will i am's delayed diary

I am grateful for the prayers, thoughts and concerns that were expressed in response to my post . My aunt finally breathed her last breath in the presence of family members last Thursday. Her suffering has ended and a new journey has begun for her. Mum and I left KL for Bagan Sungai Burung on Friday afternoon. The drive there was quite horrendous during the last leg as the trunk road leading from the PLUS exit to Sungai Burung is really bumpy ( worse than Kuching by a factor of 3 ) and eerily devoid of vehicles. By the time we arrived at the village, it was around 6:00pm. Went to pay my respects and proceeded to make myself useful by folding paper offerings. The funeral was quite unique. To me, it was kinda like a party with a buffet line. It's amazing that a funerary post like this can turn into a food post. Well, dinner was served at 7:00pm-- stewed duck, fried duck, fried suk yu ( blanched and salted Mabong ), stir-fried vegetables, Kung Pao cuttlefish, baked catfish, and seaf

BDAY2008XenriCollage Swiped from williamnyk . Months have passed since my birthday in October and you know what? I have yet to finish blogging about it ( QueerR, choke or not? ). Quite an injustice to the loved ones around me as all your gifts are precious to me. Time to reveal the final gifts: A Nokia 5220 cellphone from KH -- We talk everynight on the phone and my old Samsung SGH-X700 was a bit giler according to him. He could hear a fan-like noise in the background and it irked him to no end. Therefore, he bought me a new phone! Love its music playback quality. Thanks again, baby! A scrapbook from SK -- With lots of love, she made a scrapbook from scratch, highlighting events along the year of 2008. A very thoughtful gift. Thanks dear! A Japanese procelein rice bowl from Jaded Jeremy -- For some reason, I love eating out of Japanese rice bowls and for that same reason, he got me one. KH lugged it back to KL for me. Arigato, JJ-kun! A Braun Buffel half-rim spectacle frame f

In my company, there's this guy who joined my product team last year. We shall call him FZ. He had zero business and technical knowledge of the product, and yet my Fatty Boss pushed him up as a Team Lead. This irked Lan to no end. According to Lan, his only purpose was to sit in on meetings ( blindly passing requirements to the technical team ), writing e-mails to tai chi responsibility and gain credit for reporting project statuses, Facebook, Facebook and more Facebook. And recently, Fatty Boss even introduced him to my JellyfishHead Project Manager as his assistant in overseeing all the implementation sites. I nearly choked on my water. Well, FZ recently sent me an e-mail asking for technical training material. I conveniently ignored it after my collague told me that he is so useless that even after giving him a sample document, he expects you to change it to suit his context. Later, he added me on GTalk. I rejected that too. I wonder how long before the jig is up. :P.

Bah! The Borang BE 2008 has arrived in my postbox. The deadline is the end of April, but perhaps they are trying to take advantage of the Chinese custom of clearing their debts before CNY. :S -- Regards, William

Yup, I was at NZX again, but not to repeat that fiasco at Full House . I was there to meet some ex-classmates from my Kuantan days and since one of them lived nearby and SK wanted so much to see the Disney thingy there ( we ended up taking pictures of the tarps they use to cordone off the exhibition area ). Kit brought his wife, kid and cousin ( my dar pinged immediately! ). Kit's baby took an immediately liking to me, but later switched to my other classmate, Ko. We hypothesised that it was due to his moustache. Ko came with Rene ( his future wife ) who also happens to be from the class next door. And SK was all clingy-clingy and feeding me stuff at the dinner table, so that kinda makes it look like a reunion of 3 couples. Sure to cause a stir in the rumour mill. The ones married with kids have their family to worry about. Those planning to get married have all the preparations to stress over. SK and I merely nod. We were supposed to eat at 7:00pm, but it was delayed for an hour d

A hypothetical question ;P : You're in your room doing a review of the latest Japanese exercise video to hit your download folder. Nearly at the end of your workout , with your target heart-rate nearly achieved and you're all wet and sweaty , your boyfriend gives you a call. In such a situation, what would you do?

My mum's eldest sister has been suffering from fourth stage liver cancer since last year. It has metastasized. She is now on her deathbed awaiting the final release. I pray that her suffering will end soon. Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy. -- Regards, William

Have you ever heard of the Tiong Hua Dance Festival ? If you have not, let me explain. It's actually a dance competition organised by the Anxi Association of Selangor and Kuala Lumpur. For 21 years, they invited various primary schools, secondary schools and dance troupes to take part. This year, it was held at the HGH Convention Center in Sentul. Of the 3 days, I attended the second day, which was dedicated to the secondary school category. 13 Chinese schools participated with 1 absentee. I was quite impressed with the performances. Most had good costume and music, but some of the choreography sucked. Actually, I was expecting traditional dance, but contemporary and modern dance influences had a big showing that night. I guess after 21 years, everyone wanted to try something new to get the judges' attention. My favourite was the second contestant, a school from Petalig Jaya. The music was haunting and the costumes were ghostly and wispy. The dancers seemed like the were glidin

