What I've been up to …

Today was the 27th day of fasting (Ramadhan). So, will we be fast for 29 days, or 30 days this time? This question has been going around quite actively lately that I decided to blog about it .

On Wednesday (8th September 2010) night, there’ll be “New Moon Sighting” activities by the various religious bodies. There are rumours that this years Eid (Raya) could be on Thursday and not Friday as initially understood. These rumours will be answered only on Wednesday night, when it ‘s cofirmed whether we will be celebrating on Thursday or Friday.

I told a few colleagues that to reduce our enxiety, let’s check the times of moon set and sunset for Wednesday evening.

After googling for “moon set sunset Malaysia”, we came across this  site: http://www.timeanddate.com/

I checked for the sunset time for Wednesday (8 September 2010) and got this:

And for the moon set, I got this:

As we can see, on Wednesday, the sun will set at 7.15pm, while the moon will set at 7.05pm. To get a new moon, the sun has to set BEFORE the moon. So, analytically (Malay: kiraan falaq), there will be NO NEW MOON on Wednesday night.

On the other hand, on Thursday night, the sun will still set at about 7.15pm, but the moon will set at 7.56pm. That’s a good 41 minutes away. Hence we should be able to see a clear crescent that night.

So, my dear friends, after studying these tables, when do you think our Raya (Eid) will be? *wink*

If we really celebrate Raya on Thursday what is your conclusion?

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It happened to me many many times, but only today I feel like blogging about it.

KTMB hotline is 1-300-88-5862

Getting through the line is very fast, but getting someone to actually answer your call is a real joke!

Try it yourself, and you know what I mean…

I visited KTMB’s website:

Aftergoing through a few pages, I was not happy with the information. I needed more, so I called their Hotline. Their hotline is definitely very very cold!

A few attempts failed. The calls just ended up being terminated.  I got similar outcomes when I tried the number a few weeks ago to enquire the latest ETS service.

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I came across the phrase RT (retail Therapy) from some of my “Mak Cik Blogger” (blogging aunties) friends, esp Kay.

Two office mates and I booked our Jakarta tickets some time ago, and last Saturday (15th May 2010) was the departure day.

We were really aiming to shop till we drop and nobody brought a camera! Why would we need a camera, we were not playing tourists, hahaha!! We however had our phones (though mine doesn’t have roaming facility) that have built-in cameras. Hence all the pix here were taken using my phone camera.

Day 1

Armed with a few millions rupiah (yeah, we were millionaires that day!), we arrived at LCCT at 6am (having checked in online the day before). It was a fast move to the departure lounge because we were not carrying any check-in luggae (hence skipped the baggage drop).

Our plane left at 7am, and arrived at Soekarno Hatta Airport 2 hours later, at 8am local time. By 9am we were already at Tanah Abang!!

Oh, by the way, I met Tini of Snazzy and Such on the plane. She was accompanying her friend for some shopping too!  Our path crossed again at the food court in  Tanah Abang!

First stop was at the textile shops for bargain on cotton fabrics. I managed to take these pix:

It looked so much similar to the shop that I blogged (about wanting to visit).

The shop not so cheap, but we found others that offer better prices. One of them was this one:

My friend looking at some of the cotton:

while I looked at those outside the shop:

After this second shop, I totally forgot to take any other pic, and just engrossed myself in the RT .

We had our lunch of nasi padang  at the food court in the (Tanah Abang) shopping complex. It was simple but delicious. I also had one of the best cendols I’ve tasted so far too.

After lunch, when our initially almost empty hand-carried bags were full, and we had just too many plastic bags to carry, we took a cab to our abode for our stay there, the Traveller’s Hotel.

We took a rest until it was time to have dinner. We asked the reception for some suggestions of places to go. The guy suggested “Mall of Indonesia”. We didn’t hear it right, and when we tried to tell the cab driver, he (the driver) asked us back “Grand Indonesia?”. Clueless, we said yes. Little did we know we were heading to downtown Jakarta, and it was Saturday night! We ended up spending quite some time in the traffic jam before we eventually reached the place.

