Fetch your daughter to school ah?

Today, as I walked with my dad to his car so that he could drop me off at the station, we walked past our next door neighbour who was out washing his car at seven freaking thirty in the morning. As usual, I walked on straight ahead while he greeted my dad.

Neighbour: “Fetch your daughter to school ah?”

Dad: *chuckling* “No la, to work.”

Neighbour: “To work?! Work already ah?”

Said neighbour has been living next to us for more than half a year and has seen me in the morning/evening/night for a bazillion times because his hobby is washing his car at all hours of the day. Hello? Who on earth goes to college every weekday at 7.30am without fail?!

Words

I loved words. I love to sing them and speak them and even now, I must admit, I have fallen into the joy of writing them. – Anne Rice

I stumbled across this quote and it says exactly what I would say about myself. The pen is, after all, mightier than the sword.

I cannot find anything else that I would like to add to it so I will just leave you to enjoy the quote and let it sink in a little.

Do you have a quote that inspires you?

Ini kali lah!

Just went to my very first political lecture at BU11 that ended literally 30 minutes ago and I’m all the more pumped for election day.

Had the privilege of hearing some of the top speakers – Sivarasa Rasiah, Ambiga Sreenevasan, and Elizabeth Wong talk about the much needed change in our country and it’s so heartening to see so many people who welcome that.

We’ve had enough. We’ve had enough of politicians who treat the people like idiots who can easily be bought with money, like idiots who will believe whatever lies they spin. We’ve had enough of blatant corruptions. We’ve had enough the rocketing crime rates and feeling too afraid to walk out of our homes or even to sleep soundly at night. We’ve had enough of the fools who are supposed to lead our country.

This coming 5th of May will be the first ever time I would be voting. My one single vote might be the determining factor in the change we seek. I can’t wait.

Taipei Day 5

Haven’t blogged about my Taipei trip for 2 months so here is Day 5 of my November 2012 trip to Taipei.

Oh, and I am extremely happy to report that tickets have been booked for next year! That’s right, I’m going back to Taiwan baby! ♥

As is customary, the post begins with a photo of yours truly.

Yes, I wore the fluffy white sweater again after my mum did the laundry on Day 4. No, I chickened out of wearing the hat in the end. It was too hot for a hat anyway.

Our day starts with breakfast a trip to Longshan Temple!

Mum with an inflatable model of Guanyin at the Longshan Temple Station.

Breakfast is at Chow’s Porridge 周记肉粥.

Directions: Alight at Longshan Temple Station (Banqiao Line), turn right to Guangzhou Street as you see Longshan Temple right in front of you. Walk for 5 minutes and you’ll see Chow’s Porridge 周记肉粥.

They have these deer horn extract for you to add into your porridge. D:

Old school porridge with bits of pork and deep fried shallots in it. Mum’s not a fan but I liked it.

The order sheet cum menu. If you can’t read Mandarin, you’d better bring someone who can. Or you could just order randomly and hope for the best.

Top: Asparagus with soy sauce. Cold.
Bottom: Pig intestine with soy sauce. Cold.

Top: Pork cheeks with soy sauce. Cold.
Bottom: Squid with soy sauce. Cold.

Their signature roast pork 红烧肉. This one deserves a full picture by itself because it’s crispy, savoury and HOT.

Srsly, I don’t know why all the other side dishes are served cold with only a few tiny drops of soy sauce. -_-

Total damage: 290NTD. I think this was probably one of the pricier meals we’ve had in Taipei so far.

Next stop: Longshan Temple 龙山寺! This is one of the most famous temples in Taipei so if you’re ever in Taipei, it’s worth a visit.

You have no idea how hard it is to capture a photo without a car passing by in the background.

Standing quite far away from the man-made waterfall because the water’s quite smelly. =.=

My mum unknowingly went damn near and ended up getting splattered by smelly water droplets hahahaha.

The following photos will have no captions because they’re all touristy shots.

No photos of the interior because there were too many people. Mum bought some incense sticks for 20NTD to pray after our touristy shots and that wraps up Longshan Temple 龙山寺!

Next, we took the MRT to Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall Station (Just 2 stations from Taipei Main Station/3 stations from Longshan Temple) and head to Exit 5 for our visit to Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall 国立中正纪念堂.

When we got there, the sky was overcast. D: This is either the National Theater or the National Concert Hall.

Archway of Memorial Hall Square 自由广场.

Very windy. Don’t know what was going on with my smile so I censored it. =.=

Here’s a better (and less windy) photo.

Wind is back. -_- It was already drizzling at this point, thus the umbrella in my hand.

The main point of our visit, the CKS Memorial Hall…was under construction. -____________-

After that, the rain came pouring down so we sought refuge at the front of one of the halls for a bit and ate some free snacks we took from our hotel room.

And we took photos like this… If I didn’t censor this, my mum would kill me.

