Monkey See, Monkey Do

Its been 2 weeks since i took up the job. Time passes by so fast that the whole week was just like, you woke up on monday just to find out a few hours later that its friday already. Life was calm and routine. I've suspect that if only i can get a 6 foot 2, 38-22-40 Latin American as my wife, get a bungalow and an xc90, have 5 lovely kids, life on earth would beat the days on heaven handsdown!( of course i must be dreaming i can't even get a decent 5 foot 2) I've got to admit, its tough working. And most of the time I didn't even use my brains when i'm doing my job( I suspect if I have any). Most of the time i'm wondering whether i indeed listened attentively on my school lessons or my teachers are ill equipped in knowledge to teach. Everyday, i'll just refer to old documents and.....monkey see, monkey do. Or, ask my colleagues and people say, monkey do. Life was sweet and calm before right before my boss asked me to go out all by myself to do field work! I've got such a shock of my life! Who else's homework i've gonna copy??? Or who else should i consult? Can i be like....em...pick up the phone and ask.....boss.....the form is this and this and this....what should i do!? Sigh......my field work is on Thursday.......and STPM result is coming out soon. Gasp! God must be forsaking me!Ha ha, joking. My colleagues are first class and i'm learning the ropes pretty quickly. Just today, the whole staff room grind to a halt just to think of ways for me to get to brickfields on thursday. They helped me a lot on the brainy part and i try to do my best to help them with brawn. Just today i have to move dunno how many thousands of files just to uncover 1 or 2 old ones lying deep inside the store cum office! My boss was nice to me....because he has not called me to his office and scold me for incompetency....Haha! But i've got to admit i'm pretty slow. Now i am doing 3 jobs all at once!

From 1st gear to 5th

I'm sorry guys for letting you wait. I was supposed to write this yesterday but can't because I have to help a particular friend of mine with his/her homework half a globe away. So, sorry readers, but I've make up with 2 posts. So I hope Kelly Ti Lien Ghee won't complain. I'm working now, but I won't write it down here on what i work as or whose my boss. ( You never know whether your boss is keeping track of your blogs, right?) So, leave your e-mails in the comment box or meet me in MSN messenger so that i can give you all a more 'personalised' answer. But before that I've got to thank lien ghee for holding a birthday party. Met a lot of my old friends there.

So here's the recount of my haphazard week.

Sunday

It is Chap Goh Meh and i went to market with my mom to buy stuffs for our steam boat dinner. Then I went to temple with parents and had our lunch there. Came back to prepare the food for steam boat. My granny came, my brother, his wife and my sister came back to help. There were vegies, sotong balls, home made fish paste with fatt choy inside (yup! fatt choy), crab meat sticks, prawns, pork and chicken fillets, and scallops etc (woh! i can't believe it! but my mom bought scallops! You all should know that i come from a poor family).
So the highlight of the day was when i helped my granny to fry "fu chok" (bean curd skin with fish paste in it). I'm a kitchen veteran and obviously not afraid to cook. I have confidence that my food taste good too. But perhaps because i was having a fairly good time, or maybe it was after effects of my blogging activities, i accidentally dipped my left hand 4th finger (i dunno what to call it) into hot oil! See lien ghee, its all because of you, forcing me to blog, and that's why bad luck has been on me. It won't be long until i get raped and you'll be happy. I cooled it down with water(which according to my mom, wrong) too relieve my pain. But still, it felt terrible. It was then my quick thinking make me see the half frozen scallops lying beside the basin. With gusto, i took the mushy but cold scallops and placed them on my finger. It killed the pain immediately. So next time, dear readers, if somebody ask you what is the medicinal value of scallops, your answer, painkiller.
Nevertheless a huge boil did surface and i got no guts to burst it. At night, my brother's godfather, together with his family joined us for steam boat. Trust me, the food were good especially for the prawns and scallops.

Monday

I went for my interview at 9.00a.m. in the firm at Jalan Changkat Bukit Bintang. My interviewer is the firm's partner, Mr Yong. He is a nice man. Then I was introduced to my colleagues. There is Bee, Boon, Zehra, etc (Eh, don't be mistaken that i work in a zoo. Its not bee, baboons and zebras mind u! They are kind, cheerful and helpful!) My work desk was just outside the partner's room. I was given a 50-something pages thick guidelines to read for the whole day.
Later that day, during lunchtime, a self-proclaimed Sabahan teacher approached me to try ang rip me off RM35 so that he can reach KLIA. I told him that it was my first day of work. U must see how disappointed he was.

Tuesday

Went to work, continued to read guidelines, and soon received my first ever assignment. It was kind of simple but of course, I'm stupid so i have to disturb boon for help all the time.

