What comes to your mind when you see a subject that spells a great deal of negativity like this post? I am not going to kill myself, no way! But, I almost lost my life in my usual bus ride home earlier!!
I felt weird already when I first boarded the bus from the bus stop near my office. The bus reeked of kerosene, both outside and inside of it! I could smell it even before I got up the bus. Immediately I texted KL to ask him if it was normal for such a strong smell of kerosene to be present. His reply concurred to what I was thinking about in my head, to get down from that bus! However, I was too tired and this damn bus has taken so long to come so I cannot imagine how long it would take for the next one to come.
I fell asleep before I even realised, and by the time I opened my eyes; there was a whole lot of commotion on the bus. People were talking loudly, and I actually heard (when I pulled down my earphones of course!) "Ohhhh, no wonder there is such a strong smell of kerosene!" Everyone was then shooed down the bus by the helpless bus driver. Lucky I wasn't too far from home at that juncture.
This tiny episode suddenly enlightened me.. it must have been the wish of The Almighty up there, to let me be alive and live my life to the fullest. Life may have been really tough, and it is not any easier now with Rianne growing up so quickly. But I am strong. I will not quit, I will do whatever it takes to raise my little baby, my mistake from the past. No use looking back and dwelling on my stupidity which I can lament until the cows come home! I rather channel my efforts into better use like working hard and looking forward to a brighter future.. I know my time will come, the time when I finally taste happiness.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
I do, I do..
You know how the elderly folks always describe us to have "borrowed the guts from a tiger" when we are super daring, and does some incredible misdeeds or maybe even heroic acts; that no ordinary mortal would attempt. I am thinking I might have indeed borrowed those from a tiger, or otherwise I must have been a tigeress in human skin and flesh..
You would never expect the person who has always been the passive party, and one who's never supportive of marriages and would just freak out at the mere mention of it; to actually be the one to propose a marriage. Yes, that someone did and that person is no other than me, my goodself! Haha..
Honestly, it wasn't at all a tough thing to do. Not when it was just asking my beloved boyfriend if he would say yes should I ask him to marry me. Of course I wasn't not the least shy or blushing when I asked him. In fact, my whole body grew so hot that I had to hide under the blanket after I popped the question! Well, it just seem natural that I should be proposing if I love him enough to want to spend everyday, for the rest of my life with him. Hence, it wasn't hard at all for my heart and mind to agree on the course of action. And viola, it happened and my heart actually felt a good sense of relief after saying it out.
Just like how anyone would react to a proposal, KL was surprised of course; and happy I know. He was grinning and asked me "Where got girl propose one!". He followed by asking if I meant now, to get married. I could totally see where KL was coming from with his question. We are both not financially stable yet, and he only started on a new job this month; so I understand the hidden message. My reply to him was "no lah, pretend I never ask..", in a joking tone. It is not because I got embrrassed and want to chicken out, but more like I don't want to stress him with having to marry me anytime soon. I want him to be ready for a family, a life, together with me and Rianne. He assured me that he's not saying yes now not because he don't want, he wants he so exclaimed.
Ha, tell me now if you think I am really gutsy (Oops, need to return them to the tiger!)..
You would never expect the person who has always been the passive party, and one who's never supportive of marriages and would just freak out at the mere mention of it; to actually be the one to propose a marriage. Yes, that someone did and that person is no other than me, my goodself! Haha..
Honestly, it wasn't at all a tough thing to do. Not when it was just asking my beloved boyfriend if he would say yes should I ask him to marry me. Of course I wasn't not the least shy or blushing when I asked him. In fact, my whole body grew so hot that I had to hide under the blanket after I popped the question! Well, it just seem natural that I should be proposing if I love him enough to want to spend everyday, for the rest of my life with him. Hence, it wasn't hard at all for my heart and mind to agree on the course of action. And viola, it happened and my heart actually felt a good sense of relief after saying it out.
