ringgit.me

I don't know what it is about salesmen. A few years ago, I worked in Floor 21. Floor 21 is the Sales Department. I can't help but observed that salesmen do not flush after using the urinal. They just waltzed into the restroom, unzipped their fly, do their business, zipped back up and waltz right out. Some decent salesmen will wash their hand. Notice the word "some"? That means, if you are meeting a salesmen today and you are going to shake his hand, I'd suggest you use Dettol afterwards. What is wrong with all these people? Mind you, these are not your average salesmen. These guys earn RM100k per annum. They drive BMWs or Mercedes. And yet, they do not have basic manners and hygiene such as toilet training. I really wonder if their children are potty trained? There was this particular guy. His name is Alvin (real name - in my blog, I don't use real name but I don't see a point of showing courtesy to Alvin by hiding his name). He's the worse of the lot....

This evening Anti Ringgit and I went to 1 Utama to look for watches - I wanted to get a Tissot for Anne's upcoming birthday and AR wanted to buy a Tag for himself. As usual, I parked in my favourite spot in 1 Utama. As we walked down the first flight of escalator, we bumped into Yee Leng, one of our tour mates, who had just finished shopping. We exchanged a few pleasantries. AR later commented that Yee Leng was staring at me non stop. Even though AR was busy talking, she never looked at him but was eye-balling me. AR was jealous. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm.... Told you to get one of these , AR.. You NEVER LISTEN! Tai sei!

"Is it too much... to ask for someone whom I care about? Is it too much to ask for someone to come along in my life who will make me happy? Someone whom I look forward to seeing everyday? Someone who care for me? " I was just looking at my blog dashboard and found that at 10pm on Jan 10th, 2005, I wrote the paragraph above but decided against publishing it. Wow... 5 months down the line and my life has changed... :P

It's almost the end of May 2005. This month has been my busiest month ever.. having to juggle between relationship, work, American guest, and friends. Of course Anne has my utmost priority, the rest are just meh . However, the fact remains that a lot of things happened in May. I remember telling people that May 2004 was my busiest month of the year too. Thankfully I have started blogging at that time and looking back at my archives , indeed, I was very busy in May. This post , written exactly 1 year ago, talked about how I had finally settled down in the new house and how it was a relief for me. In that post, I pondered about my move to AU and outlined how difficult it was to let go of things. What's on my mind now, after one year of serious pondering? I can't really answer this question especially with Anne in the picture now. It would be even more difficult to move. I have talked to Anne about it and we are still unsure how the pieces should be moved. She's very supp...

Yesterday I met up with Kimmikanuyi, Monica and Anti-Ringgit in Mosin Restaurant. I don't believe we have gathered like this for a long, long time. Of course I was grilled by Monica about Anne. Of course she's happy for me and will help me pick up a birthday gift for her. Trust Monica to be so helpful. I am sure she will have a good eye for a good gift. Now, I really do not know what to get for Anne. Is it too early to get an expensive gift? Monica said that will scare her away. She suggested bouquet of flowers which may be nice and all but it has no memories... you know, once the flowers withered and dried. I wanted to get her something special. After all, it is her first birthday with me. Ideas?

I don't know if this is even worth blogging but I thought I should at least find out if it is really common to Americans or that it is just unique to my kwai poh guest. My guest is an American from Dallas, Texas. Today, she told me that it is a pretty common practice to have the a/c (air conditioner) switched on 24 hours a day. When nobody's home, for example, during the day time, the temperature of the a/c is set to a higher level so that it does not need to cool the place too much - yet the fact is that the a/c is still switched on and therefore is a waste of precious electricity. And oh, they have centralized a/c-cum-heater in the house, so you can imagine how much of electricity is being wasted even as I am typing now. You see, in Malaysia, a tropical country where it is generally hot and humid, people don't switch on a/c for 24-hours! We usually switch it on at night when we wanted a more comfortable sleep. In fact, most of us were brought up with the habit of switchin...

I was talking to an American guest today on some Chinese superstitions. While she respected some of our unique taboos, I can see that she has this "it's so ridiculous" look on her face. On my way home, I realize that there really is something to this superstitions that most Chinese believed and feared. When I was fending off unwanted relatives' remarks on when I am going to settle down, I don't use chemistry as the excuse. The older folks will not be able to understand why younger people needed chemistry to marry. They come from a generation where arranged marriage is acceptable, so telling them that you and the girl do not have chemistry is like telling them that you are marrying an alien from Venus. That notion will never hit home. I have this excuse which I always use when being attacked by my aunts and uncles. I told them that all my male cousins (from both my father's and mother's side) married after their sister married. I said that if the sister,...

