will i am's delayed diary

Nasi Kunyit , swiped from williamnyk on Flickr. Coincidentally, this year's All Souls' Day coincided with Deepavali. And being a Saturday, the whole tribe could travel to Teluk Intan to visit my late father's grave. Woke up at 4:00 am that day and my past working hours had made it easier for me to get out of bed. At first I thought my BIL couldn't make it, but he came anyway. The fourth quarter is always his busy period. Since he drove, I took the opportunity to catch more ZZZs. My busy working schedule these past three weeks had taught me the importance to reduce one's sleep deficit. Made good time actually. Started out before six and the PLUS highway was quite smooth. In addition to that, the trunk road from Bidor to Teluk Intan was devoid of the usual mish-mash of trucks. Arrived some time after 8:00 am. Just in time for breakfast at the Jalan Maharani food stalls. By the time we sat down, the table was already full of food. BIL had bought apam balik ( too thi

Once again, the whole tribe followed mum and I to Sunday mass. And you get no points for guessing that we had lunch at Paradigm Mall. RHB had some kind of road show there with a giant monopoly sort of game to attract kids ( and ultimately their parents of course ). Just with a roll of the dice, you can get freebies. Of course the kids were interested with the balloon animals that the sullen clowns were making. Big Monster asked for a machine gun while Little Monster got a teddy bear. Big Monster had a hankering for chicken, so we ate at Nando's ( A tip on Foursquare made me laugh: "Senyumlah sikit..." ). I made the mistake of ordering mild instead of lemon & herbs. That made feeding time with the kids quite challenging. Little Monster kept complaining that the food was spicy and wailed a lot. Practically fat lan char . His mum calmed him down and he eventually fell asleep without eating much. Luckily Big Monster was more tolerant since we ordered his favourite chip

Quite a stroke of luck that I managed to salvage my weekend. Colleagues covered my shift because on weekdays I prefer to come in early. Pigged on my bed till 9:00 am. Drove over to Bandar Kinrara to pick SK up then we sped off to Seri Petaling for breakfast at Restoran Alison . Been ages since I actually sat down and ate there. Naturally we ordered from the two famous stalls-- one selling chicken rice and the other Hakka noodles. The roasted items from chicken rice stall had dropped in quality. The char siew was too sweet and the siew yuk was too salty. Oh well. Jalan-jalan at the wet market after that. Didn't spend too much time there. Spotted a middle-aged gay couple there buying groceries. Wonder if one day I will be out at the pasar with KH, buying supplies for a romantic live-in weekend. Got home some time before noon and dropped my mum off at my sister's place to babysit. My Almera was due for its 5,000km ( but I had only clocked 3,200 on my odometer! ) service so I

Note: With me being stationed at PJ City, I had been driving instead of taking the LRT. So it was some time since I accompanied KH on the train home... On Tuesday ( please apply the will.i.am. time zone here :P ), KH and I got off work at the same time. I braved the PJ roundabouts while he joined the sardine brigade at the LRT. Waze guided me to the Seri Petaling LRT station by the way of least resistance. The timing was quite impeccable. I just needed to delay for five minutes and I managed to catch him at the station as he just exited. Fetched him home. Though the distance wasn't far, I was happy enough to be able to see him briefly and ask him about his day. Of course it did turn into a grope fest at some traffic light stops and I would certainly like to drive slower to prolong the session. LOL. Dropped him off at his condo and he would give me a peck on my cheek. During the drive home, I would have a smile plastered on my face. Ah, the simple pleasures of life.

BIL had bought MYR100 worth of coupons for a charity sale on Sunday, so I had to sacrifice much needed sleep to go there. Sis and the kids came along because BIL was tied up with his year end workload. Proceeds from the sale at the Bandar Puteri Puchong indoor badminton complex ( home of Michael's Badminton Academy, chock full of sweaty teenagers ) were for Da Zi Jiang Tang, a Buddhist organization to helps orphans and old folks. Plenty of food available for sale. Took my breakfast there-- fried noodles, yam cake, assorted kuih and teh tarik . From there, went straight to church using the LDP only to be greeted by an abnormal jam near the exits to Sunway and Federal Highway. Turns out that the crawl was due to Adidas King of the Road. Ugh. Thought these things finish earlier. Of late, marathons seem to be all the rage. And collecting finisher badges and jerseys are becoming a hobby. The more zealous would fly around the world to run. To our relief, Little Monster didn't

Been working my ass off ever since the system went live. Coming in at the wee hours and leaving late at night. As the Chinese like to say-- "No day, no night". Or worse still, "Got time to die, no time to fall sick". KH had bought tickets for Agatha Christie's "The Mousetrap" ( or some reason, KH always tersasul say "The Mouse Hunt" ) and it wasn't cheap. Naturally he was worried that I couldn't make it and he hadn't seen me for more than a week. Gotta admit that I was a bit disappointed that he seemed to be more worried about the play rather than my current work conditions. But that couldn't be farther from the truth. Just that KH often says the wrong things at the wrong times. I know that he always thinks of me. But anyway, with the system stabilising by the end of the week, I sat down with my boss and arranged a work shift so that I could take Saturday afternoon off. Naturally, KH was thrilled. Picked him up at about 1:00