Kuching200813 Swiped from williamnyk . Since our flight out was at 1530, we couldn't do very much that day. We slept in a little and did our packing. POD then brought us out to Top One Foodcourt for a very good Sarawak Laksa . Great rice noodles and gravy so fantastic that you want to lap it all up. After a little more last minute shopping, POD sent us to the airport. Upon arrival, we found out that our flight was CANCELLED. The staff claim that they had notified all passengers. A check on their CRM system revealed that they had sent KH an e-mail. KH receive neither SMS nor e-mail. But anyway, who the hell checks e-mail on their holidays! No guarantee for cancelled flights, only for those that are delayed. Our complaints were ignored. But I think Air Asia is not making good on their promise with all the irate letters I see in The Star lately. Seeing that we had 4 hours to kill, POD brought us back to his place for lunch. His mum had cooked up a storm! Stewed pork, chicken

Way past XMAS, but what to do. I'm tardy. :P. My "eldest" di 's favourite food joint is Yuen Steamboat at Sunway. If I'm not mistaken, I've had three dinners there with him and Takashi. As usual, we loaded up on prawns, but didn't bother with the BBQ chicken wings this time. Managed to catch up with him and the boyfriend regarding work and stuff. I finally managed to pass him his belated birthday present ( MPH vouchers ) and we exchanged Christmas gifts. They gave me a Body Shop gift pack consisting of olive, shea and strawberry soap. I wonder if KH would appreciate "little William" smelling of strawberries... :P. For Takashi, I bought him a Santa Claus-themed papier mache box, perfect for keeping condoms and lube. :P. I also had a gift exchange at the office. It was a simple affair at Old Town , The Pavilion ( more expensive! ). I gave away a pair of Skinxwear bikini briefs and received a cute illuminated glass nativity scene from Memory Lane.

Shoddy workmanship seems to be the norm in the construction sector these days. If you want "better quality" ( read: standard ), better be prepared to fork out another 100k. Talam is the poster boy of sub-standard developers. The current house I'm living in is a great example of their commitment to "quality". So far, my family had to deal with cracks, uneven windows ( more trapezoid than rectangular ), leaking roofs, lousy plumbing and haywire wiring. The latest incident involved a piece of decorative cement centrepiece fall off from the wall of the second floor. It crashed onto the awning ( destroying the tiles in the process ) before crushing the flower pots on my porch! That piece of cement could really smash someone's head in. On the way down, the decorative arch was also ripped off and boy was I surprised to find that it was just polystyrene and plaster ( standard practise according to my civil engineer sister ). Luckily I don't park my car there and

In my product team, there is a serious shortage of resources and talent after a series of resignations last year. As a result of that, certain seniors and team leaders are in hot demand especially when there are multiple projects going on at the same time. The movement of people can be very ad hoc depending on how things go. The term that is usually used is "fire-fighting". From this you can gauge that the situation is quite precarious, like the proverbial "egg on the edge of a buffalo's horn". Such a team leader was recently assigned to my project. We shall henceforth refer to him as Lan. Since his project was done and over with, he was "temporarily" assigned to my project to help "put out some fires". Everything was fine and dandy until his services were required elsewhere. To understand the problem, I must first explain the screwed up way my project is run. In reality, all the resources belong to my fatty boss. However, my project is mana

For some unknown reason, Apollo asked for a lunch outing on Aidiladha. Everyone thought that he had something to announce. A new boyfriend? A new job? Struck 4D? Turned out to be none of the things I mentioned. He genuinely wanted catch up with everyone. Cheh! Haha. Just joking la. Anyway, it was at NZX . Changed quite a bit since I've been there. Many shops have closed down and many shops have took their place. Quite volatile. But in other words, quite fresh. DanielH suggested a boutique restaurant there called Full House . An all-white house, complete with balcony and vintage mini cooper out front. Everything in there cute-sy and for sale. The perfect place to camwhore if not for their horrible service. After waiting for 40 minutes, only 3 out of the 6 sets we ordered arrived. The hunger had thrown DanielH into a foul mood and by our third inquiry, we kinda had the last straw. Reminder to the waitress. Reminder to the supervisor. The supervisor came and ignored our complaints, wi

