will i am's delayed diary

Add Some Colour , swiped from williamnyk on Flickr. Note: 冬 is more important than 年! LOL. But Happy Year of the Horse y'all! Celebrated the Winter Solstice on Saturday with friends and family. SK had invited Apollo, Brian, Adam and Frankie-D over as they all did not go home to their respective home towns for reunion dinner. BIL's brother and sister also came. It was a huge cook out with mum and SK in the kitchen. In total, we had twelve dishes-- lotus root soup, arrow root with lean pork, steamed silver pomfret, soya sauce chicken with pacific clams, steamed pork ribs in ginger bean sauce, braised duck, tomato omelette, grilled chicken, bacon- enoki roll, tomato prawns, siew pakchoy with shiitake and mum's signature salad. For drinks, we had Moet & Chandon champagne and Wammsler sparking mead! Fantastic right? Amazingly, we found space for fruit rojak and of course tang yuan . This year, mum decided to use filling. We had home made sweet potato paste and chocolate...

Christmas Cookies , swiped from williamnyk on Flickr. On my second day in Singapore, I arranged a meet up with KH's wife in Singapore, Moonlight Piggy an ex-colleague of his. Met her over lunch at the food court attached to the Tanjung Pagar MRT station. She told me to look out for the giant Minion standing near the control booth. True enough, there she was in a superbly yellow dress ( imperial yellow! ) and came running over to give me a hug. That must have been some scene for the commuters. :D. Being the gracious host, she treated me to one of Singapore's favourite food, fish soup. Hot and soupy, definitely a crowd pleaser for the Chinese. She ordered for me, so I just sat and waited, no need to 'chop' our seats with tissues. LOL. She also gave me some chocolate cookies from Laurent Bernard Chocolatier and told me to share them with KH ( on the other hand, I gave her a pair of Doraemon travel chopsticks :P ). Wanted to end lunch with coffee, but crowds were crazy...

Tokio Marine , swiped from williamnyk on Flickr. My bosses arranged a training session in Singapore out of the blue for some technical issue, so I was there for three days and two nights. At first, I was supposed to fly Silk, but due to a company policy forbidding employees to travel on the same flight, I had my ticket changed to Jetstar. Well, at least it flies from KLIA. Checked-in early so that I would have the chance to use the Plaza Premium Lounge ( unlimited access with Alliance Bank Platinum ). Good that I was there early cause by 8:00 am, there was a queue outside. My colleague was shocked when he saw the line. Not quite exclusive hor ? LOL. Food was so-so, but at least the latte was satisfying. It was my first time visiting the Singapore office. Basically the seat of power is there. The KL office is just a proxy. We are the puppets while the puppet master pulls the strings from down South. The office was on Cecil Street, very close to the famous Amoy Food Court. On our fir...

Rings of Calamari , swiped from williamnyk on Flickr. Sunday was a working day for me. My client wanted to test their disaster recovery readiness ( BNM requires at least two exercises a year ), so they switched their host system to their DR box. I didn't take the early shift as I needed to go to church. Good for me as everything that could go wrong would be at the onset anyway. LOL. By the time I went in at 12:00 pm, all the problems had been ironed out. Hehe. Thought that lunch would be provided, but I was so wrong. At 2:00 pm, I beh tahan jor , so I went for lunch with a couple of colleagues at the nearby mamak . Mee goreng mamak + ayam goreng . Hehe. That kept me full till dinner time. Did the final checkpoints at 6:30 pm before handing the baton to my boss. Drove home and waited for SK to bring me to dinner. Chose to try Drunken Cat Restaurant at Kuchai Lama. Heard that they were quite famous at Peel Road. Not a lonely affair as we were joined by KH, KT and Lifebook. Most of ...

Breakfast Noodles , swiped from williamnyk on Flickr. Come Saturday, I settled my extended warranty with Nissan in just under thirty minutes. Went home after that to have breakfast with the kids. Had a hankering for Restoran Yong Seng 's pork ball noodles. Accompanied SK to the ENT after that. Wanted to drag Big Monster along ( separating the brothers create less headache for my mum ), but he refused to budge from the TV. Her specialist had a posh clinic in Bangsar South. A jovial character. Went in to see how he pushed the scope into her nasal cavity. Yikes. And I was there to help SK answer the doctor on the meds that she was on and side effects that she had in response to some others.Gosh, like I was the hubby. For lunch, SK suggested Ficelle Pattiserie Boulangerie at Taman Desa. Hidden at a corner, near Watsons. Never noticed the place. Bad service and hot surroundings, but I was impressed with the price and food quality. Recommended items are the semi-spicy mixed vegetable a...

Power to your Eyes , swiped from williamnyk on Flickr. Took leave on Thursday to settle some chores. Bright and early, I went over to the Nissan Service Centre at Puchong Jaya to purchase an extended warranty for my Almera. Unfortunately, I didn't get that done because I didn't drive my car there for inspection. Since the pricing is based on mileage, they need to take a look at the odometer before proceeding. Ish. Boh pien . Drove over to SS2 after that to meet Apollo. Been meaning to get my eyes checked and make an extra pair of spectacles before his shop closes down. Much better to get a good night's sleep and rest one's eyes before checking the power to avoid inaccuracies. Been noticing some blurriness and sensitivity to light, especially when driving at night. Wouldn't be surprised if there was an increase in power. Too much fiddling with my phone perhaps ( or watched too much porn in the dark ). Anyway, when I arrived at Petaling Jaya, Apollo was still havi...