Wednesday

This was the 'Big' day. While I was busy finishing my first assignment, bee, together with another girl, moved 2 boxes of documents to my workplace, and asked me to help her out. the were about 15 main documents, each the size of yellow pages.Me awed.

Thursday

Reached my office some 10 minutes late. What's worse was that my company's partner was alreadyt standing in front of my desk, and smiling at me. Continued to struggle past the pile of paper. Boon and bee were out on field work so it was up to me to guess out the direction of where should i be heading. While I was on the way home, somebody accidentally stuck his lighted cigratte onto the back of my right hand. Now i have a boil on my left hand and burn marks on my right. Great. Then later on, at Jalan Bukit Bintang, a bapak Ayam called out to me!!!! Sigh....do i look so desperate?

Friday

Boon and Bee came back, I realised that the direction i was heading was to damnation. Panicked and tried to do u-turn.Spent the whole day doing things all over again.

The Three Ringgit Bet

2 days before I start working, my brother took me to look around the firm. We saw the building, talked bout other things when we came to the question of food.

"There are many foods to choose from in Jalan Alor. I think your colleagues will invite you to dine with them. Don't worry those guys are quite thrifty." He said.

"Well, that's good. As long as its under 3 ringgit then it will be ok" I said.

"3 ringgit? I bet you eat shit!"

"Well, what do you suggest huh? My pay is low. I try my best to get a 3 ringgit meal. Sister-in-law said that she found a 2-something mixed rice before." I protested.

"She's a girl mah. You are a boy. You want to eat as much as her? In my workplace, my meals are guaranteed RM5 and above. Anyway, I would really like to see how you survive on RM3 on food per day". He said.

He threw me the gauntlet and so the challenge is on. Below is the list of food and their price from monday to friday.

Monday>> >Mixed rice, no drinks-------------------------------------RM3.20
Tuesday>>>Roast chicken rice, no drinks------------------------------Rm3.50
Wednesday>Mixed rice, no drinks-------------------------------------RM4.00
Thursday*>Mixed rice, boiled sugar cane water-----------------------Rm5.20
Friday>>>>BBQ pork rice, no drinks----------------------------------RM4.00

*on thursay, my colleagues went out for field work. So it was up to me to decide what to eat. I wanted to look for roti canai, but the shop has no customers, no houseflies, just waiters. So I decided to have rice instead. Drank boiled sugar cane water because my sore throat was getting worse(for not drinking water for the last few lunches)

So, to reach my mark of averaging RM3 or less for each lunch, from next week, I have to
bring soy sauce so that i can swallow down plain white rice,
or bring sandwiches from home (that's cheating),
or have bread & buns everyday
or even roti canai kosong with kopi O.

By the time I'm done, I am ready to go to hospital. So what do you readers think, huh? My pride's at stake.

Burglary

Kelly Ti Lien Ghee, you owe me big time. Ever since I started this blog, many things, eventful and uneventful has happened to me. Now a burglary has happened in my house. Are you happy?

Joking. Um, but the theft is real.