Just like how anyone would react to a proposal, KL was surprised of course; and happy I know. He was grinning and asked me "Where got girl propose one!". He followed by asking if I meant now, to get married. I could totally see where KL was coming from with his question. We are both not financially stable yet, and he only started on a new job this month; so I understand the hidden message. My reply to him was "no lah, pretend I never ask..", in a joking tone. It is not because I got embrrassed and want to chicken out, but more like I don't want to stress him with having to marry me anytime soon. I want him to be ready for a family, a life, together with me and Rianne. He assured me that he's not saying yes now not because he don't want, he wants he so exclaimed.
Ha, tell me now if you think I am really gutsy (Oops, need to return them to the tiger!)..
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
The battle of the durians
I am definitely not a food gourmet if you have realized by now, but it isn't hard at all for me to start writing a post about mooncakes.. especially durian-flavored ones.
As usual, my boss has left me in charge of organizing the mooncake roadshow for this year. However due to space & time constraints, we were unable to have any hoteliers or confectioners coming to our office for a mooncake bazaar. Nevetheless I still managed to get the 2 top mooncake-specializing hotels to render an attractive corporate discount, and one had even brought samples down for our staff to taste.
I'm more of a snowskin than traditional mooncakes fan, though I have always adored those ham & nuts baked mooncakes, savoury & sweet, how intriguing! It is quite obvious that durian mooncakes are the hottest item in roadshows and bulk orders this year. The mooncakes that hit the highest order rate in our office was "Snowskin with champagne truffle" from Raffles Hotel, and the "Snowskin D24 durian" from Goodwood Park Hotel. But what caught both KL's and my eyes was the Mega Mao Shan Wang Durian Snowskin. Mega is what we thought would be impressive enough for the gift to my mom.
Indeed my mom was grinning from right from left when she received the Mega mooncake (1 piece only) from KL's hands. It was actually the last piece from the roadshow, so we count ourselves to be quite lucky, and with the credit card discount of 15%, the mooncake cost around $45.
The verdict : Contains pure durian pulp, so taste is not only rich but solid. Kinda like durian cake when you freeze it and eat it afterwards.
The other durian mooncakes which were surprisingly good are those from Home Favourites Cookies & Durian. The highlight of the mooncakes are they actually have got gold dust sparkled on top of them. Premium durian and Mao Shan Wang ones are what my kindest boss bought for both me & my colleague. They are priced at $70 and $75 respectively for a box of 4, which is insanely expensive! Needless to say, the person who benefitted most from this durian frenzy is no other than Auntie Lee Annie!
Just received another 3 more boxes of D24 durian Snowskin mooncakes from Raffles Hotel. Will try and see if they are on par with my 2 top favorites mentioned above.
I shall leave you with the pictures of the best tasting durian mooncakes of 2011, and you seriously should consider getting them next year if you missed this time!
As usual, my boss has left me in charge of organizing the mooncake roadshow for this year. However due to space & time constraints, we were unable to have any hoteliers or confectioners coming to our office for a mooncake bazaar. Nevetheless I still managed to get the 2 top mooncake-specializing hotels to render an attractive corporate discount, and one had even brought samples down for our staff to taste.
I'm more of a snowskin than traditional mooncakes fan, though I have always adored those ham & nuts baked mooncakes, savoury & sweet, how intriguing! It is quite obvious that durian mooncakes are the hottest item in roadshows and bulk orders this year. The mooncakes that hit the highest order rate in our office was "Snowskin with champagne truffle" from Raffles Hotel, and the "Snowskin D24 durian" from Goodwood Park Hotel. But what caught both KL's and my eyes was the Mega Mao Shan Wang Durian Snowskin. Mega is what we thought would be impressive enough for the gift to my mom.
Indeed my mom was grinning from right from left when she received the Mega mooncake (1 piece only) from KL's hands. It was actually the last piece from the roadshow, so we count ourselves to be quite lucky, and with the credit card discount of 15%, the mooncake cost around $45.
The verdict : Contains pure durian pulp, so taste is not only rich but solid. Kinda like durian cake when you freeze it and eat it afterwards.