Balloon Paradise , swiped from williamnyk on Flickr. The kids followed us to church again. It was a little easier this time round because Little Monster slept through the whole mass. And mum just gave Big Monster some junk food to settle him down. It also helps to have another pair of hands. SK was also there. She overslept ( she wasn't feeling well ) and missed her super early morning mass. Decided against Paradigm Mall that day. Went the other direction instead to One Utama. Our first choice for lunch was Pu Tien. Unfortunately there was a queue out front. Tried Soup Restaurant a few down doors down. I had tried their food in Singapore. It was POD's birthday dinner and I remember quite well that we ate in the dark because there was no power supply. Looked through their menu and seriously I was quite shocked by the prices. Simple dishes were double the price. Ugh. Took a gamble and prayed that the portion would be decent. Their signature item was the Samsui Chicken, so we or...

Breakfast Balls , swiped from williamnyk on Flickr. Work reared its ugly head again and I found myself in office on Friday midnight. Went home earlier at 3:00 pm to try to get some sleep. But the best I could manage was ninety minutes. Yawned and yawned while I was driving to the data centre. Go figure. The whole village was there to support the roll-out. The end-of-day process ended at about 1:30 am and they brought down the whole system after that. Sad to say that one of my deployment scripts had an authority problem and we had to use a workaround to make it work. By 3:00 am, all objects had been migrated and we decided to go to a mamak in Sungei Way while waiting for the start-of-day process at 4:30 am. Just had a cup of teh tarik and roti telur . Bitched about the current turmoil in the company and the shitty way that management does things. So sick of them playing the blame game ( they have yet to blame their problems as an act of God though ) even when its so obvious that thei...

Goku Raku Ramen , swiped from williamnyk on Flickr. My sister had to OT again on Sunday, so she offloaded Little Monster on mum and I. Thankfully, she took Big Monster along with her to work. Without his mum around, Little Monster tends to be mellower and less manja . He was quite well-behaved at church. Just the usual ass-can't-sit-on-the-pew syndrome. Brought him to Coffee Sprex after mass. When the barista saw me, she immediately signed an 'L' and I just nodded. The usual. Haha. Met the co-owner of the establishment. She explained to me that she ran a programme of eighteen months to train the deaf and mute to run the business. Her first project was at Damansara Perdana for Cafe Aloha. She took a liking to Little Monster and gave an accurate assessment of his age and character. Gave him a butter cookie, but he was too shy to eat it. To make life easier, lunch was at Paradigm Mall again. This time round we went straight up to the top-most floor for Goku Raku Ramen . T...

Leland and Frank , swiped from Tobyotter on Flickr. Ended up at the market on Saturday, so I had to reject Grat's invitation for breakfast at Kota Kemuning. For some reason, it was quite quiet that day. The crowds were missing. Whatever the case, it will pick up soon with CNY coming. Same old, same old at the market. The siew yuk seller had his radio on full blast and was belting out "The Great Pretender". The vegetable seller was telling an animated story about the theft of fifty ringgit notes from a fellow vendor. Tried the new restaurant at OUG-- Kopitan Penang . Large and air-conditioned, it had more staff than customers. People are averse to paying cafe prices at a wet market area perhaps. Bet they do better business at night. Selected their CKT, prawn noodles and kaya butter toast. All three were acceptable by cafe standards. Better than Old Town even. Had to babysit again as my sister had to help out at the factory. Thankfully she brought Big Monster along with h...

Diebold , swiped from zieak on Flickr. It was the the end of the month, so I dutifully walked into a local bank's self service branch to help my brother perform installment payment on his housing loan. Like usual, I would withdraw money from his Singapore account using the interlinked ATM card that he provided me. I used one of the newer machines-- the DIEBOLD instead of the SIEMENS NIXDORF. I withdrew the maximum MYR1000 and waited for the machine to finish its whirring and clunking. To my surprise, when the money came out of the slot, it was in a mess! Not in the expected neat stack of cash. Some notes faced the wrong direction and there were even stray notes that were folded. Practically had wrestle the stack of money out of the machine. Geez. Since the fire insurance was also due, I withdrew another MYR1000 with the same disorganized results. I pocketed that second stack of cash. Next, I walked over to the cash deposit machine and stuffed the two stacks of cash in. More whirri...

Go, Be MyWitnesses , swiped from williamnyk on Flickr. As a follow up to the previous day's migration exercise into the production environment, I went into my client's data centre at 4:30 am on Saturday to ensure that the previous day's migration didn't screw things up. Well, it didn't, so this post will be on a pleasant note. :D. Left about an hour later. Felt terribly hungry so stopped at Restoran Rishadh for a tosai garing and teh tarik . Didn't sleep when I got home as I was supposed to leave for a day trip to Melaka at 7:30 am. The whole thing was organized by my BEC as part of our yearly activities cum pilgrimage. Met up at Seri Petaling where the bus was already waiting for us. Been ages since I took a bus and that old school bus was quite rickety. Hin . Handled the registration while the bus was moving, going from seat to seat getting names and NRIC numbers. Felt like a steward training for turbulence. For MYR25 per pax, we also got two bottles of min...

Surfboard , swiped from williamnyk on Flickr. Late Friday evening, my client surprised me with a last minute program migration to production. Bah. And I was supposed to leave on time that day for my paktor session with KH. Since it was urgent ( performance tweak for impending high volume transactions ), I had no choice but to prepare the necessary documentation and approval. The celaka thing was, the bosses had already left work and I needed to get an endorsement via e-mail. Ended up calling the project manager, who was the most pening of the lot. Managed to settle everything by 7:30 pm. Luckily KH never lou gai . Very understanding BF. Hehe. Our dinner venue was Koryori Enoshima , formerly known as Ozeki Italian. Same boss. Same staff. Just different name, different interior, partially different menu. They basically stained the whole interior with white paint. Very woody. A surfboard features prominently on the wall. Too bad no Surf Surf Revolution waiters. One thing irked me thou...