ringgit.me

Today is a very busy day for me. I attended Tai Lo's brother's wedding luncheon in Sri Kembangan, somewhere near Mines Wonderland. Later in the evening, I will be attending Emily's wedding dinner in Nikko hotel. In today's luncheon, we talked about how many wedding dinners we have attended. I have calculated the ones I attended and it was over 20+ dinners! That's a lot in years! Some people said that wedding dinners are a happy occasion. We celebrate a couple's happy union. It is great and all, I know, but to me, Chinese wedding dinners are such a chore, especially as the guests. Note: I am not attacking the bride nor the groom. My following post is an attack at the Chinese wedding tradition: 1. Chinese wedding dinner is time consuming Typically, the dinner reception starts at 7pm. You arrived at 7pm, shake the couple's hand, give them the ang pow (which is a form of "gift or blessing" in currency) and then sit at your designated table. One table ...

Haze is a new vocabulary for Malaysians. I don't remember seeing haze 10 years ago. It seems to creep into our lives in the past few years. Yesterday's haze was one of the worse I have ever seen. It covers the whole city. Visibility is less than 500 meter! I could not see the Ikea sign from LDP. I could not see KLCC twin tower from Concorde Hotel - I could only see the silouhette of both buildings. You can imagine how bad it is. When I go to my car porch, I could see haze and smelt haze! It has a rubbish burning smell. It's unhealthy. Haze is a product of the immense heat that attacked us during Chinese New Year (Jan/Feb). The sun is so strong and the heat so unrelentless that the bush and forest caught fire resulting in this terrible haze. Thankfully, there was a heavy downpour of rain on Sunday morning. That ought to have cleared the haze...

So today I joined the team for lunch. We went to this restaurant and ordered our food. It's not an expensive restaurant, nor was it the usual kopitiam . A bowl of noodles cost rm5 here and drinks go around rm3. Anyway, I sat beside Mr Miser in this huge round table for 14. I probably have not mentioned it before but Mr Miser has dandruff problem. His hair is fulled of white dandruff. It was even in his shoulder. When he move, I can imagined dandruff flying everywhere. While it didn't worry me as much, it gets disturbing when the food arrived. Ugh.. Anyway after lunch, I asked for the bill. I decided to pay first since apparently no one is willing to take the first move. This is the time I miss the AA style of the Americans where we would be billed individually. After paying the bills, the rest of the team started to pay me back. Mr Miser asked "do they charged for water? I don't think they charge for water, do they?" "I don't know.. maybe they do,...

Just the week before CNY, I showed mystic_grey where Kepong's Kedai Telekom is. She moved to this new place in Jalan Kuching and needed to go to Kedai Telekom to apply for a line. Like in most banks, we have to get a number from an information counter manned by a girl. While waiting for her number to be called I watched at the happenings around the information counter. I observed that almost all (100%) of the people who asked the girl question never said thank you when they received an answer. They collected the number, gave a nod and walked away! Even after asking a question about how to fill in a form, for example, these people would just walked off. Not even a simple thank you. The girl was pleasant and smiling. She must have will made of steel to be able to smile when faced with rude customers. No wonder "never said thank you" was an entry in the Rude Malaysian contest! When we thanked the man that helped mystic_grey, he was pleasantly surprise. He smiled, thanked us ...

Anyone interested in a trip? . .

The Chinese horoscope has 12 type of animals: Rat, Ox, Tiger, Snake, Dragon, etc. The Chinese believe that there are some animals which don't get along together.. so when choosing for your significant other, you have to choose one who is born of certain years (and therefore of certain Chinese horoscope animal) and then, both of you will live in harmony. I have always known that I have problem with someone who is a Dragon. Ox and Dragons don't get along well. The Dragon is a pain in the neck to the Ox. I remember one movie quote "how can one love a pebble in one's shoe?". People who are born in the Year of the Dragon are the pebbles in my shoe. I know, because one of my sisters is born on the Year of the Dragon and she gets on my nerves ALL the time .. heh heh heh... I think if she ever found out about this, I am dead! Anyway, I was in adiscussion today when a slip of paper fell out of my notepad. Upon picking it up, I saw that it was a medical certificate from Bon...

