Not A Banana

I am glad i am not a banana. Hehe.

I am glad that my parents decided to send me to learn Chinese for 6 years so that i am not just yellow skin but all white inside Malaysian Chinese, a.k.a all westernized inside but only physically looking like a Chinese.

I think it is a pity for those who do not know Chinese because there are so much that they are missing. How could one really fully understood the depths and knowledge of the Chinese from reading all the translated books? How could one really understood the meaning of each unique chinese character? There are just so much knowledge and depths to them, afterall it is culture that has thousands years of history. The only way to really understood them is to read and see them from their original novelty.

So yes, i am proud to me a Malaysian Chinese who is not a banana.

Plus, i am happy that i could go to Karaoke and sing my heart out by reading the lyrics from the screen. I am glad that i do not need to memorize the lyrics of my favorite Chinese song. I am glad that i do not need someone to read me the lyrics in advance while i am singing (well i need to do that to KC and  it is tiring).

And i am even happier today because my dad is back from KL and he got me a lot of Chinese magazines! Yeppy! Time to stop CNN and just indulge myself in some fashion world and gossips!

Angels and Demons

We have planned to go to the gym for the last 2 weeks but were always being caught by the wrong timing.

First, it was the migraine that we both had from the hot weather and the hot from the oven fried chicken we had for lunch. Then my father came to town and we took it as an excuse to not go. After that it was the normal excuses of the gym will be too crowded during weekends and also the too tired after work excuse.

Today, i almost wanted to keep my lazy ass stick on the chair when KC told me that he was very sleepy but i could go to the gym while he sleeps at the pool side. Straight away i told him to forget it and to go tomorrow but he insisted and luckily he insisted.

It took me a few moments before i agreed to go. The angel and the demon in me were fighting in my head to win this war. Finally the angel zapped a very powerful message in my head. He said "If you do not go today, you will never go tomorrow or after. There will always be more excuses. The first step is always difficult!" And viola, i got my lazy ass from the chair and changed and was excited to go.

Yeah! Finally, i went to the gym today.

It has been a year since my last work out. I did it because i was in Beirut and i was bored. There was a treadmill in the house so i decided to kill my time on it. A year later, i step up on the a treadmill again.

It was difficult. Only managed to do a 20 minutes of treadmill before i cool myself down on cycling. At the end of the day, i was tired for doing so little. I actually had butter legs when i walked back to the car and i was so tired and sleepy especially after dinner.

I thought i could sleep early tonight but ironically it is 215am here in Algiers but i am still widely awake. The tiredness in my has gone and i feel fresh and healthy (well the angel is telling me so)...

More to go tomorrow. Well i just hope i can keep my spirit up for it and last long enough until i return to my la-la land. *wink*

One Fine Day

When everyone has had one of those bad days when nothing is going smoothly, today is one of those fine days where everything settles itself in perfect place.

Today is one of those days where....

• every song from my mac sounds really accommodative to my emotions
• i woke up feeling energized with a great night sleep
• the house is spotless clean when the maid decided to come 1 day earlier without announcing
• the aroma of the boiling soup let you know that there will be a great meal later in the evening
• the weather is perfect with the right temperature and wind
• you realised you have done a lot yet there is still plenty of time for you to read a magazine
• great hair day!
• radiant skin and glowing
• most importantly, i got my confirmation on my flight back to hometown

Well, today is also one of those days where my stomach is growling with hunger but i dont know what to eat. Ended up eating some melon and bread.....

Bye Bye Singleton!

Wee!!!!

Another great news travelled to me from KL today.

After being a singleton for some time, my best bud finally found someone who is worthy of her love!

On 30th July, 2010, she waved bye bye to her singleton life and am now a woman happily in love! Isn't that the greatest and sweetest news one could get in a far away land?

Have fun dear and may your love life be a blissful and wonderful journey!

Love!

My Simple Life

Was debating what a simple life is with a friend.

He kept telling me life will only be simple if we go back to the past, where there is no technology and hence the eliminations of all the problems we face now. We should go back to the time when we hunt and plant for our food and when we can just pick up any stones from any corner as means of trade. He said he wants a place just like the Pandora in Avatar.