I woke up this morning, at 5.16a.m. after somebody knocked on my room door. In a daze, I heard my mother calling me out, saying that somebody is trying to still my father's bongsai. Alarmed, i quickly jumped out of my bed, ran out to the front compound, leaving my specs behind.
When i saw the empty stand where a bongsai used to be, my heart sank. The gate in my front compound was ajar. I dashed out to the road, but nothing was in sight. There wasn't a ghost on the road. Only silence.
I went back to fetch my specs, and when i went out again, my father had returned. It seems that my father gave a chase, on foot. We examined the gate, which was slightly bent.
It was a small, typical gate, that uses a bolt to close and link the two sides of the gate and another bolt that anchors the ground. Just like those that you usually see in new houses. The bolt(anchor) was lose, while the other bolt was still firmly in place, with the lock on it. The catch is, the gate was ajar.
My mother recounted that a loud crash, similar to one that is caused by a car accident, woke her up. My father woke up a second later. Both of them looked out through the window, which shows the front gate. They were shocked when they saw a man carrying a medium sized bongsai, roughly about 30 kg, up from the stand. My father gave a shout, dashed out of the room, took time to open the gate of my house(my house have 2 gates, one is the front gate and the other leading out of my living room), and ran after the burglar. My mother woke me up.
Then, while we were still puzzled by how the thief opens the gate, my neighbour, Uncle Lim came. He told us that he heard the crash, looked out of his balcony, and saw the thief carrying the pot. The thief was small built, some 40-50 years old, with gray hair, and was wearing a stripe shirt. He went back to fetch his keys, dashed out of his house just in time to watch the thief rode by his house in a motorbike, the bongsai balancing precariously on his lap. That was a rather big bongsai with branches some 20 cm long, which makes it some 40 cm in diameter. Uncle Lim gave chase in his car but lost him in the twists and turns of the housing estate's roads.
It was among the best bongsais that my father has. It has the best apex. It wouldn't have cost much, the pot and soil, but it took both my father and Uncle Lim, a bongsai sifu himself, painstaking years and devotion to trim it. In fact, the bongsai is 22 years old. I wouldn't speculate on its market value. The incident broke their hearts, and mine too.
After much thought, we came to common ground that the thief must have studied my house and the bongsai for a long time. This is because we have a "beware of dog" sign on the gate, but of course my dog had passed away 2 years ago. Therefore he has no worries. Secondly, he studied the bongsai very well. Every bongsai has its designated front, sides and back. A bongsai is valued by looking at its front, which was facing inside, leaving the back facing the road. It looks like a green mushroom if you look from outside of the house. So he must have spent a long long time just to analyse it. Unless this is a common robber stealing every damn thing under the sun in the hope that he accidentally steals the best things. Not very bright huh?
He must have climbed into the house compound through the wall. Once inside, he lifted the bolt(anchor) and gave the gate a good, strong kick, which explains the bent. This action will push both sides of the gate out, and the other bolt would have scratched against the gate. He kicked it so forcefully that the bolt scrapped all the way out of its 'holder' and seperated the 2 sides. Then, he removed the bongsai and climbed onto his motorcycle for his getaway.
Therefore, my friends, if you live in a small house with a small gate like mine, think about changing it(the gate, I mean). The burglar was so efficient he probably had done it hundreds of times. No kidding. My mother, father and Uncle Lim only heard one crashing sound, which means the thief did it in just one kick.
Everytime I see burglary, rape and murder I thought that they only happen to somebody else. Unfortuantely, I'm also somebody else to somebody else, and now it was my turn. The world has never been a safe place. Every damn thing happens. Gentlemen/ladies, don't leave prescious things in your compound that passersby can see, even though they are ought to be outside of the house. Bring them indoor. If you love your dogs, keep them indoor. Put an alarm.

Scary day act 2

It was sure to come. There was no running away from it. The day finally came when Wen Sern, Zentrox and Kuan Yong came to my house to finish up 2 packets of pasta, a large jar and a little bit more of prego sauce (actually its 1 1/4 jar), and the taiwanese sausages that we were supposed to finish up in PD 2 weeks ago. Things go really haywire whenever we get together, you know?
I told Wen Sern to buy some mushrooms and i expected them to be fresh. Instead he bought me dried up ones. Well it will do. He came first. I did the minced meat, seasoned it before Zentrox and Kuan Yong arrived with drinks. Kuan Yong can't believe how clean his small, tiny pot was when compared to the dirty blackened one that he 'accidentally' left in my house. It took lots of time to clean it.
Then things started to get dangerous. Kuan Yong, a certified pastry chef got all egoistic, Wen Sern took command, Zentrox voiced his opinions and i tried to maintain control. 4 voices shouted at one another, sometimes crude and vulgar, but we laughed all the time. They looked every nook and corner of my kitchen for food and sauce that can be 'justified' for use on our pasta. Heck, they nearly dismantled my whole house. Have you ever seen anybody using Lee Kum Kee's oyster sauce for pasta? No? Well, then u haven't seen us cooking. One of them spotted a can of clams and they tried to claim it for use. Luckily i saw that. If i didn't supervise them, i'm sure that even my grandma's ginseng will go to pot. They are bloody communists I tell you!
Kuan Yong manned the chopping block, apparently dismayed by the way i diced the garlic and onions. This guy works the devil out of a knife! He can chop real fast and the cuts are even and fine. His skills are dazzling but at least things slowed down a bit when he mistook his middle finger for one of the taiwanese sausages. Yup! One deep slash right on the back of his right middle finger. Blood oozed out. Tried to get him a sanitary pad but a handiplast came just in time.
Zentrox and me tried to calm down Wen Sern, who was adamant to cook all the 2 packets of pastas in a row, each about 500g.
I still can remember him saying, "What's the worry? there are 4 of us, it is just 250g of pasta for each of us. 500g is not a family size. 1kg is about it. We can easily devour 250g of things. U can't? Well i can." Then, he dumped the 2 packets into boiling water. He won.
Kuan Yong and I added some salt to the water while Wen Sern took the liberty to pour oil into the boiling water. Ya. The boiling water with pasta in it. And incredulously, Zentrox seconded him. Where on earth did they get the idea anyway? The whole situation was so chaotic nobody seems to be in control of himself. After the oil has been poured, i showed them the direction on boiling pasta that was stated on 1 of the packets of pasta. It was in English and it was obvious that it mentioned nothing about oil. They grinned.
Then, to rub salt onto the wound, Kuan Yong pointed out that Wen Sern miscalculated the weight of pasta that each of us will have to consume. He said that each of us will have 250 g of pasta. Dried pasta. After it comes to boil, it most probably weighs twice as heavy.
Plus tomato sauce, minced meat, sausages, cheese and mushrooms, I can safely say that each of us will be consuming about 600-700g of food. More grins.
After that, without much ado, we heated the wok and started to cook. We cooked the taiwanese sausages first. Then, with gusto, Wen Sern and I stir fried the garlic and onions, and poured all the prego tomato sauce into the wok, before realising that we yet to cook the minced meat and mushrooms. Disaster. We did it on a seperate pan and then add to the gravy. Anyway, you must see the glimmer of madness in Zentrox's eyes when he was dishing out the oregano, salt, and pepper onto the sauce. I was scared. He was mad.
Then we had our meal. At 12.30p.m.. Most of us didn't have our breakfast and were hungry like wolves. Despite our haphazard way of cooking, it actually tastes damn good! Zentrox and I had 2 helpings, Kuan Yong had 1 and the rest, the remaining 1kg of wet pasta, minus the sauce were all Wen Sern's.
That guy was so fedup halfway through that he played with his pasta in such disgusting ways that if i describe them here, authorities would have taken down my blog the next day. Anyway, that guy was so full he went to the toilet during the dinner. To clear more room.
My mother came back and helped him out. Then we went on a joyride to times square in a car. Yup! The speed demon's. I can't believe it that it was still a one-wheel-drive and the sand from PD laid untouch on his rubber sheets! Along the way we scratched the car's bottom on some speed bumps, accelerated while executing corners and violating a double-line. Same old story.

