Let’s come back to the teambuilding event. Sorry -lah the post about the limbo kings and queens got to wait.

We all got up by 7am next morning to start on the raft building and race event. Since the groups were already divided the day before, with a short briefing session telling us the rules and regulations that we have to abide as well as some safely aspects explained, we went straight into the building works without wasting any more time.

Despite my team having the least members, with some leaving on the first day due to prior commitments as well as some lazy bones still sleeping, we won the race!! Two factors, good teamwork as well as good design. Notice that my team is the one with the straight design compared to the triangle design adopted by the other two teams!!

A friend of ours, Jit Lian is leaving to Singapore to start her new job soon, so we decided that we should have a final get-together before she leaves. After thinking hard for a makan place, I thought of this restaurant in Sungai Buloh. Been there ages ago with a uni-mate for dinner. It is situated deep in a kampung in Sungai Buloh and I don’t remember the route there actually. Therefore, managed to do a search in the local blogs and found a map! Yay!

We all met in Tse-Kuan’s house (Bandar Sri Damansara)  first to go together in one car since this place is really ulu-ulu land and we did not want to get lost with one fellow heading east and another heading west (direct translation from Cantonese). Armed with the map, we got to the place first try without even getting lost at all! Haha. This is what you get when you have an aeronautical engineer on board.

Upon arriving there, we were greeted by this lovely spread of desserts at the entrance. But decided that we should not start with desserts thus proceeding to order our main meal.

We were really impressed by the speed the food was served. Less than 5 minutes from our order, the food was served. Starting with the kangkung, followed by the tomyum, the steamed siakap and lastly the pandan chicken. Everything was simply mouth-watering. The only complaint was that the everything on the table was spicy. Heck, I love spicy food!

Overall, we had one very satisfying meal, although the food in Thailand certainly tops this, but we’ll have to make do with this until have a chance to visit Pete in Bangkok!

p/s: this place is halal!

Organized and had the first teambuilding event with my present company over at Country Heights, Kajang. We didn’t manage to do lots of activities but overall I think everyone enjoyed session, for the first day anyways!

We did the normal things you would expect in teambuilding. Went into the hall, got divided into groups. Had a short ice breaker session. After that, we had some ‘theory’ explaining to us how to work effectively in the team, and so forth and so forth.

 In the afternoon, we had to complete an obstacle course. Although this was rather easy for most of us, there are some who really never do any exercise or any outdoor activities. So this proves to be quite a challenge for them!

Will share more photos in the next post. Look out for the limbo rock kings and queens as well as our lovely accomodation!!!

Last Saturday, Alex and I managed to catch this wondeful theaterical intepretation of the much loved movie of the same title. The show is held in Istana Budaya from July 14th till July 26th. There are two shows running a day, 3pm and 8:30pm. We decided to go for the 3pm one, not only it is cheaper but also we should be able to enjoy it better since both Alex and I sleep rather early.

Anyway, since we’re all familiar with the story, let’s skip that part. King Mongkut’s role was played by Paul Nakuachi. I for one, felt that it is rather odd for a Japanese to hold this role. Although, I know, no Thai would actually play the role since they consider it to be great disrespect for this revered monarch, I always thought the best person to play this would be from South East Asia. Paul really amazed me. He played this role very convincingly. Had the regal air about him and yet managed to squeeze in a few laughs.

The leading lady, Anna Leonowens is played by Brianna Boger. In my mind, everytime, anything musical, I would think of Julie Andrews. Probably due to the fact I watched The Sound of Music and Mary Poppins over and over again throughout my childhood, I tend to do some kind of benchmarking to her. Brianna was good, but lack of something. Just cannnot put my finger to it.