I beg to differ. I do not believe the external environment should control how we view how and what a simple life should be and is. I think it should start from within ourself, on how we think and how we feel about things.

We debated for a long time until i was totally tired from typing the same lines again and again. At the end, i told him that if we could not change our mentality and still carry the present ones with us and try to go back to the past, the same problems will arise too. There will still be stealing of food, stealing of money, geniuses coming up with brilliant ideas on how to commonize a money systems and so on. The only way to prevent these evils  is when we as human are happy and content with what we have. If we are happy to have enough food then why should we have money in the first place? Why cant we just share food?

Little did he knows that back in the year 1978, the Khmer Rouge who took over Cambodia tried to achieve this simple life by throwing the whole nation into nothing but farming only. However, the leaders of this political party brought along the mind set of 1978 when they tried to go back to ancient time. The results was a huge massacres and torturing of people and ended up 1/3 of the Cambodia populations died due to hunger, overworked and tortures beyond comprehension. There is currently a trial in Cambodia set up by the UN to trial those leaders who are responsible and this incident had been labelled a a genocide.

He said that the world has comes to a stage where simply life will never be able to attain again. With the technology and everything, there is no turning beg. And again i differ because yes there is always the latest technology available but doesnt mean you have to have it. Just like the Iphone. Mac company did not point a gun at our head and force us to buy it. We want it because we desire it when we could just simply use a very simple handphone. It is about how we balance out our needs and wants. It is about our mentality.

At the end of the day, he ended the debate by saying i think so because i am old! *faint*

Tick Tock, Tick Tock...

I am sure every once in a while, everyone will receive some telemarketing calls. Whether they are selling loans from banks or insurances from insurers, they will always began with "Hi, is this XXX" politely.

I am not a fan of receiving these calls. Sometimes these calls even bothers and irritates me, especially if i was driving or in a meeting. Of course i will try to be as polite as possible in rejecting their products because i understood that these callers are simply doing their job. The root to these devilish calls are not the callers but those who sold our phone numbers to them.

But the thing with these callers are they are not very courteous most of the time. They started off politely but when were rejected, most of them turned into a sour plum. I have had rude responses from them a lot of time. When i said "Sorry, thanks for calling but i am not interested," instead of just saying thank you and hang up, some of them replied or even asked rudely or impatiently "Why ar?", "You hear me out first," or even just a abrupt dead tone from them.

Well i guess when one is being rejected too many times, it hurts.

This morning, i received one of these calls. Now the thing with Malaysians is i am not sure if they are not courteous enough, or they are just simply not that smart. I do not mind wasting my money and time answering you call when i am in Malaysia, but not when i am in overseas. When you dial a local number and the ringing tone is different from the usual sound, it is definitely 100% sure that the person is in overseas and as a courtesy or just using 1% or your common sense, you should just hang up and try again another time. Why? Because the phone bill will be very expensive, because the callers should know their calls are not welcome, because the receivers will be prone to more anger when receiving a rubbish call like this, and most importantly overseas calls are only meant for families and emergencies only!

But NO!

So i picked up the phone just to answer to some hospital calling trying to sell me plans. Immediately my anger stroke.  By the end of the conversations, i cursed so loudly! Here is how it went:

"Hello, is this Miss Chen?"

"Yes, that's me. What is this about?"

"Miss Chen, i am calling from XX Hospital and ......( i cant understand a single word she said here)"


"I am in overseas..." (getting really impatiently)


"When are you coming back ar?"

"A year after."

"When again ar??" (by now i think my head was burning with fire!)

"I said i am in overseas and only be back after a year!"

"Ok la ok la!" (sounding very rude and just hung up!)

I was furious!!! What is this with that kind of attitude as if i was the one who called and interrupted her! Plus i have to pay like RM10 phone bill just to get treated like this??? I didnt even ask for it! See, this is what Malaysians are all about! And this is why sometimes i do not know if i should pick up a call when i see it is a Malaysia number. And now i will not know if a call is urgent or not!

Stupid!

Food Poisoning

For the passed 2 days.

Enough said.....

When You Wish Upon A Star....

Remember the familiar tune from Disney?

"When you wish upon a star, and no matter where you are, when you wish upon a star you wish comes true..."

