will i am's delayed diary

I just got back from a trip to Osaka and I have tonnes of photos to process and notes to elaborate. And of course I came back with spy shots of cute Japanese boys! But that will come two months later. Hahahahaha. In the mean time, here's a submission from KH while he was going home on the STAR line. So unbecoming of him to spy at twinks in my absence! Hmph. But anyway, enjoy Innocent Ignatius with his angelic face.

Monday was my replacement leave for YDPA's birthday celebration on Saturday. Woke up early and went over to my sister's place for a bakzhang breakfast. Little Monster was also up and he was super sticky to his mother. When she left for work, he threw a big tantrum and rushed out to the porch crying saying that his mum had not kissed him yet ( although in fact she did ). Once he had got it all out of his system, he was cheerful as though nothing happened. Fed him breakfast and played with him till lunch time. Went out to have lunch with KH after that. Took a walk to Central Market. Been ages since I've been to that tourist trap, but its Art Deco facade and vintage tiles still captivate. Precious Old China was our choice of venue as KH had not tried it. For some reason, the air conditioning wasn't working well that day, so it was quite a stuffy affair among all those antiques. We ordered the Devil Chicken Curry and Okra Kerabu . Unfortunately, the latter took very lon...

Been ages since we tried out a new Japanese restaurant. So when SK sent me screenshots of an article about Kogetsu in the newspaper, I agreed to it in a heartbeat ( already very quick by my fickle Libran standards :P ). Initial guests were SK, SK's granny, mum and I. Roped in the fifth person, who else if not my boyfriend KH? But it wasn't entirely due to the fact that I let him into my pants-- with his CIMB credit card, the fifth diner eats for free. Haha. Drove to Saujana Hotel in one car. Went up to the main building only to be told that it was near the recreational club instead. Turns out that the restaurant is a low wooden building located next to a lake. Like a nice little ryokan in Subang Jaya. We were given a table with a view of the lake. Beautiful to see the rippling reflection of the sky while shoving sashimi into my mouth. LOL. FYI, the buffet at Kogetsu is ala-carte with 99 items on the menu. As with all places that attempt to do an ala-carte buffet, they usua...

Mum ajak me pergi pasar on Saturday and a neighbour tagged along. The old lady seemed thrilled for the chance to go to a little-explored wet market. Found parking easily at the multi-level car park. Life is easier when you're willing to pay. The place was a little quieter than usual during the school holidays, but not by much. Breakfast was at Restoran Sun Sea which houses the famous pork noodles ( more like the bastard child of pork noodles and seafood noodles ) of yesteryear. Their business is a far-cry from what it was more than a decade ago. No more crowds. No more queues. But then, I did not eat that. Think their soup is a bit sickly-sweet. Simply ordered from wantan noodle stall at the back and boy was it bad. Mum's choice of mee kolok was much better. Also noticed that the Penang curry laksa stall is now manned by two twinks. From their looks, definitely the sons of the owner. Not bad. Back home, I swept and mopped the floor. High time to clear the cockroach kill...

In the same week, Little Monster visited the A&E twice. Scary, right? The first time happened right after the kid visited his paediatrician for fever and cough. The kid has mild asthma, so the doctor prescribed him some chewable medication. For some reason, his mum decided to dig out some of his leftover medication from the refrigerator. The blister pack looked very familiar to me. By the time I had realised that it was actually adult flu medication, it was too late, my sister had already fed him the pill. Yikes. I consulted Antinous on the matter. He warned me to look out for breathing difficulties during sleep. That kinda freaked my sister out, so she quickly brought him to TDMC. Since it was a school night, Big Monster was already sleeping, so I went over to keep an eye on him. While waiting, I tried out my new toy, which was the Chromecast that just arrived that day. Not a very useful device, but its two primary uses was good enough for me. One was its YouTube casting functio...

My church organized a Duanwu festival celebration after mass on Sunday. Just a small affair with presentations on how to make dumplings, dumpling wrapping competition, food, music and singing. The MC went on and on about the history of the festival but I don't think the audience was very interested. Everyone was hyped about the competition! Moi: Wah, she really can talk hor? Aunty: Sunday school teacher ma... Lunch for me was a bit of porridge and noodles from the temporary stalls. Initially, there was a lot of confusion, but the activities went smoothly after that. They set up dumpling making stations-- tables underneath a suspended ladder. On each table was glutinous rice, fatty pork, black eyed peas, dried chestnut, dried shrimp, salted egg yolks and bamboo leaves. A bunch of ham sui chou were tied on the rungs of the ladder, suspended over each table. Mum entered the contest in the individual category and she came out with third prize. Not bad at all. Judging was base...

A major deployment was performed for my client spanning almost two days. Six am on Saturday, I went into their data centre to meet my bleary-eyed colleagues who had been there since midnight. They told me there was a problem when starting up the system. Had to do some manual intervention to make it work. I checked the logs and found that my program couldn't connect to the interface server. Koyak! . Contacted the IT PM and she quickly mobilized her network team. Settings and firewall rules had been 'settled' days before and yet we still see these problems on D-Day. As the hours went by, I saw the network and firewall team fighting with the AS/400 team on the What's App group that was created to coordinate our actions. So funny that they couldn't agree on the actual IP address to be used. Seeing that it was going no where, we went out for a nasi lemak breakfast at a nearby food court. During the whole meal, the tone was quite sombre because of the recent salary inc...