Grand Indonesia is too grand for our purses, so we only had dinner, bought some foodstuff and headed back to our hotel. The dinner was pricey but nice and tasty. I took some pix but somehow I could not find them in my phone, I wonder why…

Day 2

Well rested the night before, we excitedly had our breakfast early, because the destination for that morning was Pasar Pagi (Morning Market) at Mangga 2. As the name suggests, we thought the place would open early, but when we asked the concierge to get us a cab to the place, he smiled at us and told us that the place started business at 10am!

Argh…. Disappointed, we went back to our room and watched tv instead (we caught an episode of Upin & Ipin!).

At  9am we however agreed to take a gamble and headed for the market. We agreed that if we arrived early, we’d just wait at the entrance to the shopping complex. We had a pleasant surprise – there were quite a number of shops open and bustling with transactions!! One of the first things we did was to get ourselves a check-in bag each! We needed these bags to put in the goods that we’d bought and were going to buy . I also managed to buy a Simpati prepaid call card and called Yudi (an Indonesian friend who was my coursemate during my training in Tokyo in 2004)  and Norita (a Malaysian friend who lives in Jakarta).

To cut the story short, we ended our visit with an early lunch at the food court. The food that we chose that day were not as nice as the nasi padang that we had the day before.

After lunch, we took a cab back to our hotel, to drop the bags and the stuff that we bought at Mangga 2 (Pasar Pagi).  We then went back to Tanah Abang. Yes, Tanah Abang. We were there until the shops were about to close (they close at about 4pm-5pm).

We then had no choice but to go back to our hotel to rest .

Since we missed going to “Mall of Indonesia” (or locally known as MOI) the night before, we were determined to go there that night. I told Norita about it, and we agreed to meet up there. So that night, we went to MOI and met up Norita and hubby, Endi.

Here’s a pic of Norita and Endi choosing the dishes (we gave up trying to understand the menu):

My 2 “partners-in-crime” whiling away:

Norita treated us to a Sunda meal. It was delicious and I remember to snap a few more pix .

The way they served the sambal belacan was really attractive:

Similarly with another sambal:

More dishes:

And I love the sayur asam:

The main ingredients were buah malinjau and its shoots.

I know the seeds are used to make a type of crackers (keropok) that i love, as shown in this pic. That night it was the first time I saw the seeds in the soup:

Ah, enough about the food. In short, the dinner was wonderful!!

Before we parted, we thanked Norita and hubby for the wonderful dinner. Luckily we remembered to have a photo of me with them taken:

Hope to see Norita soon in KL, when she comes down to KL for some official tasks.

Day 3

We were leaving for home that afternoon. I had no more rupiah in my purse (I even owed S a few hundreds rupiahs!). Initially we were planning to just rest in our hotel room before we leave for the airport.  The temptation was high, and we found ourselves at Mangga 2 (ITC) again that morning, looking for more bargains! I resisted buying anything until I came across some chiffon head scarves that I couldn’t resist. So, I borrowed more rupiah from S and bought them.

We came back to our hotel in time for a brief rest, before we checked out and headed to the airport. Our flight was on time.

While in the plane I saw Air Asia’s new advert on the tray:

I thought the kitten looked so cute, don’t you?

We landed at KLIA at 5.50pm, and by 7pm I was home, cooking dinner for my family!

Now, that was a short and sweet RT outing!

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Touhid was one of my classmates during my e-Learning training at CICC, Japan in 2004. Together with other friends we had some great outings together while we were there. Since we left CICC, I’ve met some of the others during my travels:

1. Yudi in Jakarta
2. Mr Hiep & Mr Binh in Hanoi
3. Siriwan in Bangkok
4. Liang in Beijing.

Apart from meeting them there, Mr Hiep, Siriwan and Yudi had visited Kuala Lumpur and we had some time together too.

Last Thursday was Touhid’s turn to visit Kuala Lumpur. It was not really a visit.  Touhid and his family were on their way back to Gold Coast (he is a PhD student in Brisbane) from his homeland, Bangladesh. They arrived via MAS at 7.30am, and they were going to take the 9.40pm Air Asia flight to Gold Coast.

So, I took the day off and went to KLIA to fetch them. Rosaline,  Touhid’s missus is a charming lady. Rohn (the son) was shy but Anna (the daughter) is really a smart girl. I’ll tell you why later.