I bet we all had our wish when we were little. Whether is about the cute guy sitting across you in your class to speak to you, or maybe a birthday gift, or even getting flying colors for your exam...

And i bet out of all these wishes, we as Malaysian must have had wished for snows, autumnsand winters in the country when we were younger. We dreamt of waking up seeing snow flying around in the air and that we have a chance to ski or just wearing some nice winter fashions.

I guess we all dreamt and wished that when we were younger because it seems like a fantasy, because we didnt know about the consequences that will fall upon us if that happened, because we were not that aware and did not understand about science and the environment. Because we were young and naive.

Why am i rattling about all these? Because i had a panic attack few days ago right before bed time. The reason? Well i was watching Cnn and Al Jazeera news. The news were filled with man made disasters from the oil spills in Gulf and China to the wars in Afghanistan and weather disasters from around the globe. While the Europeans are suffering from the scorching sun and the unbearable heats, Asia continents such as Thailand and China are having storms. Weather has became so extreme and weird that they do not look logical anymore! And that panicked me.

Sometimes i tried to console myself by telling myself that the world's weather has been so for thousand of years. The only reason it look so frequent now is because with the latest technology we have, we are able to communicate more efficiently now than ever. Hence we are able to see how the world is doing compared to our ancestors.

I am not really a firm believer in end of the world. I guess everyone will die, sooner or later. So that is no point fearing about dying in the coming future when you should just live your life to your fullest everyday, make sure that you have no regrets in the future. But when you are overwhelmed by all the disasters and bad news for more than 30 minutes a day, they will get into your head and you will panic, just like me.

That is why i mentioned earlier, a girl could only watch and read heavy stuff for that long and then must be fill by gossips, fashions, blings blings and cosmetic for her to be less bitchy..

So be careful of what you wished upon a star or you might regret it later... haha

Life's A Beach!

Summer is here in Algeria after the very long months of windy days and low temperatures.

Now 4 months before i came over here, KC promised me a membership at the Sheraton Club so that we could go enjoy ourselves with the private beach and also the gym facilities. So happily i came to Algiers and waited patiently for that to realize. Days turned to weeks and weeks turned to months but there was still no membership.

His excuse was initially from it is still the cold month and too cold to go to the beach and turned to he hasnt gotten all the necessary documents needed in order to sign up for the membership. Well the funny thing here about signing up for a fitness membership is not just a mere action of paying the money. Apart the money, which in this case will cost us an arm, a whooping 190,000 dinars or RM8k, the club will need us to submit health report from doctor (just to prove that we are healthy and will not die suddenly from gyming??) as well as all the residence permits and working permits. So i turned from nagging him constantly, to showing him my black-face to begging him to get all these done. Well this cycle repeated itself a few times too many.

Finally, we got in! And the very next day after getting our membership card, we decided to spend a day on the private beach! Talk about blue blue sky and glittering golden sand!

So the first thing we had to do when we reached was to get ourselves tagged. This is for the hotel staff to identify us that we are indeed a member and not the locals walking over from the public beach along the coast. Apparently since the beach was not barred, the locals can just walk into the so called Sheraton private beach if they just walk along the coast.

And summer in Algiers makes the beach really crowded. We had to look for quite some time before we could get ourself the empty beach chairs. There were lots of ladies in bikinis too but i dare not snap photos of them because being a Chinese has already drew enough attention to us and i do not want to be seen as pervert too. 

The lady at the corner in white bikini is the only shot i managed to snap, secretly!

It was a great day! The sun was not too hot and the wind was strong. At some point, the staff had to close the beach umbrellas because some were fallen due to the strong wind. KC and Wanatabe decided to take a stroll along the coast while i sat and just enjoyed myself under the sun, the nice breeze, equipped with music from my ipod and a nice book.

I was thinking to soft perm my hair while waiting for it to grow but never really knew how i will look like. I guess the strong wind sort of set the style for me to consider. What you think? Should i do it? hehe

A wonderful book which i found from my book shelf. It is like a long lost gem that finally being found.

We spent about an hour or more sitting at the beach before we decided to venture inside. KC decided to take a dip in the swimming pool while Watanabe wanted to lift some weights but eventually ended up downing 2 cans of beers instead. 