Hari Raya Haji was a working day for me. I think my client was quite shrewd to have chosen to go live on the Saturday before it. Any hiccups on the working Monday and one could use the public holiday on Tuesday as a breather to deploy fixes or in the worst case scenarios to fall back to the old system. I came in at 4:00 am only to be told that the host system had not run its batch yet. They had delayed the processing due to a major glitch the day before. Major patching went on till 4:00 am and subsequent transactions were throttled to a snail's pace. Thirteen thousand transactions basically took five hours. Only at 5:00 pm did they begin the host batch. Since it would be another three to four hours, I drove back home to catch some Zs. Took me a while to fall asleep a my mind was quite active. Luckily it rained heavily, think that help me sleep. However, it wasn't very deep sleep. Had a skanky dream about an ang moh twink in my bed. Remember that he had a pleasant face, long-

Nasi Lemak Wisdom , swiped from williamnyk on Flickr. The project that I had been working on since August last year finally went live on the 12th of October after one postponement. Truth be told, the scope was too big and the timeline too rushed to produce a good end result. And it was muddled by internal squabbles between teams, unclear requirements from users ( exacerbated by indifferent business analysts on our end ), some sloppy development work on our end, bad feng shui , gung ho upper management, poor dissemination and coordination by the project management office and difficulty working with a 'black box' type of technical framework. Till the final week before D-day, we were still in the dark about many things. Wasn't even sure if the production environment was ready. Anyway, they finally told us to check the parameters on Friday night and by then I wasn't even sure if Saturday was actually with live production data or just a test run. Went to the data centre on

Google Wishes Me Happy Birthday , swiped from williamnyk on Flickr. I'm the not the kind of the person who always looks at the calendar. Hence when my birthday came up, I didn't even know it was on a Wednesday. Finally, KH had the chance to actually bring me out for a birthday meal on the exact date since we were working close to each other ( we've been missing out on the simplest of things, things that most couples take for granted ). He suggested TEN at Marc Residences and unfortunately, I was late for lunch. Kinda bad timing cause my project was going live in a couple of days and the preparatory work was less than satisfactory. I was all worked up and stressed. Definitely not the right mood to enjoy fine dining. But anyway, I tried my best. Poor KH didn't get to see me at my most appreciative and happy. :P. When we walked in, the restaurant was quite empty ( only three tables occupied including us ). More staff than customers. Naturally, the service was better.

Honey Chicken , swiped from williamnyk on Flickr. Big Monster and his dad went to the National Science Centre on Sunday night, leaving his mum and Little Monster tagging along to church. Had to continuously feed the tyke to keep him happy-- chocolate chip cookies, apricots and crisps. Lunch was at Purple Cane Tea Restaurant , Paradigm Mall. Little Monster didn't mind going there again although he was just there the day before. Any kai kai is good kai kai . The kid loved the fried noodles there. But after having his fill, he couldn't sit still any more. When the head waiter came over to play with him, he practically froze up. But with his mum, he threw tantrums and demanded attention. Went to Uniqlo to look for bargains and mum walked out with some tops. Did some shopping at Daiso too. Before leaving, stopped at Hokkaido Ice Cream for some dessert. Strangely, Little Monster preferred the waffle over the ice cream. Seems to be quite averse to cold items. Same went for the 3Q P

wine glasses , swiped from Xipe Totec39 on Flickr. Saturday was another working day for me, but I just clocked in a few hours after having a WTM breakfast. Arrived in the office at about 11:00am; had free nasi lemak compliments of my client; waited for the file to be loaded; found that the transaction settings were incomplete; waited for my client to complete the set up; verified the results; found that there were problems; had free lunch of fried chicken and stingray curry; unable to resolve the problem cause the other team didn't come in; clients went home, so did we! Reached home at about 3:30 pm. Should have rested, but I didn't. Went for a swim instead. Dug out my black Aussiebum trunks and when I stretched the material, I heard a crackling of sorts. Kinda like crumpling a pair of undies with dried cum on it. Think it's about time to retire that pair. Luckily it didn't slip off during my laps. Dried myself off and went up to SK's place for dinner. Two of SK&#

Double Shot Latte , swiped from williamnyk on Flickr. Met up SK, Lifebook and KH at Empire Subang on Sunday after mass. First time ever, I was jamming into the mall and had to park at B4. Good sign for them. Lunch was free that day, compliments of SK cause she managed to hit her sales quota for 2013. Ate at El Fresco , Jaya Grocer where the concept is you buy the ingredients and pass it to them to cook. If the ingredient is more than MYR20.00, the cooking surcharge is waived. One can pay extra for side dishes and sauces. A very food court style to the place but seems popular ( several sexy arm cuties were dining there! ). Not bad as you can ensure the freshness of the food. Came out stinking of food fumes though. Up next was double shot lattes at Whisk . My first time there and it was horribly stuffy. Ordered some cakes too. Made our mandatory visit to Kitchen Shop too, but didn't buy anything. The rest went home, but mum and I loitered at Tangs. It was their anniversary sale, but

Porky Breakfast , swiped from williamnyk on Flickr. Worked on Saturday again. The whole day ugh. Started with breakfast at Restoran Yoong Seng . Found that their pork ball noodles had increased in price to MYR5.00. An increase of MYR0.50! At least they gave an extra portion of noodles. In the office, my senior manager had a very long face. Like someone had deleted his favourite his porn stash. The reason for his unhappiness was the fact that the project was not ready to be delivered. With just two weeks before the projected deployment date, error logs were still being raised and the rate at which we were closing them was not satisfactory. With every ten closed, five was reopened and not counting those fresh from the oven! Actually it's not quite my business, but I was seconded to help out. Worse thing was that they expected you to help, but could not furnish you with complete instructions. This translated to a trial and error approach that not only wasted time, but demoralized sta