The other durian mooncakes which were surprisingly good are those from Home Favourites Cookies & Durian. The highlight of the mooncakes are they actually have got gold dust sparkled on top of them. Premium durian and Mao Shan Wang ones are what my kindest boss bought for both me & my colleague. They are priced at $70 and $75 respectively for a box of 4, which is insanely expensive! Needless to say, the person who benefitted most from this durian frenzy is no other than Auntie Lee Annie!
Just received another 3 more boxes of D24 durian Snowskin mooncakes from Raffles Hotel. Will try and see if they are on par with my 2 top favorites mentioned above.
I shall leave you with the pictures of the best tasting durian mooncakes of 2011, and you seriously should consider getting them next year if you missed this time!
Monday, September 5, 2011
Educating Rianne
I have thought my little nephew, Jayden, pointing at objects and asking his mummy "This one what?" to be quite amusing. And when I hear it from my own daughter, Rianne; I can no longer laugh..
I wanted to faint more than what I would do in my usual giggling self! It is undeniable that Rianne pick up things really fast, which in a way is bad as we almost cannot control the stuff she learn and start using them before we even know it. Take for example, she's a dialect expert. She can pronounce Hokkien words that accurately, way better than her mom! A 2 yr old toddler, an Eurasian, speaking fluent Hokkien words and phrases should be quite interesting to watch; but honestly, I am the least impressed!
More often than ever, I have wished Rianne to have a good grasp of English, then if she can, Chinese language would be the next. That is why I have always communicated with her in the former and lesser in the latter. I know there won't be a problem picking up Chinese/Mandarin when she goes to school the next time. I rather start educating her in English, and have her building up a stronger foundation than to struggle when she finally start school.
Talking about school, I cannot believe how incredibly hard it is to source for a centre which is going to take away close to $700 (provided I'm entitled to the government's subsidy) of my monthly salary for my toddler. It is still around 6 months before Rianne enters Nusery 1, and there is already no centre near where I stay that is available. It isn't like my criteria for the Montessori is super difficult to meet. All I am looking for is the centre should have adequately trained teachers and professional caregivers, and not just any cost-saving school
which scrimp on hiring good staff and compromise on the quality as a result.
My sister once told me it doesn't matter whether the kid goes to an expensive Montessori or just the PAP kindergarten, coz ultimately it is still the kid's inner talent that will give results. Hello, you'd only ruined your kid's talent and leave it completely undeveloped if you want to save money by sending them to lousy centres!
I wanted to faint more than what I would do in my usual giggling self! It is undeniable that Rianne pick up things really fast, which in a way is bad as we almost cannot control the stuff she learn and start using them before we even know it. Take for example, she's a dialect expert. She can pronounce Hokkien words that accurately, way better than her mom! A 2 yr old toddler, an Eurasian, speaking fluent Hokkien words and phrases should be quite interesting to watch; but honestly, I am the least impressed!
More often than ever, I have wished Rianne to have a good grasp of English, then if she can, Chinese language would be the next. That is why I have always communicated with her in the former and lesser in the latter. I know there won't be a problem picking up Chinese/Mandarin when she goes to school the next time. I rather start educating her in English, and have her building up a stronger foundation than to struggle when she finally start school.
Talking about school, I cannot believe how incredibly hard it is to source for a centre which is going to take away close to $700 (provided I'm entitled to the government's subsidy) of my monthly salary for my toddler. It is still around 6 months before Rianne enters Nusery 1, and there is already no centre near where I stay that is available. It isn't like my criteria for the Montessori is super difficult to meet. All I am looking for is the centre should have adequately trained teachers and professional caregivers, and not just any cost-saving school
which scrimp on hiring good staff and compromise on the quality as a result.
My sister once told me it doesn't matter whether the kid goes to an expensive Montessori or just the PAP kindergarten, coz ultimately it is still the kid's inner talent that will give results. Hello, you'd only ruined your kid's talent and leave it completely undeveloped if you want to save money by sending them to lousy centres!
Monday, August 22, 2011
Mid-year crisis
Have you ever been in this phase of life, often happening during the middle of the year; whereby you feel like you have worked too much all your life and you just wish you get god-damn lucky to strike lottery of some sort, and never have to work anymore?! I get it all the time.. and I call it the mid-year crisis.