Wahai anakku Mohammad DanielH, Maafkan bapamu ini yang telah mengabaikan tanggungjawabnya sebagai seorang ketua keluarga yang penyanyang. Berkali-kali, saya telah mengecewakan kamu. Bermacam-macam alasan telah mu dengar setiap kali papa menolak pintaanmu untuk menghabiskan masa bersama-sama. Maafkan papa. Saya gagal mencurahkan kasih sayang dalam kehidupanmu. Saya gagal dalam membimbing dan memberi panduan hidup kepadamu. Papa amat kesal. Ibumu juga tidak mampu mengisi kekosongan ini. Saya akui bahawa ibumu juga bermasalah, seorang kaki botol yang asyik terbelenggu di dalam kemabukan. Segala ini Papa akan cuba atasi. Papa berjanji. Dengarkanlah lagu ini yang Papa pilih istimewa untukmu... Daddy, Daddy wasn't there, Daddy, Daddy wasn't there, To take me to the fair, He seems he doesn't care, Daddy wasn't there, When I was first baptised, When I was critisised, When I was ostrasissed, When I was jazzercised, Eating kidney pies, When I was modernised, When I was circumcise

I can't believe it's already 2009. The year kinda blazed through. The only thing that made me aware of the winding up of the year was the holidays that were piled up against each other. Nine was the day in October that I was born on. Nine was the number of the first house I stayed in KL. Nine is the number of images of my .... Well.... Lol. In terms of work, tings do not seem to have gotten better, but I have come to realise an important thing though- the power of delegation. But I am cautious of it coz when one gets to used to outsourcing one's 'hands' and 'legs', it can be really tough roughing out yourself. My love life did not see many dramatic and emotional episodes. KH would agree that our two trips together were the highlights of the year. But more importantly, I feel that our degree of trust has increased. Health-wise, my acne has gotten under control and I am in the pink of health. However, I have begun to see the ravages of time. My social life is

Please forgive the horrible mistake in the last post. It was meant to be an e-mail... NOT a blog post. :'(. Thanks Javier for the heads up.

I asked Chester where he would be counting down the new year and he replied that it would be at home, on his bed to precise. Following up, I asked whether there would be someone else joining him there and he gave a positive answer- my teddy bear and my bolster. Well, both are technically hump-worthy, but that's besides the point. That sms conversation prompted me to ask this question: What do you have on your bed? I'm very minimalistic in this sense. Nothing more than a pillow and a blanket. And when the weather gets hot, even the pillow and blanket can go (and some clothes too). So, I eagerly await your feedback, be it a legion of soft toys or a couple of Antonio Banderas blow up dolls. Silakan... And oh yeah, HAPPY NO. NINE! -- Regards, William

Kuching20089 Swiped from williamnyk . The day started off with another hearty breakfast out of town ( forgotten the name! ). Four bowls of exquisitely-made noodles with char siew , a piping hot bowl of pork and vegetable soup in the middle and a round of coffee and milo only cost MYR12! It was delicious and freaking cheap. A very quiet place with real honest folks. Nic dropped his wallet there some days back and he actually got it back. After breakfast, he headed back to town pray at the oldest Tua Peh Kong Temple in Kuching. The temple's located at a busy intersection in town and is currently under restoration. Just opposite the road was the Chinese Museum, supposedly the only Chinese Museum in Malaysia, according to the caretaker. The simple, one-room museum housed musical instruments, clothing, artifacts and stories about the various Chinese groups that came to Sarawak in the early days. Finishing that, we visited the Waterfront . Nothing much to see there. Just intere

XMASOffice2008 Swiped from williamnyk . Fancy Japanese desserts and coffee? Don't mind paying a little extra for your sugar rush? If you responded positively to both questions, then you should give MOF a try. Located at The Pavilion and brought to you by Izakaya. The abbreviation stands for Ministry of Food, not the Ministry of Finance. The decor is nice and the place is spacious, but the only thing that irks me is the furniture. Small and cramped. MOF is hardly a place of high customer turnover, so I do not see why they employed such a char chan teng approach. Went there because I managed to "convince" my colleague ( who was celebrating her birthday ) to semi-treat us. Every item on the menu only MYR5!! Hehe. Having the subsidy made the food so much more affordable. I ordered the Macha Imo for MYR11. Like the MOF in Singapore, certain items from the menu come served with an information card to help you better enjoy the food. According to my card, the dish is

Kuching20085 Swiped from williamnyk . Recuperating from the previous day's great outdoors adventure, we decided to take it a little easy and head to the Sarawak Cultural Village , Damai Beach. Breakfast was at the wet market again, but this time we had hand-made noodles. Also delicious. KH tried out Dian Bian Hu -- a Teochew dish that's made out of flour that scraped off from the edges of a giant wok into a broth of pork. Never seen anything quite like it-- eaten with a spoon and has "sick person food" written all over it. It was another bumpy 40-minute car ride out to Damai Beach, Santubong. Was quite a challenge to take pictures of Santubong mountain from the car. There's this legend that Gunung Santubong and Gunung Sejinjang were once extremely beautiful princesses from the Heavens who eventually bloodied each other with a weaving knife and a paddy mortar due to jealousy. Nearly forgotten song. I remember singing it during my primary school days. Signa