I am evaluating Bloglines today. It looks to be a better newsfeed service as compared to Newsgator. The best thing is, there is a Bloglines Konfabulator widget , so you can see a widget showing how many unread blogs you have. How's that for cool factor?

Events in the last few days led me to believe that landing an oversea job is as challenging as getting a good girlfriend. There is a disturbing similarity between the two and only the most blessed people will be able to obtain it. These people must have done something right somewhere in their life to deserve such blessing. I must have screwed up somewhere along the way. Like girls, overseas jobs are in abundance. The challenge is in getting the good ones at the right time, in the right place. Once in a while, you do happen to chance upon an opportunity – similarly, sometimes you do chance upon the perfect girl. The stars are aligned. The interviewers like you. You like the job. The people you will be working with get along real fine with you. There’s chemistry between you and the new team. Everybody wanted you there. You click with the girl. Both of you are comfortable around each other. You have so much in common. The stars are aligned. You thought, this is it. She’s the one. Then, ju...

* this is one of my blogs that I wrote some time ago but never published. I decided not to change the date and kept it as the date it was originally written. * There was once I told myself that if I could not find "Anne", I would not want to while my life away just living normal. Anne is a name I use to reference my imaginary, future girlfriend/wife. The name was inspired from the lead character of a children TV show that I saw when I was young. It's called Anne of Green Gables . I can still remember the lead character declaring with determination that it is called Anne, spelt with an "E". You see, there are many stages of a person's life. People who are attached lead a different life. People who are married live differently. They have their own unique challenges and pleasures at each stage. Greedy once said that she now have the role of a wife and a daughter-in-law to play and that each role has it's own challenges and rewards. For someone who have not ...

I had an interview with one of the Senior Managers of the company, someone Bahija know, whom she called Mr Soon To Be GM. Well, I had my own reservations about this interview as I am not sure how this interview will turn out. I am not sure if the Senior Mgr likes me or not as we do have a history of working together for a while when he was not a Senior Mgr. It turned out to be a really plesant talk, which lasted an hour. He mentioned a few things which I agreed. One of them was that as we matured in our working life, any interaction with people is a piece of useful information. The interaction could be a 5 minute elevator talk or it could be a 30 minute coffee session. It could be with someone you work with.. or it could be with some people from another team. Nevertheles, this interaction, or exchanging of information, will somehow be useful one way or another. He also said that at a certain level, people are no longer motivated by money. Most of the people of high level quit because t...

A few months ago, the Bomba chief told me a story: Rain was falling non stop in this small village for days. The village began to flood. Everyon has started packing and leaving the village except this holy man. He remained in his house praying to God. Later, somebody knocked on his door and when he opened it, he saw a little boy. Little boy told him "Uncle, the flood is coming fast. You better pack and get out of the village like the rest of us." Holy man looked at the boy and said "Boy, I have faith in God. He takes care of his children. He will save me." Boy ran away. The water rushed into his house. The holy man has no choice but to climb to his roof. While he's on his roof, someone came by with a boat. "Mister", the man yelled, "hop onto the boat. I am here to rescue you." The holy man declined saying that "My faith is with God. He takes care of me. He will save me! No thanks. Save someone else." The boatman looked at him and th...