As for me, i gave the massage parlor a try. It cost me Rm140 for 30 minutes but i thought i deserve a pampering and went ahead. Boy was i wrong. It was hopeless. The masseur didint have the right muscle points and used a lot of oil on me to the extend that i thought she was just rubbing me! At the end of the day, i was soak in oil less the relaxations and i also felt like a piece of heavily oil marinated piece of walking meat! Hahahah

Well it was a fun day. At the end of the day, i was tired from the sunbathing. Will be trying the gym soon! Weeee!!!1

Belgium Goodies

Kc is back finally and my days are not just confided to talking to a dog. Finally there is a human in the house who will reply to me and speak human! Hahaha

Anyways i was anticipating for his return because i knew there will be goodies! I have asked him to buy me plenty of magazines. The last one i read was 3 months ago and i cant wait to read something other than Business Week, Times or even National Geography. I mean a girl is a girl and no matter how we will always long for some light articles or just gossips to fill our brain. If without these what are we gonna gossip about with our friends right???

And finally he is back! Goodies and pics of them!

Ok KC got his new sunny and an uncle hat (ahem).

Of course how can he not buy back chocolates from Belgium??

Yum yum!

There goes a piece that cost him 1 euro!

And i got a prize doggie! Made of choco i hope??Hehe

Love this most!!!

And i kept waiting for him to pull out my magazines! But he turned and told me "Sorry ah, not enough time, no magazines. You go online and read ok!" What!!!!!! I guess the only thing i got to read apart from those serious magazine is this.....Sigh...

Choco Info!

+_+!!!!!

Il est à Paris!! Non???

The last time we went to Paris and watch the Moulin Rouge show, we didnt get to enjoy the food in the restaurant while watching the show. We were on some tour which only brought us in 30 minutes before the show together with 30 others and watched the show together by sharing a bottle of champagne. Besides, it was just way to expensive to have the dinner and the show together.

So after a year, we decided to have dinner at Moulin Rouge!

So happily, we ventured our way into the restaurant and had our orders taken by the captain. We were even the first pair of customer for dinner that night.

The Menu. You know you are at the right Moulin Rouge restaurant when you see the windmill. Apparently windmill is no longer a symbol of Holland now.

Night view of the faucet.

Unlike the show which is situated indoor, we got to opt to dine outdoor instead at the beautiful garden. The weather was pleasant with light breeze occasionally which made the ambience even better. Once we sat down, the captain even switch on some romantic instrumental music such as "Romance Du Armor". 

It was wonderful.

Beautifully mixed roses were aplenty here but you have to pay a bomb to get in KL.

KC's a little under dressed aint he?

Yeah the happy diner!

So without further delay, let's have a look at the food. Yummy.

Appetizers. French bread with yummy dressing.

Dressing composited of olive, tomatoes and olive oil. 

Yummy escargots in cheese.

Grilled cot fish for me.

And a medium rare steak for KC.

We finished dinner and paid an expensive bill of Rm500 at the end of the day. Somehow we were not satisfied at all. Something was very wrong about the whole thing. Ah then we realised, we were not in Paris at all! We were just at a restaurant down our house in Algiers that inspired to imitate Moulin Rouge in Paris! Gotcha! Oh ya no wonder the food sucks too!

And this is Moulin Rouge in Algiers. Hahah

Markings

I cant believe it. I have been playing games in FB non-stop for the passed 2 months. And i have evidence to prove how free i was! I have spent so much time decorating my cefe, KC's cafe and even Jess's cafe.

How pathetic!

Just look at Kc's cafe. From the simple layout i actually spent so much time to decorate for him until now it is sectionalized into different themes.

Before

After

And then one day i got so bored that i agreed to help Jess to decorate her cafe also. I mean how more pathetic could i be? Well she wanted love versus alien theme. So i fulfilled my client's wish piously.

Before

After

But the worst evidence ever to prove how bored and wasteful my time was on FB game is from my cafe. I actually climbed from level 6 to level 65 in almost 2 months. I am sure others will use more time to beat my record because they did not game "full-time" like me!

Before

After

Seriously! I ned to get a life!!!!!!!

Alone

After the dreadful feelings i had last week, right after i wrote the last post, i have a feud with KC. I lashed out my upsets and anger on him, telling him what had been troubling me all the time and things did get better. I just hope that things will only get better from now on and not back to square one again after awhile because honestly i do not know how much more disappointments i could bear.