After leaving KLIA, our first destination was the LCCT to “dump” a couple of huge baggage at the “Baggage Storage” service. I could not send them back to LCCT later that day, so we thought it would be better to keep the bigger bags at LCCT so that it would be more convenient for Touhid and family to find their way back to LCCT from down town KL.

We then drove into Putrajaya. The obvious stop was the Putrajaya mosque. Despite being still early (about 9am), it was already very bright and hot, as can bee seen here:

We then stopped at McD (along the NKVE) for brunch before heading towards Genting Highlands.

It was my first time on the Genting cable car, and Touhid and I reminisced on our trip to Hakone (Japan) where we took a couple of cable cars, trains, and a river cruise – all in one day!

Here’s one shot as we went up to the top:

We only had less than 1 hour at the top, and since the outdoor theme park only offers day-passes, we had to give it a miss.

We then went to the Indoor Theme Park, and found out that we could buy RM8 tickets for single. Not to disappoint his kids, Touhid bought a couple of tickets:

His son insisted on the Ferries Wheel:

While Touhid took the ride, I looked around. The indoor park has changed a lot since the last time I was here (almost 10 years ago!).

I was surprised to see some gondolas:

On close examination only I noticed that they are mechanically operated, and the “Italians” in black and while shirt are just dummies:

Ah , well… I’ll wait for my real gondola ride in Venice – one day.. one day…

In the mean time, Touhid managed to get his kids another ride on the Merry-go-round before we had to head towards the cable car station.

We agreed that the signage in Genting can be improved a lot. Many a time we followed the signage only to come to a point where there was no more signage to our destination. We were grateful to Anna for being very observant and quick to retrack our paths! A smart 9-yr old girl she surely is!

We took our cable car ride down at 2pm. The first part of the ride was covered with clouds and the kids were so excited (actually, adults too!) to be “in” the clouds.

I finally left Touhid and family at KLCC (that’s the no.1 destination for Anna) at 3.30pm and headed back to Shah Alam. I had some other commitments to attend to hence I could not be with them any longer.

As I was saying goodbye to them, Rosaline handed over this little container to me:

When I was at a traffic light (getting into Jalan Sultan Ismail), I opened up the container and was pleasantly surprised to see the contents:

It’s a set of pearl necklace and earrings! Thank you Rosaline, I love them.

Soon we had to leave,

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Last Thursday, I had the pleasure of not working. I took the opportunity to unpack some of the boxes and catch up with ironing (apart from the routine cleaning, doing the dirty laundry, etc..).

In between the work and Facebooking, I took some quick time off  to organise the storage of my beads and stones. I then made these phone accessories:

The little golden beads and the wire that I used to connect the beads are gold-filled (in Bahasa we call it suasa) so they will not tarnish. I posted on my FB wall, and was surprised that quite a number of friends commented that these are cute.

Today, I had my monthly breakfast with Sh, As & Al. I came home at 11.30am.

Later in the afternoon, I felt like playing with the beads again, so I ended up with the following pins:

I wonder who would be the lucky owners of these pins (apart from me and Nuni)?

In the mean time I am also doing some knitting as well as having a few ongoing crochet projects. I also would like to do some patchwork quilting! Hey, there are only 3 more days of long weekend (minus today, which is almost gone now). Will I ever get to do so?

Oh! While I am playing with beads, I need to re-do Nury’s bracelets… Will blog later once they are done!

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Admiring Sabre’s Cheesecake??

Yesterday (Monday) just beforre I left for work, DH told me that he had invited Howard, Pat & Sabre to our home after work. Wow! I thought. But I finished work late on most Mondays!! I told DH so. He then said he’d arrange everything himself. Phew!!

So, when I arrived home at about 7.45pm, I found some Ayamas roast chicken, orange juice, salad (from Nando’s), soft drinks and some mandarin oranges in the kitchen.

DH was no where to be seen. He went to fetch Howard & Pat at the Kelana Jaya LRT station. Soon after that, Sabre arrived.

Not long after Sabre arrived, Nuni came home! She was early!!

I am too sleepy to say more now. Nuni has saved me from blogging in detail by her writing her blog about the evening much earlier.