So, there I was, in the office yesterday evening waiting for 4.30pm when Bonnie suddenly walked over for a chat. She asked if I have any news or gossips... and I said I didn't have any. I think she's really bored so she wanted to come over and disturb me. I asked her if anything happened over at boss' house after I left ( refer Day 5 of this post ). She said nothing much except that she was pissed at this particular colleague. The colleague teased her relentlessly. Something about her bulging stomach. She said that she had to call her husband for help and saying that the shortie (that colleague was vertically challenged, you see) is making fun of her. She said she didn't feel guilty at all for calling him a shortie. Then the conversation moved on to Mr Miser and we had a good laugh at him again. Somehow or other she mentioned about another colleague who was sick and did not come to work. She said she hope the colleague is feeling fine. I said that well, sometimes, you j...

How time flies. Before I know it, it's Sunday night, the 5th day of CNY and I have to drag my ass back to work tomorrow. How I dread going back to work. Let's see what happened during CNY: 1st Day (Wed) It is a custom of my family (and I think for most Chinese families) to reserve 1st day of CNY for visiting relatives. This year is a little different for us. As mentioned previously, my uncle passed away so his family could not celebrate CNY. We did not visit his place on the 1st day since it is impolite to do so. Another uncle (my father's brother) went down to Singapore to visit his son so we could not visit him either. This has cut our visiting down to only one aunt's place. This aunt is my mother's eldest sister, so a lot of the other cousins and aunts and uncles would visit her on Day 1, which means the whole family would congregate there to meet. It was an extremely busy afternoon with many children running around, screaming. The adults were all screaming to ge...

So, it's the Eve. This morning my mother told me that her brother, my uncle, passed away. Nobody really know the cause of death. His friend won some money from lottery and threw a drinking party. My uncle went for the party, had lots of drink and came back. My aunt commented that people gave free drink and he drank his life away. He said rubbish. If he was drunk, how could he drive home in one piece in a motorcycle? I believe my uncle is a good drinker but he's also old. I am guessing around 65. Anyway, he was tired. He slept but never woke the next morning. He was peaceful, according to my mother when she went to see him. They suspect that he must have heart attack (he had had attacks before, previously). Because it is Chinese New Year and there are no monks available to perform some of the funeral rituals, the wake will be held on the 3rd day of CNY. He will be cremated and "buried" on the 4th day. I didn't really know my uncle well. I wish him a good and pea...

These days, I am infected with a virus called "Writer's Block". I can't seemed to think of topic to write and I have almost exhausted my "Drafts". So, a quick Gong Xi Fa Chai to all my readers. May the new year bring you Health & Happiness . That's more important... not wealth, eh?

All of us have heard of a few stories like Sinbad the Sailor, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, Aladdin and the Magic Lamp. But how many of us know that these stories are part of a collection of one thousand and one tales from Arabic folklore? How many of us know all the one thousand and one stories? I read a lot but I have never read the 1001 Arabian Nights. I was determined to read it and to my dismay I found that there were so many versions. The original version were written in Arabic but was translated to English by scholar However, it was a very old translation and the English used was Old English - 19th century English. These are not easy language to read. Luckily for me, I discovered this version recently in amazon.com and bought it from kinokuniya. This book,by Geraldine McCaughrean and published by the Oxford University Press, was targetted at a more modern audience and I am happy to say that I was enthralled by the stories. I have spent countless sleepless nights on thes...

The title is a term in Cantonese which literally means, Aunty Asassin. This term is used for a person whom old ladies fancy, not in a gigolo, sex-related way, but in a more maternal, I-wish-you-were-my-son/daughter/in-law way. I am one such person. Any girls can take me to their home and their mothers will absolutely love me. My friends' mothers adore me. ZipD's grandmother always says she "sayang" me during CNY. And just the other day, ST, Anti-Ringgit's aunt's mother declared that I am like a god-son. Hmm... this is *definitely* not the effect from the Egyptian oil. That one attracts young and pretty girls. So what could attract the old ladies? I wonder... maybe it's the innocent look or the proper manners. I wonder if this trait is even complimentary or a "you are a mommy boy" laugh in your face insult. Food for thoughts. Hmm... Perhaps I can even start a business. Anyone who needs a temp boyfriend to appease the parents can hire me b...