Anyways I am alone in Algiers now. Well not really alone because i still have Cofi by my side now, although she doesnt really seems appreciative that i actually forgo a chance to travel to Belgium just to be by her side so that someone familiar is taking care of her, so that she will not be left alone in the house when the dark comes at night and so that she will not feel insecure without seeing me and KC for a whole week if i would have traveled with him together to Belgium.

Kc went to Belgium since yesterday over the weekend for some regional meeting. If only i could have gone together, i would be enjoying myself and taking plenty of pictures of Belgium now. Well i have had debated hard with myself on this before i decided to stay put for Cofi. Afterall i could not bring her here to accompany me only to abandon her alone in Algiers just because i want to enjoy myself with traveling. I cant be so selfish can i?

Well i told myself now is a good time for my solidarity because we do need time alone sometimes just to find ourselves again. I also tried hard to console myself that this disappointment will eventually be compensated with a bigger year end trip to London and maybe eventually a trip to Egypt.

And to make myself happier, i am already counting the days till i board the plane to go back to KL. Now let me count, how many days left?.....Hm... oh ya it is only 90 more days to go.

:) well time flies as we get older. In a  blink of eyes, i would be back in KL again.

All I Need Is Myself Only

I have been suffering from gastric for the passed few days and am still suffering from it as i am typing this.

While all these time i have been in pain and agony, i cant stop thinking that all i needed is myself only. While other couples might have the better half to take care of them when one falls sick, i ironically, can only depends on myself.

I have to cook for myself, take medicine by myself, wash up after cooking and even have to make the choco by myself.

All the time while i am doing all these thing myself, KC has been doing NOTHING but just gaming.

Of course i know today for once, i should not be mad at him because it is his birthday, but how difficult does it gets for him to just fetch me my medicine and perhaps, on his goodwill, make me a cup of hot chocolate?

While i told him i vomited because of gastric, all he did was to turn his head away from the monitor for a second, gave me a concern look and just ask, are you alright? and then when straight back to his game.

Yes, gaming is DEFINITELY more important than me.

If so, why do i need a partner in this world if all i needed is me and me only?

WTF!

Total Hiastsu

Today is the 5th of July, which is the national holiday of Algeria, which is also the birthday of KC.

Isnt is nice to have the whole nation celebrating birthday with you by not working? So we could not go out dine or wine because no one is working! What a great way to not do anything on my part and just let his birthday slip off like this! hahahha

Happy birthday darling, many happy returns.

Love.

One Year Wiser

How time flies.

Last year, i was celebrating my birthday in KL right before i packed my stuff getting ready to travel to Algeria.

This year i celebrated my birthday in Algeria.

Looking back the last 365 days, i reasoned i have not done anything really purposeful except playing games in fb and doing pretty much nothing. But i am glad that this means everything were as good as it could and nothing bad had happened.

This year's celebration was nearly to nil. There was no cake, no present, no flowers and not even a birthday song. There was no one but KC here to wish me happy birthday in person. However, i am still a very blessed girl having receiving numerous wishes from friends and family through FB. And because of their generosity, my 365 days ahead will be blessed and i am sure it will be a great journey too.

I guess i have way passed the age when i wished for a specific present. I will be truly happy if same day next year, i could have all my friends and family celebrating and wishing me happy birthday again and that everyone will be at their pink of health. That will be the best present anyone could wish for.

The other surprise was i received a note from a long lost friend. Thank you my dear. You never knew how much that means to me and thank you for getting my year starting at the right note again.

Blessed and love all too.

Celebrations!

Today is a happy day!

Not because i am 1 year older than yesterday, well this is never a reason to be happy to begin with. It's just because one of my buddies is getting married as i am typing this!

Congratulations to Aline and Wei Lun!

It's great to be witnessing how a couple started off from dating, getting to know each other more, falling more in love and eventually tying the knot. Especially when the girl is Aline, the social butterfly whom we thought it will take someone really special to catch her and tie her down. Kudos to Wei Lun for doing that.

Though i could not be in KL to witness their wonderful moment as husband and wife, my heart will definitely blessed them with the most wonderful and most blissful marriage ever.

