family. My nephew is so cute. He wrote me the other day to give me a weather update. He said it was "a little bit hot and a lot cold. So wear a lot of cloth". Now, I'm not sure if he is just taking short cuts or whether we need to question the level of English he learn at school. We shall see.

It was his birthday recently and he requested for a Liverpool jersey. Now I understand why these football club can afford to pay their players in millions.

His brother requested for a "large toy" (not small one - that was the exact message). So, I went to Hamleys last weekend. It is supposed to be the biggest and oldest toy store in UK. It was fantastic. The kids are really spoilt for choice. There is one problem though.... the place was completely overrun by kids. The screaming! Guess I won't get any brownie points with them.
(STRONG HINT! to all my friends with kids or planning to have kids. I DON'T DO BABY SITTING!).

I'm going to try out the shops in NY. Hopefully the £ to $ works in my favour. I'm down 2 dress sizes now, since coming to London, and in less than 6 months. By that rate, I'll be down 8 dress sizes by the end of my contract. Yohooo! One can only hope :-)

Okay, now for the second time, I'm going to try to grab some breakfast and hopefully this time this thing saves. I absolutely refuse to do this over.

An education in Romania art.

I had a fairly interesting Sunday last week. My colleague invited me to a screening of some Romanian short films. Was it good? Well - let's just say, I was extremely grateful that they were short films and not full length features. All the films were really depressing and if someone have had a really depressing week already, that would be just enough to push them to slit their wrist - in my opinion.

At the end of the screening, the organiser invited the director to come up and dialog with the audience. I was dying to ask why were all the films so "dark" but I thought I had better keep my opinions to myself so as to avoid being lynched. I think I might have been the only Asian in the cinema.

I did learn something though - to be grateful for what I have. The people in Romania must have struggled for many decades under the communist oppression, and the pain is still fresh in everyone's mind and heart. I believe that they are merely trying to purge all this pain through their art and hopefully, in a few years time, they will be able to reflect on the happier times.

GONG HEY FATT CHOY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Boy! Has this been a long and hard week. This is the first time in many many years that I celebrated Chinese New Year (29 Jan 2006) away from my family. The last time this happened, I was at university and that, it was entirely my own fault. Well - technically, this also is also my "fault" - choosing to come to work in London. So, I am trying to make the best of it.

I had dinner with Lisa and Sook on Chinese New Year's eve (friends are important, when one is far away from home). We went to Imperial Kitchen (I think). We ordered a Taiwanese chicken dish, prawns with salted egg yolk, some vegetables, and each of us had a different soup. I had the lobster soup (which was orange in colour - strange). Sook had a seafood soup - which was quite nice. Lisa went for the safe wonton soup. The food was quite good but the waiter kept dropping and breaking things. I told the girls that he may have been really upset because he did not get his "ang pow"(red envelopes with money in it). The really strange thing about this restaurant was, they decided not to serve dessert because they were really busy! The first time I've been to a Chinese restaurant, which did not serve dessert.... hmm...... So we went around the block and had "tau foo fah" and chestnut cake.

Chinese New Year day itself - I decided to keep to family tradition and went vegetarian for the day. I found most of the ingredients Mom used for her traditional vegetarian dish and I made myself a huge pot. It fed me for 4 meals. Because I slept in and had to cook lunch from scratch, I did not make it into the city to see what the celebrations were like. Well - there is always next year.

While everyone in KL was having a gala time (they have almost the whole week off - lucky people), I had work really hard on this project - so much so, I think I fried a few brain cells (not that I had many to start with :-(

Tina is back in KL for 3 weeks and Lisa is going back as well (I WANNA GO BACK TOOOOOOO)

Although I am not home, I made sure I called all the family and wished them a Gong Hey Fatt Choy (with a very heavy hint about ang pow - of course!) -