Archive for November, 2007

I was reading an article in a magazine that more and more people are now turning to cruises for their functions or parties instead of holding them at a posh hotel. Cruising is no longer just for celebrities but they are still for the rich. You don’t have to be famous but you need to have $$$ to hold a party on a cruise. The rest of us can only look at a Cruise Guide and dream.

There are cruise ships that are huge with lots of entertainment within, casinos, gyms, eateries, you name it. Well, if you are not rich enough to own a cruise ship or to charter an entire ship for your party, you can still go on a cruise holiday, I suppose. Its not like having your own party on your own boat but its still an experience to add into your memory bank without denting your bank account too much.

I have not had the chance to go on a cruise before. I hope I have the chance to… one day.. How about you?

“Apartment for Sale”. I put up two of those. I bought a sales sign from a Hardware shop and put that on the front door. Then I used a black marker pen and yellow highlighting pen and drew up another sign and put that at the side window of my apartment. I decided to try this option first before putting up a listing like the ones listed here - denver homes for sale.

As soon as I drove away from the apartment my handphone rang. It was from the neighbour opposite calling up to enquire. When I finished the conversation, I received a few more calls, all from neighbours. I suspect that some of them were merely trying to find out how much the apartment is going for so that they have some idea how much their unit is worth.

Anyway, I must have been lucky because I managed to sell my apartment within a week - on my own and at a reasonable price too. I did speak to several real estate agents but eventually I received a good offer from a neighbour. To my surprise I even had a counter offer. With so many new developments that offered apartments with some sort of facilities (mine did not have any) I was expecting to list my apartment for a few months before concluding a sale so I was very happy indeed to have sold it within a week. Perhaps it still had a niche of its own. I noticed that 90% of my callers were elderly men and women. Hehe. So that must have been the niche.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Took the kids to the KL Bird Park recently. Also known as the “The World’s Largest Free Flight Aviary” it certainly houses a large collection of birds. They look well fed too. I could see that they were feeding on papayas, corns, bananas and other fruits. Yum yum. The fruits do not look like discards. They look fresh and good.

The birds were used to tourists I suppose because they flew about freely right before our faces. Some of them were really colorful and some looked like they were wearing pretty headdresses. Now, I know where some designers get their ideas. The colors were really beautiful and striking. Bright hues of red, yellow, turquoise, blues, greens, purple and pink. There were quite a number of peacocks too and one of them decided to showoff to us, spreading its beautiful tale wide open. It was quite a sight to behold.

To my amusement, I saw a signboard in front of some green leafy plants. There was a brief description about the plant. The signboard labelled it as the Malaysian Ginseng. It was a Tongkat Ali plant. Hahahaha. Well, I guess it belongs in a bird park alright since its suppose to treat another type of “bird”. Lol!

Since its Friday, those of you who have kids and have not been there before can consider going there for the weekend. Its RM30 for adults and free for kids under 3. Can’t remember how much it is for kids above 3 but if you flash them your MyKad, you get a discount so your ticket costs only RM12 for an adult. Please forgive me if I get the ticket prices wrong. My memory isn’t quite what it used to be.

There! Done my bit for Malaysian tourism. Happy Weekend to everyone. 

I have been summoned to attend a wedding dinner. (in Chinese, this means being given a wedding invitation card with your name on it). I used to receive this summons a lot during my 20s when lots of friends were being wed. I still got them in my 30s but its dwindled a lot by now.

Receiving one of these things often puts me in a dilemma. Though Chinese, I don’t really know what is the “cultural” expectations. In other words, I don’t know what to do lah.

So what is the expectation, can someone please tell me? What is the standard? There is KL standard etc etc. The Chinese must protect their own “face” so they often give in to this “ransom” for money angpow and apparently there are certain standards to comply to (meaning a minimum amount to give) irrespective of whether you attend the wedding dinner or not. Comply to these standards or forever be known as a miser or stingy poker.

So what is the standard? I have my own theory. To me, if I get this summons from someone close to me, I would give them something irrespective of whether I attend or not. If I attend, I would make sure that I at least pay over and above the cost of my dinner so that my friend won’t have to pay for me to attend their dinner. If I can’t make it to the dinner, I would give my friend something too because I want to, not because I am obliged to.

This is probably the same reasoning why people are expected to pay more give a bigger angpow when attending a dinner in a hotel compared to a dinner at a Chinese Restaurant for example.

Once, I received this summons from a colleague on another floor which I hardly know. I did the unthinkable. I chose to ignore it. I did not pay up the summons lah. Some say that is very rude. Aiyah, so many rules one. If you receive it from a subordinate, you must pay more, if you receive it from your superior, less etc etc. To me, I hardly know you, so why should I be held ransom? But some say must at least give a token lah blah blah blah.

On the other hand, if you are the wedding couple, handing out this summons can also give you headache. You have to plan your seating arrangement and number of attendees so that you don’t explode your budget or run out of food or seating places but sometimes you invite just one person and that person brings a legion of relatives. Sometimes you’re not sure whether its “nice” to just invite someone without inviting their spouses etc etc. More rules again.

There are also rules in giving out the angpow. Apparently you can put it in the same envelope that you receive together with the summons so that the wedding party immediately knows who its from since your name is written on it. Is that right? I’m also not sure about this practise.

So many rules makes me pening kepala. So what is the standard? If you are not attending? Must give ah? How much to give huh? If its addressed to you and your spouse, must give double ah? How much to give if its your subordinate or superior leh?