CNY

Happy Chinese New Year to everybody. Yet my disappointment, this year's CNY has not been an exception, the celebration atmosphere and the spirit of gaity have been slipping away, largely due to the stagnant Malaysian economy and the ban on firecrackers. Nevertheless, CNY has never failed to be unforgettable, just like the 3a.m. firecrackers that woke me up for 4 straight night. They arte illegal, of course.

CNY was all routine to me, spring cleaning, bake cookies, decorate, pray and have the all important reunion dinner on New Year's Eve, but the fun started at the first day of CNY, when, after all the painstaking spring cleaning for the last few days, i still miraculously woke up at 8, but i did a stupid thing by wishing my father by saying, "PaPa, Happy CHINESE New Year".

Like a wily fox that he always is, he said," Son, being a Chinese, we don't wish another Chinese a Happy Chinese New Year, We wishes Him/her Happy New Year, stupid."

OUCH!

How can i forget such a new year!!!!What a way to kick stat my new year.

Which partially explains why my neighbour's house nearly caught fire.

My neighbour is a good man A successful young man at his 30's, he is polite and steadfast in Chinese cultures and traditions, which to me is a pluspoint. The tragedy struck when after praying to the Tian Gong on 2 make wooden table as a makeshift altar in the morning, with all the incense, josssticks and stuffs, my neighbour and his family left their house unattended. I didn't see it but base on my analysis and experience, he must have placed his incense too deep into the bronze urn, which can result smouldering of the incense stick, much like a peat fire. It orcurs when the part of the incense that was meant to be burned got underneath the ash in the urn, so the spark of fire on top of the top end of the incense will finally make its way underneath the ash, generating enough heat to start a smoulder.As the urn was bronze, and there were a lot of burn materials (especially taking note of my neighbour's amount of josssticks and incense used when he was ushering the god of wealth) , the urn acted like an iron, and the heat finally consume the tables. It causes much smoke due to incomplete combustion(lack of oxygen causes carbon monoxide) but nobody realises it except us because he had just built a large gate that block all visibility of the front compound from the outside, so most of my neighbours probably thought some devoted nutcase been praying for 4D numbers.

The fire could have gotten much worse if my father didn't douse the fire in time.

Therefore, I urge people to be more careful when you pray. For instance, you can place a tile or glass in between the urn and the table, or use a ceremic urn instead of bronze as it doesn't conduct heat that much. Or else, you can also renovate your house and build more neighbour-friendly-cum-burglar-friendly gates and fences so that other people will always have a clue on what you are doing.

Then, on the 4th day of CNY, I went out for a movie with Wen Sern, Zentrox and Jeff. We watched Fearless in Berjaya Times Square. It is a very nice movie, pretty original storyline, and highly recommended if you ever is a Chinese. The whole KL was so traffic free that we took a taxi. Zentrox's sole came off from one of his sandal and all of us was glad to repair it for him with a cellotape, ala-mummy style.