A scene from The King & I

Other than the two leading roles, the other cast members which stood out was Tuptim and Lun Tha. Tuptim (played by Luz Lor) had this flawless voice. Everytime she sings, my hair stands! Alex commented that she had a better singing voice compared to the lead!! Her voice very much reminded me of Lea Salonga.  Lun Tha (played by Enrique Acevedo) had a good voice but that was not what that attracted me to him. Being a Burmese/Thai servant, he was half-naked throughout the whole show and I can tell you folks this, his body has the same standards of those we’ve seen on the movie 300. Kekekeke…

The scene that I enjoyed the most has to be the presentation by the royal children and wives during the visit of the English diplomat, The Small House of Uncle Thomas. The story is Tuptim’s interpretation of the Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Having an American story done in a totally Siamese setting, this is totally hilarious and star of the whole production!

I give this a very strong 8/10.

Hello folks,

 I had a very hectic weekend and due to the rain, I am now down with flu. All the flu meds will cause drowsiness so I am at home. Will post more regarding the weekend. Ta ta for now!

Yesterday, my company had a blood donation drive. I attempted to donate last year, but the idiotic & incompetent nurse did a bad job at poking me. I bled into my skin instead causing my entire left arm with a nasty bruise. Took the bruise almost 2 weeks to completely disappear.

Despite that incident, I thought that I will have another go again this year. The National Blood Bank was the one running the drive. Of course, my company is fully supportive of it. Gave a door gift and a certificate (signed by the National Blood Bank president) to every donor. The gift was a LED torchlight. Pretty handy and practical gift!

In total, we managed to get about 284 packs of blood. Not a very high number but at least it is a good start. I hope all of us realise the importance of this sharing. As I was telling Alex last night, I would rather be the donor rather than recipient.

 Side Talk: While I was filling the form, there was a section stating that those who have stayed more than a period of 6 months between 1980 and 1996 in United Kingdom is not allowed to donate. Anyone knows why?

Last Friday, Alex and I went to try out this place called B.B.Q. Plaza in Sunway Pyramid. We passed by the eatery several times but never entered it because Alex was rather worried that we’ll end up smelling like food once we finished out meal. However, since it was Friday and it after work and we’ll be heading home straight after dinner, Alex was game enough this time.

We reached the outlet slightly before seven o’clock. The restaurant manager quickly greeted us and asked the usual questions (i.e. how many of us dining). We have to wait roughly about 5 minutes at the entrance before we were shown to our seats because, despite the number of staff this place have, they were rather slow at clearing up the tables mainly due to the fact that there was only ONE person doing this. The rest of them just serve and take orders. Need a  little reshuffling here, if you ask me.

Clockwise from the top: Our hot plate before , The set we ordered, Cooking in Progress, The special sauce flown in from Bangkok weekly

To cook the food, they provided us some pieces of lard to grease the hot plate and some stock if we wanted the more traditional method of boiling. I feel the stock they provided is mainly to prevent the hot plate from overheating rather than to cook.  We were also quite pleasantly surprised by the fact that the whole place is not very smokey unlike normal steamboat/bbq. Clean envirpment and reasonable pricing. Overall we were quite satisfied with the place. Although the service could improve, this place offers a rather unique steamboat experience.

As most of you already know, although I am born an ethnic Chinese, I am not very well-verse in its language. I speak English as a first language. My Cantonese is so-so. My Mandarin is pretty much like a Mat Salleh who has just learnt the language. My Hokkein is also not really that much better. I only understand mainly the Northern flavour of it. Heavily influenced by the Malay language.  So I can sometimes get irritated by Alex and his chine-pek English), whom I thought has similar family background as I. So today, being Friday and all, I was just surfing aimless on the Internet and found this little quiz.  Quite surprised by the results really. Ego boost for the afternoon.

How grammatically correct are you? (Revised with answer key)

You are a GRAMMAR GOD!

Congratulations! If your mission in life is not already to preserve the English tongue, it should be. You can smell a grammatical inaccuracy from fifty yards. Your speech is revered by the underlings, though some may blaspheme and call you a snob. They’re just jealous. Go out there and change the world.
Take this quiz!

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Turns out that 29% of the people who took this quiz has similar score [Ego deflating]

Kena tagged by Kamkuey to do this meme. Actually he tagged me when I was at the old place, by right, no need to do right? He he. But since he is such a good friend, I layan-lah

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