The look of love - Bach

This is a double doses from me. Okay, confession: I didn't know much about who compose or write this song - earlier. All I know is that I heard this particular song again when I bought my Sergio Mendes CD.


After googling, I found out that the talented man behind this beautiful song is actually Burt Bacharach. Believe you me, this song has been sung by so many talented singers and most of them are equally good. The song was also featured in Casino Royale 1967. I like this one by Dusty Springfield bcos it is so hauntingly soulful & beautiful.

And I also want to share the second version mainly bcos Bach is playing the piano (I love his expression)and Chris Botti is playing the trumpet .. ohh so beautifully!


I know I always got carried away when I'm excited about a song. Sorry can't help it and can't get enough of this either. Beautiful song. Pump up your volume people and enjoy!
p/s I'm also dedicating this song to sweet niki-chan, cheer up okay'

Gastronomic affair

Okay this entry is going to be about food, glorious food. I had so much of good food these pass few weeks that my blog had more or less turn to food review by yours truly. I hope this trend is not going to last or my waist line will suffer and trust me it is already in danger. If it's not my waist line then its my glucose level. The last time I checked it was at borderline. Gosh!

So we drove back to my parent's place last Friday. On the way, we stopped for lunch at at Tanjong Malim's Yik Mun, an outlet which was made famous by its 'pau'(buns with fillings either with chicken/beef/coconut/red bean/sweet 'kaya').

After much persuasion, my kids agreed to order fried rice. If it was left to them, they wouldn't want to eat anything at all. When the fried rice arrived, the portion was big that it can even feed a third person. Luckily the children were sharing a plate. Both me and hubby ordered chicken chop. I surprised myself bcos after last night's BBQ I thought I had enough of chicken but apparently my taste bud and stomach thought other wise.


Just look at the portion! When it arrived, both hubby and I were looking at each other and said we should have ordered just one...Nevertheless we still managed to finish it. No matter how difficult, I just cannot make myself waste food, especially good food. And this chicken chop was thhhaaat good! And that ladies&gentlemen has always been the problem with me. *sigh*

Dinner time - my mom cooked ox bone soup for us. We had a feast. The bone is as huge as Danial's knee cap!!
Another sweet attraction that has never failed to lure me over and over again is cendol. Sweet dessert. Love it, love it, love it. This is in Sitiawan (check out the cendol man attire!!)


The next day, on our drive back home, we didn't take the usual highway. Instead we took the trunk road which passed Kuala Selangor, a place famous for its seafood, cheap seafood. So we stopped for early dinner. Beautiful sight, breezy atmosphere, hungry stomachs & tasty, tasty crabs. Emm..yummy indeed.

Oooh my waistline...

Ho! Ho! Ho!

To all bloggers who are celebrating - Merry Xmas from me and family & to everybody else - enjoy the holiday, yipee!! Have a safe and fun celebration wherever you are. Spread the peace and love.

BBQ

Muslims all over the world observe Eid-ul Adha last Thursday. This festival is celebrated in conjunction with the pilgrimages performed by Muslims, called the Haj and to commemorate Prophet Abraham's spirit of Qurban or sacrifice. (Prophet Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his elder son, Ishmael, when God commanded him to do so as a test of his commitment to his faith. And at the last moment, God miraculously replaced a ram in place of Ishmael).

It was a quiet affair for my family. On Eid-ul Adha morning my hubby went to the mosque for prayers. The boys suppose to follow their father to the mosque but the amount of excitement they had the evening before with their cousins at K. Long's house left them exhausted. Or they would have waken up so early either to play their Play Station or surfing the TV channels for Cartoon Network/Nickelodeon/Ceria etc. If waking up to school would be this easy…