What a wonderful day and what a lovely and pretty couple they are. Awe.......

Another Year Gone

6 more hours and i will be celebrating my birthday.

Another year has gone by, so fast.

Well I have a feeling that Mr Wong would have forgotten about my birthday and there will definitely be no surprises from him. No present and no flowers. Just hope that at the least he will remembers it.

Sigh...better not put my hopes high up. We are in Algeria afterall......

Anyways, happy birthday to me...

Dream's Over

Yesterday at approximately 5pm Algeria time, we witnessed how Algerians' dream of further pursuing into the World Cup 2010 was over.

When Algerian "luckily" managed to draw with England in the previous match, they were thrilled. Right after the game finished, we heard locals honking on the roads and even saw fireworks on the sky. The very next day, Toyota Algeria declared that the coming Wednesday it will be a half working day for the staff so that they could all go home and watch how Algeria fight their way through into the top 16 group.

Yesterday, after the match, it was death silence in Algiers. No honking and no fireworks.

Poor Algerians, what a pity that they managed to defense the game to a nil-nil game for the whole 90 minutes only to lost 1 goal in the last 4 minutes. Well not that they have played well because they have never managed to score a goal throughout the match, but i would say that their defending was way better than their attacking.

Oh well, dream's over for Algeria.

p/s: This year's World Cup resulted so many unexpected outcome! Italy is out but bravo for fighting so well even to the very last minute. I wonder if Ghana might win the cup now that there were so many unexpected outcome! haha

Boxxy Issues

About a month ago, KC told me there will be some counterparts coming to Algiers from KL. I was excited! 

Straight away i planned in my mind what i need from KL and have been messaging my brother and asking him to pack. Whenever i thought of something, i messaged him to update. I was doing it so often that i actually find myself troublesome to deal with.

So thanks so much bro for helping me out. Thanks Michelle too because i am sure she was the one who got me the chillies i was craving so much.

So after waited for more than a month the boxes with my precious are here! When KC brought back the boxes, i am pretty sure my eyes were sparkling with anticipations and i was over the top. I was like the little kid who finally received her present after a long wait and begging.

So without further wasting my time, i began to unpack my goodies. Wee!!!

Finally, real spicy chillies all the way from KL.

Unfortunately the flight and the non-air tight containers took a toll on the chillies. 

Some are rotten....

And some are molded. 

And in desperation, i am currently airing them outside in the balcony and will be scooping these goodies for cooking as and when i need. Hm...maybe i should try planting them here. Afterall the weather is still kinda chilly even though it is already summer.

Besides these, i also got myself plenty of the stuff that could mummified me when i am gone! And guess what my dinner was on that night? Mi goreng or Shin Korean noodle? For sure is the spicy choice since i have been craving for it so long. Well it was an awesome dinner! Totally satisfying to my tongue and stomach.

I could just eat them and last myself 2 months before i ran out of them! 

Tell you these are irreplaceable! So yummy!

 And there were more surprises too. Someone was playing secret santa by sending us these. Apparently they were not from my brother or Michelle. So our guess the KL counterpart who helped us brought these. Well cant verify it yet because he has already gone back when we received the goodies.

Plenty of healthy herbs for soup. I love soups!

How could i forget the famous Ipoh white coffee sachets? Ahh... thanks secret santa!

Well thats all folks. Am gonna go eat my mi goreng now and enjoy my TVB movies... what a great way to live! haha

Of Course!

I got the tv turned on since i woke up this morning and had the pleasure to watch both the Algeria vs Slovenia game as well as the Serbia vs Ghana game.

Both games were ....well nothing much interesting and no much of action too.

Then it is the highlight of the night - Australia vs Germany.

It should be good because Germany is quite strong so i was really looking forward to it.

Now i have a policy with dinner. I told KC that we have to eat in the kitchen without the Tv because this is the only time that we should stay as a couple to have a decent meal and have updates of what happened that day. Today i made an exception to sit in front of the tv just to watch the game. It took so much trouble to have the soup, dishes and rich taken out to the living room.

We were having 30 minutes of fun until the server went down!

Of course! Things like server down or power failure will only happen on games which you actually cared about!

Sheesh!!!!!