DH and I later sent Howard and Pat back to their hotel (Le Meridien, KL).

It was a brief but enjoyable evening meet. Thank you, Pat for the bouquet of flowers and thank you, Sabre for the cheesecake!

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Last Wednesday morning (about 6.15am!), while I was doing my “farming” on Farmville, I was greeted by Howard on FB chat. Howard lives in the States. No doubt we are friends and even neighbours in Farmville, we had never chatted  online before.

(BTW, I met Howard for the first time in Acheh. It turned out that Howard used to work in Kelantan. See his comments here).

Anyway, here are the screen captures of that morning chat on Facebook:

I was sceptical about this, didn’t think Howard could be that desperate to ask me for financial help.  I was thinking, “I am sure Howard has other close associates whom he can ask for such help”.

On the other hand, I thought, WHAT IF it was a genuine call for help? What kind of friend am I?

DH was about to leave for a day trip to Langkawi, but he kept on reminding me not to at any circumstances agree to give “Howard” any money online. DH said it could not be Howard.

Then it occurred to me to check Howard’s FB status:

How could Howard be in such predicament and had the time to play Farmville? And how come Howard never put in his status as something to indicate that he was in dire need of help?

I decided to ignore that chat, and turned my status to “offline”.

Not long before that I saw a notification on Howard’s latest status:

Ah, phew! So, the chat was not with the real Howard.

So my friends, beware of Impostors on Facebook!

On a lighter note, Howard didn’t terminate his account. He changed his password, and reported the incident to FB. He still is one of my neighbours on Farmville .

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Yesterday (Monday) I managed to have lunch with a close friend, Aisyah, who was my colleague during my UNISEL days.

She wanted to have Curry Mee so we went to one of the outlets at SACC Mall (arg, forgot the name of the restaurant). I became a bit adventurous and ordered Thai Laksa. It was not that bad, really. Here’s my lunch yesterday:

I also had a glass of soursop drink which was a bit too sweet to my liking. Aisyah paid the bill! Thank you, my dear friend.

And today, I had lunch with 3 of my current colleagues at one of the stalls in front of our office block. I seldom have my lunch there simply because it’s usually full during lunch time, and it can be a bit hot on a sunny day. Today we were almost famish and went out slightly earlier, hence we beat the normal lunch traffic. By 2.10pm we were back in the office (note: our lunch time is between 1pm-2pm)!

Unfortunately, of all days, today it rained .

So, there we were, sitting under one of those gigantic umbrellas, but next to me the bench was wet (wiped it up just before we sat down):

My lunch was very simple, “Nasi goreng kampung” and plain tea:

Tomorrow will be my last day of work for this week, and I wonder what I’ll have for lunch then….

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Last Monday, my company started a training session at the new Pullman Putrajaya Lakeside The buildings are impressive, and I was told that their food is great, so that was why we opted for the place. We are there from Monday to today (4 days) followed by another day next Wednesday.

It’s our first time there, and we were looking forward to having the training session there. Last Thursday (despite promising to pay only on Monday), I came to the place with the payment cheque (since our Finance department got it ready that day). I was hoping for a good service, knowing that this is a brand new (5-star?) resort/hotel and having paid in advance.

We had the first hiccup when they didn’t call me last Friday (as promised) to inform me the time for my staff to go on Sunday to do all the preps. When it was past 6pm, I had to call several times, just to get the promised info.

The second hiccup was when my colleagues called the given numbers on Sunday, just to be told that those guys were on leave! Wrong guys! My colleagues had to enquire at the reception to get access to the rooms (we are using 2 romms) and to get assurance that the networks and servers that they set-up will be secured in the locked rooms.

The third hiccup was last Monday, when the welcoming breakfast (which was promised to be ready at 8am) was only ready at 8.30am, and we were starting our session (with a VIP!) at 8.30am. As if that was not enough, the rice noodles that came was not enough! Even the sugar packets were not enough! And that day several of the participants were fasting, can you imagine that?

Last Monday the noodle was served in this warmer:

To see how big (or rather how small it is), see here the actual container, with a little bowl:

Do you seriously think this container is big enough to put noodles for 35 (YES, I MEAN THIRTY FIVE) persons? I think Pullman’s chef needs to go back to culinary school to learn basic arithmetic!

