Cheat Work Thursday

So this week I'll be attending a Refresher Class, a dinner party the night after, and that wedding 300km from KL the following day. Yours truly, driving again. UPDATE: The wedding -- well, you already knew pretty much everything about weddings: the food is usually good. The dinner party -- as much as I don't want to buy anything new to wear just for an event, at the very last minute I'd usually accept defeat. Four hours before the event started, my vain a** was still running from one shop to another looking for things to wear. I ended up sneaking into the party during the Guest of Honour's toast. I doubt anybody noticed or cared, anyway, about my late entrance. I showed up and now I have a new dress, so life is good. Remind me to skip this next time, please. But I kind of like the guest gift -- some cool camping tool, or probably a rolling pin, depending on how you look at it. Only that, I don't camp (or roll bread). Or maybe I will, if you count the on...

I watch Desperate Housewives for the uncomfortable scenes. Scrutinizing the clothes that I want -- the dresses, the tops, the coats, plus the biceps and the flat abs -- is a bonus. (I didn't really watch Sex and the City.) So, besides Gabrielle, I think Edie has one of the best wardrobes this season (season 4). Don't worry if she (or everyone else) overdresses to a game night party, I really like most of what she wears. This scene was hilarious and dark. I lmao but also felt guilty. Image: abc.com

My mother complains thinks I've been wearing the same baju kurung / kebaya for too many years (besides, of course, how tight or inappropriate-for-the-occasion the kebayas are). I'm going to hang on to those baju kurung forever, by the way, they were made by her. The thing we already knew about baju kurung or kebaya -- they can be really expensive. One that you really, really like may cost you at least a couple of hundred RM. (Usually, my mother sews my baju kurung, so that would cost me less 🙇🏻‍♀️, but not kebaya.) And it's not easy to care for the material or move around in them. Plus, the only times that I'd wear them are during a wedding or raya or a kenduri, none of which I really look forward to. So, it's only fair that I don't have many of them. But a wedding (this thing never ends) is coming up in about two weeks. So I've already bought some chiffon and satin in black and sent them to my favourite tailor*. *It's now some of my friends...

People ask, "Why did you do that?" when I tell them that I left BLEEP and the Hell House (my former employers) to do what I do now (err, thank you?). When you allegedly have good things going for you, why let it go? (Ok, BLEEP does give a not-too-bad pay, and people sort of assume that Hell House does the same.) Anyway, I was pretty much at the bottom of the food chain in both. I'd take ANY pay and just be grateful that I can pay the bills. My response to them was, "They were just not for me, and vice versa." BLEEP prides itself on encouraging employees to work from home. How do we do that, I'll never know. We stayed in the cubicle 18 hours a day. Other things I remember about BLEEP: for perhaps the world's leading IT company, it uses a last-century accounting system, a dinosaur-age database and Lotus e-mail. I had at least eight passwords to have access to my work. But... I enjoy mentioning to my current clients that "Owh, I was with BLEEP a...

It's not that I read that much, but when I do, I'd read Sophie Kinsella, Jeffrey Archer, John Grisham and Sidney Sheldon. Most of the time, I find it difficult to finish reading books by others. There were a number of successes -- Dan Browns, Donya al-Nahi's Heroine of the Desert (the story of her mission bringing mixed-parentage kids who had been 'kidnapped' by their Middle Eastern parent back to the US/UK(?), I forgot this part), and Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha, for example. At this moment, I'm trying really hard to finish Cecilia Ahern's P.S. I Love You. Things do not look too good at this point. (Seriously, who recommended me this book? Why am I still reading it?) Recently, I did try reading Flyboys, Catcher in the Rye, a Louis Fischer book about Gandhi, Michael Crichton's Next, To Kill a Mockingbird and a few chick-lits. I'm positive they are all great reads, but I couldn't go beyond the 10th page. Mmmhonestly... as for ...

BABEL is a story of how one bullet, differences and misunderstandings change the lives of four families in four different continents. It's one of my favourite Brad Pitt performances. ATONEMENT is beautiful and heartbreaking. While it felt so close, the movie didn't give me any closure, and that haunted me for a few days. NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN . Can a man with the strangest, most hilarious hairstyle send a skin-crawling terror to your spine? Yes, I think he can. There Will Be Blood . I needed three attempts to complete watching this. I fell asleep halfway through the first two — while on coffee. It is now a sleeping pill inside joke between me and my sister. I haven't made the third attempt yet. Posters: Paramount Vantage, Universal Pictures

... which is delicious, just like what I heard before the trip. Traditionally, the coffee is brewed into a cup with a metal drip filter (which a friend suggested looks exactly like a sink filter -- err, thank you for putting that image in my brain), then mixed with condensed milk, ice optional. These shops should be open next to every Starbucks all over the world.

Our Vietnamese guide was funny and unpretentious, always ready with jokes and stories about his life and Vietnam. And one of the first things we noticed about Saigon was the massive number of bikes on the road. The second thing was the way they drove. Traffic lights (or road dividers) are not meant to be obeyed. Traffic comes simultaneously from every direction, and people honk every 30 seconds. Apparently, the road rule in Saigon is, "You win or lose." We went to the usual tourist spots/activities: puppet shows, sampan rides, candy making places, orchards, and coffee shops for their famous coffee etc on the first few days. Hawkers and street food were everywhere, with plastic chairs set up along the sidewalks. I loved the view and the idea of joining the crowd, but I had to pass up on that experience. Saigon is fast-paced and busy. This city is made of hustlers. Most of the people are friendly, but I have a feeling some of them are already tired of the repetitious p...

You can shop for a lot of things in Vietnam -- from lacquerware, embroideries and paintings to clothes, silk, kain ela  and millions others -- just ask my friends. The high-end shops offer higher quality, more expensive lacquerware and silk, but a cheaper version is always available in the markets. Two shopping spots that you may not want to miss are, of course, the famous Ben Thanh Market and maybe Nguyen Trai Street. I discovered the latter after asking the concierge for 'small shops to buy clothes'. I went there alone and, after making a few wrong turns, arrived at what must be at least two kilometres of mostly clothing shops. So, among other things, I bought a couple of dresses for a total of RM125, the famous star cap for... much more than its actual price (but it's one of my favourite purchases), 10 pieces of embroidered clutches for RM47 and 10 metres of satin silk for RM109. Street sellers selling stuff like handicrafts and handbags etc can be very persiste...

1) A 1970 tank displayed at the Cu Chi tunnel complex, an underground network turned war memorial park. (The tunnels apparently contributed to the US military withdrawal from Saigon.) 2) One of the many horrifying traps -- the round floor goes down with weight, leaving the victims stabbed. 3) The model of the Cu Chi tunnels. (Part of the tunnel has been made larger and opened for tourists to crawl through. I did crawl through the 100m route, and it was still scary. Imagine it in its original form, without the lights and expansion.) The tunnels did not only serve as hiding spots and communication routes, but also as hospitals and living quarters. They were part of a larger network of over 200km long, which took over 20 years to build, mainly using hand tools. 4) A Pulitzer Prize winning picture of a mother crossing a river with her kids to escape attacks. 5) Pictures of people exposed to chemical weapons. 6) A military helicopter displayed in the War Remnants Museum. ...