At night, we had a small BBQ at the house. We were toying between the normal dishes-rice dinner vs BBQ and decided on the latter on the morning itself. Great … now on with the shopping or … so we thought. We got all our ingredients in Giant store the same morning–chicken, lamb, sausages for grilling; honey & mint leaves for marinate; cabbages, carrot & mayonnaise for coleslaw; tomatoes, mince meat, mushroom & spaghetti for spaghetti & sauce of cos’; French fries and 3 bottles of ice-cream soda & pineapple syrup to mix for the drinks. All except for the beef. It was sold out and it was only 1015 in the morning. I guess we have ourselves to blame for doing everything at the last minute. The Giant’s store attendant said they only had limited supply for the day. Who can blame them, it’s a festive day!! After dropping me & groceries home to start with the preparation, my hubby was given the task to search, beg, borrow, steal beef for the night’s menu. Luckily he didn’t has to go far. He found some beef in Tesco but not exactly the right portion/section for grilling but as they said beggar’s can’t be chooser. So any part will have to do.


So our guests – all my in-laws including parents, brothers, sisters and their children arrived. The gathering started with takbir recital by the children lead by their grandmother (my mother in law). And as reward, each received RM2 for their effort from their Puan-grandmother.


Alas, we under estimated the chicken portions (talk about hostess nightmare!!). Luckily we have another bird in the fridge which was quickly thawed and cut and tossed into the marinate sauce and onto the fire. Needless to say, it got into the disappearing act by many still hungry stomachs lol.



My husband did most of the grilling and cooking that night. At the end, he passed it to several of his young nephews who divided the task to the griller, the fanner, the inspector, the awaiting in-line and of cos the many spectators!



Our guests left the house close to 1130pm after the usual ritual of Nescafe. During the clearing and cleaning up, I realized my feet and soles were killing me. So after rubbing some medicated ointment I asked the kids to apply pressure to my feet by stepping on them but still that didn’t do the trick so at the end it was my husband turn to relieve me of the pain by applying harder pressure with his hands. I could ask him to go on forever but both of us were already too sleepy.

And I have to wake up early the next day to pack bcos we are driving up to Lumut to my hometown for the weekend and as for hubby, he has to drive all the way while the whole family snoring away…hi!hi!

Ooh my feet!!

Dinner with the girls

I treated the girls from the office to dinner last Tuesday night. We were suppose to go to Marche' at the Curve but when I called to make reservation, it was fully booked due to a charity dinner. So we shifted to Plan B where I decided to go to Jack's Place at 1 Utama. I was on leave on the said date so I drove from home :) while the rest of the girls rushed all the way from the office.
Our orders were lobster-crab mushroom something (forgot the name) and garlic bread (complimentary) for appetiser, main course were lamb chop, baked kurau (TC was trying to be health conscious -as if :p), mixed grill, lamb & fish and grilled chicken. Desserts were mango jelly float, fruit platter??(TC again!), banana split (hooray) & peach melba. Both me and Phoena had coffee latte and everybody else dessert as well!! lol
Either we were very hungry or the food was really that good whereby we emptied our plates very fast including desserts!! Talk about hungry! The manager (who was attending to us) was really pleased with us.
At dinner table we talked, no, gossip about a lot of things then the subject turned to Demi Moore, her diet (something about sun baked rice OMG), her body-wow and of cos' her Ashton Kurcher! Yes, for that Demi Moore is our idol!! Until NJ pointed out that Anita Sarawak's hubby is actually 22 years younger than her? Is that for real???!! Hooray, Kak Nita...lol!

We were laughing very hard by then. It was a fun outing. Since all of them have to work the next day (except for me) so we thought of calling it a night early. But not before stepping into La Senza the next door shop followed by Elle store, tried few shoes in Nose and Vincci. Even had time to browse for books in MPH. Hmm...girls, we seemed to lose our sense of timing when it comes to shopping or window shopping...