If you remember, I was pretty hooked to a little nifty program called Konfabulator . It is so good that I actually paid for this software. That was version 1.8.4. Today, the main page of Konfabulator.com has a teaser page. It shows a countdown to the new version - Konfabulator 2.0. Eight more days to go. It has a lot of improvements. I CAN'T WAIT! I hope my 1.8.x license is applicable for 2.0 also. Try it out and see if you like it. I sure do.. and I believe Kimmikanuyi loves it too ;) Oh, btw, iTunes 4.8 was released! It manages movies! Wowzeeeeee!

When I was wooing Anne, I started sending her a song every 2 or 3 days. Most of the songs I sent were love songs except a couple such as Everytime and Change Of Heart. These two songs were the exceptions because she said she like them. Anyway, for every song I sent, I put in in a iTunes Playlist named Anne's Songs. Once I reach 80 minutes worth of song, I'll burn it into a CD for her. iTunes made that so much easier. There is a reason for the choice of each song. It usually represent what I feel at that particular day when I decided to send the song. My most difficult challenge was looking for the first song. The first song she received from me must not have too much implication or deep feelings and yet it must convey a message - a message that I am interested in her. Gabrille's Sunshine did that job really well. It goes something like this: "Sunshine through my window, that's what you are...". Then the implication received a notch up the scale. I sent her K-...

We are doing dinner for mom tomorrow, so as not to join the crazy crowd that tends to celebrate mother's day tonight or yesterday night. This is pretty common in my family. We just hate crowds :D Yesterday, as a "mother's day" gift, I told my mother about Anne. I bet she's very happy and she's finally relief that I have found someone. Heh heh heh... I showed her the picture and her first comment was that Anne look so much younger compare to her little sister, Lina. Ha ha.. I bet Anne will be happy to hear that. So, everybody's happy today. Yay.

YEP stands for Young Entrepreneur Program. It is a program where school children are given the opportunity to run and manage their own business. These children form a company. They have a CEO, CFO, Marketing Director, HR Director and other important positions. They will have weekly meeting, learned how to write minutes, learned about coming with a product and marketing it, learn about competition, etc. They have guidance from working adult. My company participated in such a program. Last week a few students from one school came into the office accompanied by their "mentor", an employee of the company I am working in. The mentor introduced the student and told us that they have this particular product to sell. The product is some sort of Post-It Notes packaged in a handmade box with nice ribbons and wrapping papers. The box were nicely done. Very good quality.. something one would find in a handicraft shop. Their so called marketing strategy is to buy this and give it to the s...

The other day, ZipD asked, nonchalantly, a very simple question: "Is she the one?" I was taken aback. Where was the usual gaming trash talk? Why such a question? I thought for a while and replied, "I sure hope so." He said "Hope so? What do you mean?" in which I countered "How do you know that your wife were the one?". He said, you just know. Hmm... Interesting... Is that really true? That you just know? I can understand the whole chemistry part where you know she's the right one to be a girlfriend.. but to be the ultimate "THE ONE"? How can one know? Wow.. I have to think about this first...

On January 2nd, I made a change to the look and feel of my blog. My loyal readers were shocked. I started with the plain template because it was a New Year. We should all start with a new slate and put colours into it. 5 months later and I feel I needed a change. This time, it was motivated by the "popularity" of my blog. I have been receiving many comments and I really like the " Recent Comment " feature created by BloggerHack. It allows my readers to see who has commented on what topic. It's so cool that I wanted to fit it into my blog and the older blog template does not allow this as I didn't have a side bar. With the new template, I have a side bar and you can see Recent Comment on your right. Cool eh? I hope you guys enjoy reading each other's comments as much as I do. Cheers.. .

Today's Amazing Race 7 took place in London. Wow, seeing Sherlock Holmes Museum, London Eye, Buckingham Palace and the Underground brought back memories of my trip back in 2002. I love London... probably as much as I love Melbourne. It's really a great city. So much things to do and see. And the park, boy, do they have one of the most beautiful parks in the world. I miss you, London. I hope to visit you again someday.