 

So everyone is affected by the recent google page rank revamp. Semua kena demotion. Lol! Nevermindlah, sama sama turun. It merely means that everyone has come down a step or two. It would matter if you were the only one affected though but since everyone, even the big boys are affected, its really no big deal.

I tried to check my page rank using a page rank checking tool so the first thing I did was to google “google page rank checker”. These are the top 3 that came out from my search results.

1. Blogflux
2. PRChecker
3. Checkpagerank

I tried to check my google page rank for this blog using all the 3 tools above. The first one showed a PR of 4, the second one showed a PR of 2, the third one showed a PR of 3. Hmmm… I guess some of them are not quick enough to adjust their formula to show the latest results. They showed varying results for my other blogs as well. Was happy for a while thinking that I was not affected when I tried the blogflux tool. Lol!

Previously, I used to have one blog with PR4 and two others with PR5. After a revamp was demoted to PR4 for all. Now it looks like another demotion leaving me with 3, 2, 2. To me, this second round of revamp does not make a difference to me. It made a difference when I went down from PR5 to PR4.

PR is just a number. So who cares? I’ll just blog on as usual. How about you?

Do you read product reviews? I do. Product reviews are much more useful than product advertisements. They give the true picture whereas product advertisement tends to give a glossy picture of the product or service. So I always read product reviews. Product reviews by real users give me the truthful picture and sometimes even brings up facts or perspectives of the product which I never would have thought of.

I find Consumer Research sites and product reviews like WIZE really useful. There is a review on just about any consumer product you are interested it, from baby carriers to operating systems softwares and utilities, from shavers to MP3 and Digital Media Players.

The categories available or product reviews available are really wide. You can choose to look through 75,720 products and 1,523,014 reviews (these are the numbers I obtained at the point of writing this post). The tagline for the WIZE website is “Get WIZE, then buy” - WIZE simplifies all the Web’s opinions and information so you don’t have to. How true. Its always wise to do some research and read up some information before buying and here is a site which compiles all of that widely available information on the web for us to make our research homework easier. Its definitely a good place to go to find product reviews.

I bought The Family Herbal Cookbook by Cecilia Tan and so I decided to step into a Traditional Chinese Medicine Shop to buy some herbs and try out some recipes. I hate entering a shop when I am ignorant about the product that I am going to buy. Its easier to cheat an ignorant person. Afterall, herbs can sometimes be very expensive and how do I know if they are the real thing or fake? So I enter the shop with caution.

And, I AM ignorant. I can’t differentiate between the different herbs. To me, they all look the same. They look like wrinkled old dried up twigs (which they sometimes are) or twisty, ugly, wormy looking thingys. I feel very self-concious at the shop because it is obvious that I do not know my herbs.

I did not grow up in an environment where going to herbal shops comes naturally to me. My mum died at 10 and thats when all things herbal died too for me. So I can’t remember much except for when I was 17 and living with my aunt. I vaguely recall her making a herbal concoction for me by using a double boiler over a charcoal flame on several occassions. That was the extend of my knowledge.

Language is a barrier for me too. I speak limited Cantonese, no Mandarin and my hokkien is half past six (meaning, its lousy). Fortunately for me there are recipe books that comes with complete color photos of the various herbs plus a detailed description of what they are for and there are traditional chinese medicine shops in shopping complexes now. These shops look like they are being run by the second generation English speaking kids who have taken over the running of the business from their parents. Phew! Thats a great relief for me, not having to struggle with my words and have no one understand what I want.

Even then, I embarass myself by not being able to distinguish the herbs and not knowing the prices. When I told the guy at the counter that I wanted 30g of a certain herb, I almost fainted when he told me the price. Lol!

Well, knowledge can be attained, so I shall not let a small thing like that hinder me. I shall continue to study my herbs by reading my recipe book from front to back cover. Don’t laugh. Some of the recipe books are interesting reads as they explain what a certain dish is for and why you mix the ingredients in that manner. So yes, I read my recipe books from front to back before I decide what to try out.

Another thing about Chinese herbs, when I was pregnant, I consulted my gynae about whether I should take things like bah kut teh for example and she told me that its ok to take herbs that you can see in actual physical form but not those that are in powder form because you don’t know whats in them. I think thats sound advice so I’ve followed that from then on. I like to know what I’m ingesting so even if I go to a Chinese Medicinal Hall, I normally won’t tell them to “Chap” (pack) some herbs for me for a given purpose. I prefer to tell them what I want. For that same reason, I don’t usually buy those ready packed ones even though those are much easier to buy and a lot less intimidating then going to a Traditional Chinese Medicine shop.

I haven’t much time to blog these days but hopefully, I can steal some free time here and there to read my recipe book instead.

The world is flat, not round, that is from the view of a flat screen television. Oh, but what a lovely view that is. These days, the Flat Screens are not only aesthetically pleasing to the eye, they are a whole lot clearer than the older technology TVs. On their own, they look like a nice decorative piece of furniture and of course when its on, you get crystal clear entertainment too.

The bigger the better, for some people, that is. I don’t like mine too large. Not in my small house anyway. I wouldn’t mind it if I owned a sprawling huge villa or bungalow. In that case, I will need a really huge flat screen TV then.

If you’re a fan of Flat Screen TVs, you should read some flat panel TV reviews before you trade in your old TV or part with your money. There are so many choices available to consumers these days, its always good to do some homework before buying anything, especially costly electrical items.