Mas Que Nada - Sergio Mendes

I'm thrilled to have bought this album. Again, it brought back many childhood memories - listening to my abah (dad) and his brothers (my uncles) playing or rather showing off their records collection to each other. I must say my music preferences are largely influenced by these men and their selections which I listen to during my growing up years.
What's also interesting about this compilation CD is that the packaging is made of recycled materials, both the board and the paperfoam tray. Meaning it's biodegradable. That's so cool! Now we can appreciate great music and be mother nature friendly at the same time.
There are so many brilliant tracks here but I leave you with the most upbeat one which so not recently made a comeback by Black Eye Peas. But I prefer the original anytime. Enjoy!

The Party

Last Monday nite, my office division had a staff appreciation party...yes you read me right party on Monday night. These pictures were taken from my 2.0 megapix handphone camera hence the blurness. Sorreeyy!!!
It was a night full of laughter, fun, music and goodies to be won. The party was to celebrate our 10 awards sweep at the last PPFM Oscar Night. The party committee also created another 25 staffs awards to deserving staffs (just for fun)! Some of the quirky titles were Jurassic Park and Lost World Best Friend - these are the 2 smoking areas in my company. Two of my staffs were nominated and one won (is this good or bad?? lol); The Walking Google, Most Friendliest (my staff won this); Cafe's Best Friend, Most Sexiest Male/Female, Next CEO, Meanest Look, The Loudest, Most Quiet, The Invisible, Most Stressed & Calm, Office My Second Home, Craziest staff, Best Smile, Trendy Hairdo and etc. A trophy plus a RM50 voucher awaits every winner. In addition, 90 lucky draws were drawn that nite with prize range mainly on handphones, MP3 players, tv and others. I won a RM300 Jusco shopping voucher. Yesss!! I can go shooppingg...I can go shopping...

Since I don't drink I had the duty to chauffeur a colleague home after her fourth glass. But after several quick test she proved to me that she was still very sober. So I drove her back to the office where she took her own car back. I reached home at 1130pm only to realise that I forgot to bring the house key. After several futile attempts in calling my hubby's mobile (he was already asleep), my son came to the rescue when I called his mobile phone instead. Phew. Luckily I already took leave the next day.

A Cup of Comfort

Currently I'm reading the above. Not exceptionally interesting but can do especially to kill time whenever I'm waiting in banks or clinic etc. No, I still haven't finish reading Old-Girl Network (quite draggy). I'm reading both books but not simultaneously but yes I have finished Lost & Found (remarkable). What are you reading now?

Fridge magnet episode

Kak Long, my eldest sis-in law went to Cairo, Egypt and as usual when she goes anywhere she never forgets to get us the siblings (and me the out law :p) souvenirs. I said I wanted King Tut's fridge magnet. And this pharaohs one almost close to one. Isn't this cool? I like...Oooh I'm so happy to add it onto my 'fridge' collection:)
My youngest sis in law collects Star Buck's city mugs which display the city's name on it. Oh wow, it's the first time I've seen it. Kinda like the Hard Rock Cafe's t-shirt or merchandise. Quite expensive thou'. Anyways I'm very much contented with my magnet. Thanx K.Long.

This Guy's In Love with you - Faith No More

Okay as promised few days back, here's the cover version of the original song by Herb Alpert, which in my humble opinion 'really not bad at all'. In fact, Mike Patton's voice was awesome. And mind you this was perfomed LIVE! Cool.

ps/ I was watching the movie 'Failure to Launch' starring Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew McConaughey last night and this song was in it, what a coincident!

Crab rassam, mutton and banana leaf rice

Last Wednesday, my colleagues and I took Cristina out for lunch at a banana leaf rice shop in PJ. This is one of the most authentic shop I know or have been introduced to. It is not a posh place but food is awesome. The eatery is actually an old bungalow which half of it has been converted to a shop. We reached there at 1:00pm and the outer session of the shop was already occupied with diners. The shop's speciality is crab rassam. It is really out of this world! It was quite spicy even for some of us (me particularly) but Cristina loved it. We also had mutton curry - delicious!! Some of my colleagues took ponni rice (non carbohydrate rice). Even our plain water which was served in metal cups had some herbs in it. How authentic is that? Our expat friend surprised us by displaying her knowledge on how to properly wrap the banana leaf 'plate' after her meal. Needless to say, we found it very difficult to concentrate in the office after our hearty meal.