After the rain subsided, we explored the surrounding park.

Everything looks so clean and quiet after the rain.

I look very disheveled after the rain so no more photos of me. :/

Due to the rain, our lunch plan to Yong Kang Beef Noodle 永康牛肉麵 was postponed to almost 6pm…

Directions: Walk from Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall (about 10mins). Directions taken from Google maps.
1. Head northeast on 杭州南路二段 toward 杭州南路二段9巷
2. Turn right onto 信義路二段
3. Turn right onto 金山南路二段
4. Turn left onto 金山南路二段31巷 (Destination on the left)

My advice? Take a taxi. It took us forever to find this place. At this point, we are cold, tired, and starving.

Our first proper meal since breakfast…

Menu outside the shop.

We ordered a bowl of clear soup noodles with beef tendons and beef 清炖半筋半肉面 (200NTD) to share since we planned on going to some other place for dinner. I’m not a huge fan of Taiwanese beef noodles and this was only average to me. They have a bowl of pickled vegetables on every table for you to add into your noodles so that was pretty good.

After that, we had to walk all the way back to the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall 国立中正纪念堂 to take the MRT to our next destination since we couldn’t find any taxis near the restaurant. That took another 20 minutes of hobbling…

And we’ve arrived at Ningxia night market 宁夏夜市 at last! This is one of the smallest night markets we’ve ever been to in Taipei so far. You can probably finish the whole night market in half an hour.

Directions: Ningxia night market. Alight at either Tamsui Line (Red Line) Shuanglian MRT Station or Zhongshan MRT Station of Tamsui Line, walk towards west (Chengde Rd.) from Exit No.1 for approximately 10 minutes (We took a taxi from the station instead).

They do, however, have this stall. And that is worth a visit all by itself.

This is the most awesome…

Hot mua chee 烧麻糍 ever! These are boiled in hot water and comes with either grounded peanut or grounded sesame. We opted for both! This was 40NTD.

We also ordered another version served on top of shaved ice (60NTD). This makes the mochi a bit more QQ than the hot one. I personally prefer the hot one while my mum likes the cold one. Be sure to try both and decide for yourself!

Doggy tethered to a motorcycle while the owner went off to buy food from the night market.

Nothing else caught our fancy at the night market so we quickly moved on to another location to fill our tummies.

Saizeriya at Xi Men Ding! This is an Italian restaurant that was started in Japan. They specialise in extremely affordable Italian food.

Menus.

My spaghetti bolognese.

Mum’s spaghetti with seafood and spinach.

Garlicky escargot. Yum.

Everything came up to only 247NTD!

After dinner, we walked around Ximending for a bit and shopped in their Daiso and the 24-hours Watson’s. 24-hours Watson’s are the shiznit I tell ya.

A haunted telephone booth in the Xi Men Ding square with a massive queue full of youngsters. We are too old for this shit so we went back to the hotel and rest.

Stay tune for Day 6! (These Taipei posts seem to have no end in sight wtf)

Loud, Obnoxious and Disgusting

How do you deal with loud and obnoxious co-workers? Do you confront them? Or do you suck it up and suffer in silence?

There’s this 2 women in my workplace that drives me absolutely nuts with their inconsiderate behaviour in the office. Let’s call them A and B.

Both of them are excruciatingly loud, whether it’s on the phone with someone else or talking to another person face-to-face in the office. Often, they like to argue with each other and it is a complete nightmare trying to work while they both talk/yell at the top of their voices. A likes to talk in an annoyingly high-pitched voice when she’s on the phone (her voice literally goes up an octave or two for some godforsaken reason), while B has the gravelly voice of an old man. (I’m not kidding. Her voice is even deeper than say, my dad’s.) When the 2 of them talk together, it grates on my nerves so much I feel like pulling out my hair.

A also has the extremely disgusting habit of snorting her mucus, very loudly. So loudly that people sitting 2 rows away can hear her snort and swallow. And this doesn’t happen only when she’s down with a cold; she does it every single day, every couple of minutes. It disgusts me to no end to hear her snort and then freaking swallow her mucus! Worst part? Her combative and aggressive personality means no one wants to talk to her about it because she will no doubt turn it into a big drama.

I’m at my wit’s end here and I can’t just tune them out because both of them are so freaking loud! Sometimes I fantasise going to A’s seat, smacking the back of her head and ask her to stop snorting her mucus.

Urgh.

Looking Young

In a world obsessed with youth, you’d think looking younger than your age is a fantastic thing. And most of the time, it is. I mean, nobody likes premature aging, right?

I’ve always been told that I look younger than I really am. At 24, I’m almost a quarter of a century old. Yet, people often tell me that I look like I’m at most, in my late teens. While I don’t deny that I quite like my youthful looks (it sure beats looking like you’re 40 when you’re only 25), sometimes looking like you’re perpetually underage is not all that great at all.