2011 has been a long and excruciating year for me. With a role transfer from the regional team into the local HR team, everything seems exciting and challenging at first. I was more enthusiastic than ever, and super passionate about my work that I simply feel no exhaustion after a 12 hrs workday for consecutively 5 days. It was the change in my job portfolio that totally burnt me out.. The tonnes of paperwork and administration & coordination required for new joiners as well as resignees are killing me! My 12 hrs were not enough at all, so I had to put in time on my weekends too.
And did I mention about our office move? I have never encountered such lousy planning & coordination of an office move! Our HR team had to shift our workstations twice in 1 month, and can you imagine the amount of papers we have to move with us???!! I don't even know if the move was just to vacate our office space for the expanding subsidary company of ours; or should it be the purpose of housing the Shared Services Centre together so as to achieve higher level of efficiency and effectiveness? Whatever the ultimate objective may be, I just want to say that the move was badly executed. Timeframe was short, instructions were unclear, movers were inadequately trained, and operations were completely disrupted! There were no connection to a printer & scanner, our office phones were dead and worse, everyone was snatching for a piece of the wireless broadband as we weren't connected to our local LAN at all! And the most irritating of all is, I lost my pedestal during the move! No one else lost anything except for me!
Seriously, I am way falling behind my work now and it will impact my overall work performance if things don't get done by a certain time. I am feeling the stress everyday, and I really don't want to have people complaining that I am incompetent in my work when I am not; but very overloaded actually..
2011 has been a long and excruciating year for me. With a role transfer from the regional team into the local HR team, everything seems exciting and challenging at first. I was more enthusiastic than ever, and super passionate about my work that I simply feel no exhaustion after a 12 hrs workday for consecutively 5 days. It was the change in my job portfolio that totally burnt me out.. The tonnes of paperwork and administration & coordination required for new joiners as well as resignees are killing me! My 12 hrs were not enough at all, so I had to put in time on my weekends too.
And did I mention about our office move? I have never encountered such lousy planning & coordination of an office move! Our HR team had to shift our workstations twice in 1 month, and can you imagine the amount of papers we have to move with us???!! I don't even know if the move was just to vacate our office space for the expanding subsidary company of ours; or should it be the purpose of housing the Shared Services Centre together so as to achieve higher level of efficiency and effectiveness? Whatever the ultimate objective may be, I just want to say that the move was badly executed. Timeframe was short, instructions were unclear, movers were inadequately trained, and operations were completely disrupted! There were no connection to a printer & scanner, our office phones were dead and worse, everyone was snatching for a piece of the wireless broadband as we weren't connected to our local LAN at all! And the most irritating of all is, I lost my pedestal during the move! No one else lost anything except for me!
Seriously, I am way falling behind my work now and it will impact my overall work performance if things don't get done by a certain time. I am feeling the stress everyday, and I really don't want to have people complaining that I am incompetent in my work when I am not; but very overloaded actually..
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Meet the Parents
I already knew this day would come, I just didn't expect it would be this soon..
KL's parents are really nice people, at least they are very kind to the girl their son brought home. I want to be equally nice and leave a wonderful first impression to them. I was secretly wishing they would see me as a girl who hail from a reputable family, and someone with excellent upbringing.. actually all I wish is they never get to know my little secret - my little princess, Rianne.
Shame is not what I have for Rianne, it will never be. I am just unsure of how the two elders will take this fact. Thoughts keep running in my head. What if they get so angry and disgusted, and ask their son to leave me? What if they think of me as a shameless girl who's trying to get into their family by throwing myself at KL, which I obviously didn't. Although KL keep assuring me that the family will not think differently of me when they know I have a daughter, but how sure is he? They may not have been in this similar scenario before, so this is just a spectulation of the possible reaction.
But then again, we are only into our 3rd month in the relationship. So, it may seem like I'm just over-worrying. However, I don't want the family to believe that I am intentionally hiding the truth from them. Gosh, this is so hard.