Cristina will be flying off to London tomorrow.

I can't sleep

It’s 4 o’clock in the morning and I can’t sleep.

The stress of making sure the training I’m organizing and attending at the same time is finally taken its toll. For the past 2 days, I’ve done nothing else but scrutinizing our scheduling software with the consultant from London searching for solutions and cleaning up messes in the data management. Everything must be completed or at least I must get the know–how by Friday (bcos that’s the last day she’ll be here). And I have this sickening feeling that time is not on our side. On top of that, I still have to go thru all these work related emails and the last time I checked there were about 179 still un-cleared in my inbox.

I reached home from work at 8:30pm just now. Fell asleep at 10:15pm and at about 0320am was wide awake. No amount of make believe dream can lure me back to sleep. I usually try to think of something good to dream about before I fall asleep, not that it help me to dream a good dream bcos I hardly do nor fall asleep for that matter but it’s just something which I normally do. Am I making any sense here? Excuse me but I guess this is what happen when insomnia kicks in (I think). So that is when I decided to go into the ‘net’ instead. Alas, my internet connection is down (just my luck *sigh*).
Oh well, I’m writing this in Microsoft Word to be paste in the blog later. Meaning this can only be posted tonight.

Maybe this is all but a dream or worse … I could be sleep walking!!! Ha! Ha!
Okay I’m gonna try the internet connection again and sleep trying.
For everybody else out there (depending where you are on the globe)... have a good night sleep and rest.

This Guy's In Love with You -Herb Alpert

I heard this song when visiting sophie's blog .
Oooohh..it brings back childhood memory when my uncle use to play Herb Alpert at his house. Thou back then, I was too young to know who he was. But how I adore this one. It's the kinda of song which I like to hear on rainy weekend morning, while sipping tea or coffee for that matter. *sigh* Heaven!

I also found a modern remake of it which I will post later to compare. But until then, hope you enjoy this one.
It is still 4 days away from weekend...

Rain on me

This event happened a few weekends ago. Believe it or not but I'm a fan of Rain (yeah at this age!!). There you go, my confession - I'm out of the closet. Ha! Ha! My other blog, which was created much earlier compare to this current blog can testify to that! But to be honest, nowadays I already toned down and more calmer. More or less come to my senses and behaving like a normal fan and not a fanatic anymore. Much to the relieve of my colleagues and people around me.
Anyways, the said party was to celebrate Rain Msia (MJJH) 2nd birthday. And I'm happy to share that I'm not alone (even at this age) to be crazy over Rain. We are like one big happy family there in MJJH. We intially met in the internet forum and the young girls actually help me to navigate my way around the 'net' world. So I learned and we bonded. Thru Rain Msia, we had many small gatherings like this one.

Sarangheyo Rain ^__^

another work excuse

I'm so out of touch with blogging. Can hardly allocate time to do so. In addition, the network was down since yesterday, so there was nothing much I could do.

I really miss blogging. Usually I blog at night on weekdays. But for the past few days I was so tired that I felt asleep just after 10pm. There was one time, I felt asleep while my boys were still jumping on the same bed next to me.

Starting tomorrow, I'll be involve in a 5 days training which I have been organising since 4 months ago. After that, hopefully my work pace will slow down a bit.

I feel bad for the boys bcos it is school holiday and we don't actually have a plan to go for any holiday. I still have 15 days of leave still due for the year. I can only carry forward 5 days to 2008, meaning I have another 10 days to kill or it will be waste. I don't consider myself a workaholic but there are just too many stuffs to be settle. Okay, I'll stop whinning now!