For one, I ALWAYS get carded in places that require ID to enter, i.e. clubs and casinos. Although I don’t go to places like that often enough to make it a perpetual pain in the butt, it still gets embarrassing after awhile, especially if your younger friends have no trouble entering and all of them have to wait around while your ID gets verified, often with a few raised eyebrows and some good-natured (and some not-so-good-natured) ribbing from the bouncers. And no, a crap load of makeup doesn’t guarantee entry without being carded as well, I’ve tried. The last time I went to Singapore, I visited the Resort World Casino. I was stopped at the entrance, checked by 2 guards standing just 5 metres away from each other, stopped again by a different guard when I just got inside the casino, and multiple times when I was inside walking around, and twice more when I wanted to get out! It got from mildly amusing to extremely annoying considering that I was a foreigner and they had to cross-check again and again (probably to see if my passport was forged).

It’s also hard to get people to take you seriously, especially in a professional setting. Just last week, I went to the EPF department to settle some things and the officer commented that he thought I was a secondary school graduate who’s there to set up an account. If he had hair, I’m pretty sure his eyebrows would have disappeared into them when I passed him my identity card for him to verify my details.  When I went to Bahrain for work, I had similar experiences when people asked me how old I actually am. Perhaps they’re afraid that my company hired an underage girl to work and thus is violating labour laws?

Over dinner last night, I spoke to my mum about travelling alone since it’s really hard to get everyone’s schedule coordinated and not everyone has the same budget or interest in travelling to certain places. It’s no secret that I really would like to go to Japan, and I certainly don’t mind travelling solo. However, my mum told me she most probably wouldn’t allow me to travel alone, never mind Japan, but not even to Bangkok. Aside from being overprotective like parents always are, her main concern is also because I look too young. My height is always going to be a huge contributing factor to why I look younger than my age. My brother who is 3 years my junior often gets mistaken as my older brother when we’re out together because he is 20cm taller than Ms. Shorty here. Looking like you’re 18 and being all alone overseas is not exactly a great thing, especially since you’re my size. And since I still get called 小妹妹 (little girl) by older people when I go out, it’s hard to argue with my mum’s logic. So, sadly, it looks like there’d be no solo travelling for me until I look a bit more like my age, which might not even happen when I turn 30…

Perhaps 21 would be a good age to look like? I think growing 3 more inches would help me inch towards that goal, no pun intended.

Frustrated,
Baby  Face

Going off on a jet plane again!

A quick post before I leave for a very very short trip!

This will be my maiden trip to the Middle East, specifically to Bahrain. For work.

I’m not terribly excited. But then again, the Middle East has never been on my list of places I desperately want to travel to. Oh well, I guess it’s good to go at least once in my life?

I don’t really have anything else to say aside from the fact that I’ve been horribly sick for a full three weeks and now my period has decided to join in the fun too. Yay me. The massively long plane ride is going to be such a joy.

This pointy building keeps showing up when I google Bahrain. Further googling says this is the Bahrain World Trade Centre. I’ll let you guys know if it really is this pointy in real life when I see it!

Ciao!

February Eats

Just me doing what I do best…

Takoyaki at Senya Isetan. Not bad but sauce is too salty.

Hamburg set at Senya Isetan. Again, very salty. I wouldn’t reorder.

Katsudon at Tonkatsu by Ma Maison Isetan One Utama. Yummiest Tonjiru ever. Free refills of rice, cabbage and soup! I think I had 3 bowls of soup and my stomach almost exploded.

A non-Japanese food entry! Club sandwich at O’Brien’s The Curve.

Their Triple Decker’s still better though.

Rosu Katsu set at Tonkatsu by Ma Maison Isetan One Utama again on a different day. Sauce is a bit too salty and the meat a little too fatty for my liking. Tonjiru is still awesome though! Not a good place to go if you’re on a diet. #Stuffed 

Not very hard to deduce what’s my favourite cuisine huh?

Suay Maximus

You know you’re suay when you get a bad throat infection and the antibiotics prescribed to fight the infection make you even sicker because you’re allergic to it…

Erythromycin, oh how I hate you.

This made me constantly nauseated and so bloated I looked 3 months pregnant. FML.

Now I’ve resorted to self-medicating wtf.

Monthlies

No, it’s not what you think it is.
I have been consistently falling sick almost every month and it’s pretty damn frustrating. To add insult to injury, I had to wait a whooping hour in an overcrowded freezing (or maybe that’s just the chills I’m having) clinic to see a doctor about my myriad of illness ranging from headache, dizziness to a massive throat infection.

The cherry on top of the cake? My medical card couldn’t cover the cost of the medications and if I wanted the full set, I’d have to fork out extra from my own bloody pockets.

Now I’m finally back home and sitting in my air-conditioningless room digesting the lone biscuit that served as my dinner before I can eat my medications and call it a night.

Way to celebrate the end of Chinese New Year. Yay.