The last 2 days I was not there, but this morning I went back to Pullman to see how things are. The final hiccup (you can say the final straw) was when I was greeted by some participants who told me that they didn’t get to eat the breakfast because there was no more left. Today they served fried yellow noodles, AGAIN  in that little container. Can you believe that?????

I was so embarrassed, and angry too, that I immediately went to the reception to lodge my complaint. As usual, with their smiling faces, they promised me that it will not happen again.  Those were the same promises that I got last Monday, from another Pullman executive (whom I’m directly dealing with). Anyway, I firmly told them that they have next Wednesday (our final day there) to deliver their promises. I’ll update here in my blog, for sure.

NEVER IN MY LIFE I’VE COME ACROSS SUCH A BIG HOTEL/RESORT THAT UNDERSERVES THEIR PATRONS! I’ll definitely think many many times before I agree to organise another event at Pullman Putrajaya Lakeside, despite their food tasting great! I remember the Monday afternoon break when ubi ketuk was one of the two items  served, and there were exactly 35 ubi ketuk (no more, no less!) – so stingy….

Some update:

On the same day, we had better (in quantity too) food. We were served chicken pies, plus 2 other kuih.

For the afternoon tea, we were served 3 items: fruit tarts, turkey-filled croissant sandwiches and CHICKEN KEBABS!! The participants of our training programme were so surprised, and some of them told me that I should have complained much earlier.

Here’s the shot of the kebab:

While we were having our afternoon tea, the Marketing director of Pullman Putrajaya came to meet us. She told us that The Chef offered us buffet breakfast at the Cafe for our final day (21st Oct). I politely declined. I thanked her for the generous offer, but we were therre for a training, and we were not asking for extras – we just wanted what is due for us, and what were promised to us. If they say there should be 2 items for breakfast, or any of the breaks, then we really wanted them to be enough for 35 pax, as requested.

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Duit Raya (Eid Money) is similar to angpow. Unlike angpow (which is given to those who are still unmarried), duit raya can be given to anybody, by anybody. It’s just that most of the time it would be the adults giving it to the children, though many adults give duit raya to their elderly too, such as parents, uncles, grandparents, etc..

The last time I received duit raya was exactly 30 years ago! I was still a student, “yatim piatu” (someone whose parents have passed away), and quite broke. I really appreciated the duit raya that I used to get. Though not much (most of my relatives were poor, and at the age of 17, I was considered too old for duit raya!), the duit raya that I got was very meaningful.

Since I started working, I have been giving duit raya to those I feel like giving (Hahaha!!! Sounds so selective, eh?). Kids would normally get some duit raya from me. Some adults like my brothers, sisters, step mum, cousins, adopted parents and some poor village people are some of the other recipients.

Some setbacks of the duit raya:

• I do not know  how, but eventually it was always expected of me to give duit raya. So, when there were times when “my economy” was not good, I avoided visiting some of these people, because I could not afford the duit raya, but I didn’t want them to know.
• Many times those I visited who got duit raya from me are quite poor,  or maybe they feel that they are poor, relative to me? I don’t know, but they didn’t give any duit raya to my kids who were much smaller then. Kids being kids, many times they complained, asking why do I give duit raya when they didn’t give them (my kids) any? Having said that, there wa one lady (she passed away several years ago) who used to get some duit raya from me, but NEVER FAILED to give some back to my kids! She said that those are kids, and they deserve to get the duit raya. That particular lady had such a big heart! Now that my kids are big, I can rest assured that I will not hear such complaints anymore.

Raya is about giving, sharing and forgiving, so why not (if we can afford) spare some duit raya for those deserving lots, and those who are close to your hearts, right?

By the way, last week, on the first day of Eid,  THE FIRST TIME IN 30 YEARS I GOT a BIG duit raya from my eldest girl, Nuni who celebrate her first Raya as a someone who earns regularly!! Thank you, Nuni. I was surprised to receive it!

Here’s a peep of the duit raya that she gave me:

I am not telling you how many pieces are in it, hehehe…… DH got one too..

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