KL's parents are really nice people, at least they are very kind to the girl their son brought home. I want to be equally nice and leave a wonderful first impression to them. I was secretly wishing they would see me as a girl who hail from a reputable family, and someone with excellent upbringing.. actually all I wish is they never get to know my little secret - my little princess, Rianne.
Shame is not what I have for Rianne, it will never be. I am just unsure of how the two elders will take this fact. Thoughts keep running in my head. What if they get so angry and disgusted, and ask their son to leave me? What if they think of me as a shameless girl who's trying to get into their family by throwing myself at KL, which I obviously didn't. Although KL keep assuring me that the family will not think differently of me when they know I have a daughter, but how sure is he? They may not have been in this similar scenario before, so this is just a spectulation of the possible reaction.
But then again, we are only into our 3rd month in the relationship. So, it may seem like I'm just over-worrying. However, I don't want the family to believe that I am intentionally hiding the truth from them. Gosh, this is so hard.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Witty Rianne
Need I say more? Hear it from Rianne right below..
Every night when I get home, the first thing Rianne would say is "Mummy come back", and she will then ask me for my mobile phone as I settle down inside my room. Usually my iPhone will be on lock mode, and Rianne after sliding her finger to activate my phone will say to me "Mummy press password". If she accidentally disabled my phone, which happens when you pressed a wrong password for too many times. She will then tell me "Anne Anne cannot", which is in adult talk - Rianne cannot unlock the phone".
There were so many occasions when I simply couldn't locate an application on my iPhone, and I would then realize they have been brutually removed by Princess Rianne! Lucky I have never paid for an application, oh, did I not mention that before? Hahaha..
Can you even imagine the sentences that Rianne make up are sometimes so logical and I swear we never did any of those she allegedly claimed we did, or were even taught by us. Last night she saw a bug on the floor, and she instantly yelled out loud "Cockroach!!". When my mom went to her rescue and picked up that little crawlie, Rianne said "Ah ma kill cockroach. Cockroach bite Anne Anne!" Fainted..
I am so impressed with Rianne's ability to speak pretty well at her tender age. Take for instance, at her eye checkup last Friday. She basically blew me away with her ability to identify pictures of objects on a book the optician was holding. As I have never asked her to recognise the similar objects before, so I wasn't certain that Rianne could name them when she was asked to. I could feel tears of joy in my eyes as soon as she finished the optical test.. I was happy not only because she can name the objects which I thought she can't, but for the results of the optical test! Her vision is perfect, even from a considerably far distance. I guess my worries were kinda uncalled for..
Every night when I get home, the first thing Rianne would say is "Mummy come back", and she will then ask me for my mobile phone as I settle down inside my room. Usually my iPhone will be on lock mode, and Rianne after sliding her finger to activate my phone will say to me "Mummy press password". If she accidentally disabled my phone, which happens when you pressed a wrong password for too many times. She will then tell me "Anne Anne cannot", which is in adult talk - Rianne cannot unlock the phone".
There were so many occasions when I simply couldn't locate an application on my iPhone, and I would then realize they have been brutually removed by Princess Rianne! Lucky I have never paid for an application, oh, did I not mention that before? Hahaha..
Can you even imagine the sentences that Rianne make up are sometimes so logical and I swear we never did any of those she allegedly claimed we did, or were even taught by us. Last night she saw a bug on the floor, and she instantly yelled out loud "Cockroach!!". When my mom went to her rescue and picked up that little crawlie, Rianne said "Ah ma kill cockroach. Cockroach bite Anne Anne!" Fainted..
I am so impressed with Rianne's ability to speak pretty well at her tender age. Take for instance, at her eye checkup last Friday. She basically blew me away with her ability to identify pictures of objects on a book the optician was holding. As I have never asked her to recognise the similar objects before, so I wasn't certain that Rianne could name them when she was asked to. I could feel tears of joy in my eyes as soon as she finished the optical test.. I was happy not only because she can name the objects which I thought she can't, but for the results of the optical test! Her vision is perfect, even from a considerably far distance. I guess my worries were kinda uncalled for..
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